A friend of mine ordered Raven Magazine about three months ago and is yet to recieve an issue of it. I was wondering if anybody on here has read it or came across it anywhere. It says it is not for sale on news stands or in stores. www.ravenmagazine.com Thanks.
Just a WAG from someone familiar with the magazine industry.
First, it’s a full-color 128 page magazine with no advertising, so all the start-up money has to come through subscriptions. And subscriptions are only $14 a year. Unfortunately, nowhere on that site could I find any indication of how many issues they’re planning to put out in a year. And the cover photo given just says “issue one.”
So, assuming it’s real at all and not just a scam, what they’re doing is waiting until they’ve got enough suckers, er subscribers to afford to print that first issue. Then they can put it out on newsstands and see if it takes off.
If not, then they’ll either go out of business or announce that overwhelming demand has forced them to run advertising.
Go through a newsstand and count how many standard commercial publications don’t have advertising in them. After you get past Consumers Report, which is subsidized by a non-profit, you run out of examples almost instantly. No advertising is such a red flag that it makes me wonder what’s really going on.
Went back and took another look. Speaking of red flags.
The raves are from Jack Kelly, Jayson Blair, and Stpehen Glass, each of whom was fired recently for falsifying the facts in their stories. David Manning of the Ridgefield Press is the name of a phony reviewer made up by, I believe, Sony, to blurb really bad movies that couldn’t get good reviews anywhere else. Ted Casablanca is real. Maybe he’s behind this.
That part was obviously meant to be a joke. It’s a humor magazine afterall.
Haj
As may be.
I, publishing God to the stars, absolutely GUARANTEE that a 128 page, full color, glossy magazine, delivered through the mail, subscription only, no advertising, can NOT make money at $14 per year.
Just can’t be done. The postage alone, we’re it monthly, would eat up most (if not all) of that cost. That doesn’t even cover printing, overhead, editorial, circulation, photo, models, etc.
No, sir. I don’t believe it!
MAD Magazine never had any advertising, until a few years ago.
Another anecdote from the publishing industry (specifically, small-city daily news): Retail price is usually less than cost. Subscription price is, of course, quite a bit less than that, and doesn’t even cover the expense of getting it to you. Most of the money comes from ads (in newspapers, the rate is something like $10-$20 per inch per column, so a half- or full-page ad, especially one in color, costs several thousand dollars).
Right. Until a few years ago.
In the magazine business a few years ago is forever. I can name magazines which didn’t take ads ** a few years ago** too, but that doesn’t mean a thing today.
The unspoken fact that MAD magazine has been forced to take ads today is the only part of that statement that anyone should take away with them.