Where do you want your zine seen? Cross platform (web, Facebook, iPad, iPhone...) with social media hooks? Check out Publisha

[Anna Sjostrom]

Hi

I'd be really interested in hearing thoughts from people on where and how they'd like their zine to be read, what's their main driver and so on.

We’ve just launched Publisha, which I mentioned to this site's administrator might be interesting to this group. Publisha is a free website that lets people easily create a magazine from scratch across Facebook, iPhone, iPad and a website.

There are lots of big chiefs charging for producing digital versions of magazines, whereas Publisha is different. We want to encourage and provide ways for new publishers to get a magazine, zine or blog (or anything else!) started cross platform with no overheads. You don't need any existing PDFs as the system creates the magazine for you, so it's also great for people starting completely fresh.

Unlike a normal Facebook Fan page which allows limited length content, each platform can show full articles (current and archived) and the dedicated magazine tab within Facebook lets you grow and manage your overall readership, as well as run polls and communicate with your fans. The analytics package gives you great information on your readers that you can use to tailor your articles, approach and adverts if you want these in your zine. You get all the profit from ads you sell. 

This is all available for free so takes the risk out of publishing.

We'll help publishers gain readers by doing cross promotion between magazines, as this will help you gain readers (as there will be several titles of interest to the same people). If you're interested in having advertising on your site, having several magazines in the same niche will also make your combined magazine, website and Facebook page more attractive to advertisers. 

Since the beta launch in April (www.publisha.com), we've already made modifications and added new features based on our users' needs and feedback. To make this product work for you, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you want to do with your zine, where and how you'd like your readers to access it (i.e. on what platforms, what features you'd want etc), whether the main priority is gaining readers or if you also want to make some money from it, if you want it go grow etc. 

If you'd like to contact me about specifics for your mag outside of Ning, my email is [e-mail]. In the meantime, please have a look or sign up on the beta site. 

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Anna

[Dan C]

You're not just advertising, you're asking for free market research - AWESOME!

That was sarcastic, because it's pretty clear you are misusing these discussion forums with this thinly guised post, but this service does actually seem like something interesting I might consider trying, and that is sincere.

[Royce Icon]

Yeah, it seems spammy, but it is an interesting sounding service.

[James N. Dawson]

Well, I hesitated responding to this, because I realize it really wasn't asking for "my" opinion, and I should stay out of it. But since I'm trying to kill a little time before I head into town, I thought I'd take a few potshots.

First, as I have for decades, I had the usual "luddite" negative visceral reaction. That doesn't mean I'm right about that, or I should have. Lately I've been trying to take a big breath and either walk away or *try* to meet the techno-enthusiasts half-way.

I don't want to be the mean old "language police", but I wonder why Internetter/technophiles insist on calling e-zines, zines? All they've got to do is put a little e-dash in front to clarify what they're talking about, and avoid ignoring, distorting and looking through hundreds of years of ZINE history and culture. A similar problem I have is with using "cut-n-paste" for "image and text transfer". It muddies the waters and "takes over", CO-OPTS another culture's language. I guess that sounds overdramatic and peevish, but I had to get it out.

I doubt that doing all this application or whatever you're supposed to call it would be "easy" at all for me, but hey, maybe I'm dumb. There're also funner, more productive and more meaningful things I'd like to do, but to each his own. Further, I wonder if all this is THAT much different from the 2 billion and other ways you can put words and images on a computer screen and isn't just the usual mega-hype for some infinitely trivial "innovation". But then I admit I may not be "getting it".

I've seen iPads, iPods, iPhones, etc. ad infinitum on TV and seen them demonstrated and to the limited extent I even understand them I've beem monumentally underwhelmed. I'm still trying to "get the point" of them all.

50 to 90 per cent of computer jargon is still techno-greek to me and I have only the vaguest idea of what this, that or the other tech term means. I still don't know what "RSS" is all about, and I've tried reading about it on the net, but that just led to more confusion. Now, none of this is anybody's fault or responsibility but my own. I'm just putting it out there.

So, wanted or not, that's one "luddite", "techno-imbecile" response, for what it's worth, and I'm not claiming it's much.

[Royce Icon]

James, first of all, I definitely respect your honesty, though your hostility towards technology does seem kind of ironic given the context.

I don't think that people are "co-opting" the language. When programmers started building GUIs for computers, it made the most logical sense to base terms on their real world equivalents. It's like being peeved about the terms "cookies" and "spam".

