Gauging Interest: Gameroom Junkies Magazine???

nocashvalue said:
Thanks for everyone's responses and honesty.

The thing about this for me is that I'm not in it to make money. I recognize that profit margins on something like this are slim. I don't know if the publisher of GR magazine ran that as a full-time job, but if so, I can certainly see it not being able to support an entire family. However, I already have a great job and anything more than operational costs would be icing on a cake.

I already do what I do as a labor of love. I have a passion for this hobby. If you look back at my old blog (www.nocashvalue.info) along with the current GJ website and podcast, you'd see that I would produce this kind of content anyway, for free. I just feel like a portion of GRMag's 1800 subscribers miss a physical copy of a magazine, as do I.

I found a print company that can do full color print runs for a reasonable amount. The price of an issue should cover printing and shipping with advertising covering any overhead (hookers and booze). I think there's a lot of people out there, just none with the time, energy, or skill to devote their efforts to a project like this.

Again, this is just a "testing the waters" post, and to see if there'd be any support. This may never happen. But then again...
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I can see how you might think I was talking about making a career out of it, and I think that is partly where Kevin went wrong. I was just talking about treading water. Advertising dollars are necessary for something like this to stay afloat, so advertisers' concerns need to be considered as well as the concerns of the consumers. A loss of either can quickly lead to a failed business. Some consumers want to find (related) advertising in the magazine, and some don't. So long as the content takes up more pages than the advertising you should minimize the complaints.
 
I would subscribe to a physical magazine. I always liked the printed versions (I don't really like digital comics....let alone magazines). However, if you gotta go digital...I probably wouldn't turn away. Either way, I would like to do some articles for you too.
 
A niche market like this, doesn't need a monthly issue...make it quarterly, then you'll wind up with a "beefier" mag with the best content you can bring.

Forcing yourself to put together enough worthy articles within a month just won't work...

And I agree with the print/online thing...1 or the other, not both. Though you could offer back issues as PDF only, keeping it 2 issues behind.
Then you're only printing what has been subscribed for, anyone wanting a back issue pays a fraction 6+ months after print for a PDF only.
 
nocashvalue said:
Thanks for everyone's responses and honesty.

The thing about this for me is that I'm not in it to make money. I recognize that profit margins on something like this are slim. I don't know if the publisher of GR magazine ran that as a full-time job, but if so, I can certainly see it not being able to support an entire family. However, I already have a great job and anything more than operational costs would be icing on a cake.

I already do what I do as a labor of love. I have a passion for this hobby. If you look back at my old blog (www.nocashvalue.info) along with the current GJ website and podcast, you'd see that I would produce this kind of content anyway, for free. I just feel like a portion of GRMag's 1800 subscribers miss a physical copy of a magazine, as do I.

I found a print company that can do full color print runs for a reasonable amount. The price of an issue should cover printing and shipping with advertising covering any overhead (hookers and booze). I think there's a lot of people out there who want a project like this to happen, just none with the time, energy, or skill to devote their efforts to do a project like this themselves.

Again, this is just a "testing the waters" post, and to see if there'd be any support. This may never happen. But then again...
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Good luck! And you probably want to talk to the Pingame Journal guys, if you do this. They've got experience, and I think they are also on the 'not for big profits' basis.

I think you might do OK if you did a quarterly. If you can keep the price reasonable, I'll sign up.

If it doesn't cost you much time/trouble, you might want to think about an electronic edition as well - have your layout software spit the magazine out to a PDF. You could make that available to the subscribers, or sell it, or just make it available a year or two later. That will save someone the time of scanning the magazine in a few years...
 
nocashvalue said:
In a thread on RGP, Clay Harrell (who was offered the rights to buy the magazine before declining) said there were 1800, but that's not confirmed.
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It certainly sounds plausible. If you do subscriptions, you might want to consider 'single issue' subscriptions for the first issue, as well as longer 4,8, or more subscriptions. That would let folks who are on the fence order the one issue without feeling they are risking a lot of money, but also allow you to know pretty much exactly how many copies you need, so you don't have to over-order from the printer.

A couple of other things:

I don't know how the economics play out (I kind of assume being the same size as everyone else is cheaper), but I'm personally partial to digest-sized magazines (like 2600 if you've ever read that), rather than 8 1/2 x 11. Don't know why, I just am.

Please, don't just shove everything you've got into each issue. Decide on a size (pages or # of articles, whatever), and try to have 2-3x more material than that before you go to press the first time. Use just what you need to make the magazine the size you want.

Keep up the pace of acquiring articles as you go. This builds up a 'buffer' so that you can lay out the magazine at a reasonable pace, and not be scrambling too hard at the last moment.

The idea here (and it's IMPORTANT) is that if you're going to do say, a bi-annual, you should put your two issues out ON TIME. Yea, we all know it's a hobby level thing, but if you ship on time, you'll get more subscribers than if you ship semi-randomly.

Another thing (and I'll actually volunteer, here and now, to help with this one) is: PROOF READ AND COPY EDIT. Nothing says 'guy in his basement' like stupid typos. I'll be one of your proof readers, and I'll even volunteer my wife's time on the proofing & editing (she's a Latin teacher and there's nothing like bad editing in professional publications to set her off...).

And lastly, when you pick your first publication date, think about when the next issue should come out, and try to plan the whole thing so that you don't have deadlines showing up around Christmas or Easter. You'll just make yourself nuts if you do.
 
heres my thoughts.

I would buy the mag in a heartbeat just to see other peoples game rooms and little articles on games that I might not have known anything about, and stuff like that, tips section, how to section, you know magazine shit.

I would 100% prefer a magazine and not an internet/pdf file.

Please make this happen, I subscribed to GRM for 6 issues and then they stopped.. and im sad. I need more bathroom material
 
I'd be all over this... I still look at stuff on the internet a lot, but I still love getting printed mags. I subscribed for the last 3 years of Gameroom and I also still get a bunch of print car and motorcycle mags.

One problem I think you might have is actual gameroom submissions. I think Gameroom was running out of them the last couple of years... I can give Kev a shout and see if he wants to comment on this, but I'm not sure.
 
Here's what I'd do if I were you. draw up an issue. The 'premier' issue. Print up 200 copies of it. Price it at 8 bucks shipped, see if you sell out. If you do, make another issue.

Just sell them after you've printed them, don't do subscription.
 
LyonsArcade said:
Here's what I'd do if I were you. draw up an issue. The 'premier' issue. Print up 200 copies of it. Price it at 8 bucks shipped, see if you sell out. If you do, make another issue.

Just sell them after you've printed them, don't do subscription.
Click to expand...

this.. but make sure i get one.
 
LyonsArcade said:
Here's what I'd do if I were you. draw up an issue. The 'premier' issue. Print up 200 copies of it. Price it at 8 bucks shipped, see if you sell out. If you do, make another issue.

Just sell them after you've printed them, don't do subscription.
Click to expand...

If he does that, then he's got to lay out all the money up front with no guarantee of getting ANY of it back. Sounds like a bad plan to me.

If you don't want to do subscriptions, do pre-orders for each issue. That gives you the money up front again, but with no long-lasting obligations.
 
You could get a halfway decent printer with glossy paper and have it be kinda do it at home-ish for the first couple magazines. Or get kinkos to work you up something. You'd take a batch preorder for the first couple mags and go from there. If remember correctly didn't tmnt start in a similar way once upon a time? This would be just to get your foot in the door and work out a couple of the bugs. A soft opening if you will. Once the fan base is in place you can do a grand restart with the first printings turning into collectors items
 
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