E-zines are called such because they are electronic ZINES. They may not be in the flesh, but they have the same goal: to communicate, to share information. There is a long legacy of e-zines dating back to the early 80s with textfile zines that were distributed via BBS. These were pretty much doing the same thing as their physical counterparts, only they had a cultural bent up until the 90s when more people were using the web. By then, there was pretty much every zine niche being covered via an online equivalent. And because of the internet there are countless old physical zines that are preserved for future generations to see.

There is a lot of hype going on about new technologies for sure. a lot of it is silly. but at the end of the day its all about information. The more formats and media available, the more options for you to communicate. noone is forcing you take part in it. Personally, I'd rather know that an endless amount of people could access my art, not just 25 people I gave a copy to because I'm too poor to do a big print run.

As for RSS, essentially just think of it as a way to look at a bunch of different sites at once. You use a RSS reader for RSS feeds, and whenever there is an update to a blog or website you like, you'll get it in one place. It's really only for people who real A LOT of blogs.

[Anna Sjostrom]

Wording is inevitably misleading and often controversial. The same is true when writing a magazine - if you're writing online, is it still a magazine? Or is it a publication? But many think of publications as a book, a medical journal etc. Writing online can also take so many different forms, from the more traditional magazine slant, to blogs and so on. A magazine doesn't have to look anything like a traditionally laid out magazine (as in the example of Publisha), but it's still technically a magazine by definition of content.
New technologies of course add an interesting element to this discussion.
Having said that, I agree with Royce, about e-zines being an absolutely fair and correct term for zines using online technology.

I also wanted to give a quick response also to Dan and Royce. I'm sorry if you feel I've abused this discussion forum - I actually contacted the site's administrator saying what I wanted to post and I was accepted into the network. I genuinely feel this is a product that will benefit writers who, like Royce describes, are too poor to do a big print run or have an expensive layout done, but still want to get their message out there to as many people as possible.

[NicoleIntrovert]

I don't think anyone making ZINES (and by that, i mean ZINES... not E-anything) is paying or even contemplating paying someone to do a big expensive layout.

Though... i could be wrong.... but then you should be asking yourself if it is a ZINE that you are doing?

Anna Sjostrom said:

Wording is inevitably misleading and often controversial. The same is true when writing a magazine - if you're writing online, is it still a magazine? Or is it a publication? But many think of publications as a book, a medical journal etc. Writing online can also take so many different forms, from the more traditional magazine slant, to blogs and so on. A magazine doesn't have to look anything like a traditionally laid out magazine (as in the example of Publisha), but it's still technically a magazine by definition of content.
New technologies of course add an interesting element to this discussion.
Having said that, I agree with Royce, about e-zines being an absolutely fair and correct term for zines using online technology.

I also wanted to give a quick response also to Dan and Royce. I'm sorry if you feel I've abused this discussion forum - I actually contacted the site's administrator saying what I wanted to post and I was accepted into the network. I genuinely feel this is a product that will benefit writers who, like Royce describes, are too poor to do a big print run or have an expensive layout done, but still want to get their message out there to as many people as possible.

[Anna Sjostrom]

Absolutely agree, but we've had several people getting in touch who have run zines for some time and want to develop into something bigger with wider circulation.


NicoleIntrovert said:

I don't think anyone making ZINES (and by that, i mean ZINES... not E-anything) is paying or even contemplating paying someone to do a big expensive layout.

Though... i could be wrong.... but then you should be asking yourself if it is a ZINE that you are doing?

Anna Sjostrom said:

Wording is inevitably misleading and often controversial. The same is true when writing a magazine - if you're writing online, is it still a magazine? Or is it a publication? But many think of publications as a book, a medical journal etc. Writing online can also take so many different forms, from the more traditional magazine slant, to blogs and so on. A magazine doesn't have to look anything like a traditionally laid out magazine (as in the example of Publisha), but it's still technically a magazine by definition of content.
New technologies of course add an interesting element to this discussion.
Having said that, I agree with Royce, about e-zines being an absolutely fair and correct term for zines using online technology.

I also wanted to give a quick response also to Dan and Royce. I'm sorry if you feel I've abused this discussion forum - I actually contacted the site's administrator saying what I wanted to post and I was accepted into the network. I genuinely feel this is a product that will benefit writers who, like Royce describes, are too poor to do a big print run or have an expensive layout done, but still want to get their message out there to as many people as possible.