Wouldn't It Be Cool...?

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2003-02-02 01:47pm

I guess this might've been better in Off-Topic, but I'm not sure, and it does apply to this forum, so...

Wouldn't it be cool if some of us SDNet scribes got together and tried to start a print magazine based on the topic and attitude of this forum? Imagine it; right there beside Scientific American and Discovery Magazine... the Premiere Issue of SLAM: Science, Logic And Morality -- personally, I think that would kick ass!

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-02-02 01:59pm

Hmmm... interesting. I can picture it now....

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-02 03:44pm

It could be doable. I've got the software to lay it out...getting it printed and distributed would be a whole other matter, but an electronic magazine distributed via PDF would be just a matter of assembling the content.

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2003-02-02 03:47pm

Think anybody would subscribe? I mean, we all do, already. But do you think people would pay to read our subjects and the way we flame on people? Heh heh heh...

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-02 03:50pm

Eh, I doubt it.

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2003-02-02 03:54pm

Still, it'd be fun to try. Oh, well. Worth a thought.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-02-02 04:06pm

Why would people pay for something they can already get for free?

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2003-02-02 05:50pm

Each of the usergroups getting its own section.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-02-02 05:53pm

There are lots of boutique specialty magazines out there. This is certainly not the goofiest idea that's ever been floated for one.

Post by **Colonel Olrik** » 2003-02-02 06:07pm

Darth Wong wrote:There are lots of boutique specialty magazines out there. This is certainly not the goofiest idea that's ever been floated for one.

As long as it doesn't take money or too much time.. Maybe a bimonthly edition, with a few articles each one written by a different person (and an editorial), at least partially based in the board discussions..

One unlucky guy (but experienced and willing) would have to put it in magazine format..

It could be posted in a section of the site.

It is doable..

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-02 06:42pm

I'm sure there are magazines that cover these topics already. Theres no reason to consolidte them into one and pray that someone other then SDNers will read.

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-02-02 06:50pm

Doesn't Skeptic the magazine do that? Except without our style and love of sci-fi.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-02 07:45pm

Layout itself wouldn't be very difficult. With the right software and a few basic templates (the former I have, the latter I could make easily), you could put a magazine together at a rate of about 15 minutes per page (assuming the content--articles and photographs--are already ready to go when the layout editor sits down to put it all together). To distribute it electronically, all you need is the full version of Acrobat to convert the desktop publisher file into a PDF that anyone can read. I'd be willing to do the layout myself provided we were only talking about 16-20 pages or less maybe once or twice a month.

If you want a PAPER magazine, however, things get very sticky. You could, of course, just print out the PDF pages and staple them together, but if that's all you're willing to do, you might as well just send the magazine out as a PDF and let the readers print it. For professional printing, look to spend at least $400 per issue, not including distribution costs. This will get you black and white photographs, cheap newsprint (NOT glossy magazine paper) or Xerox paper, and about 12-16 pages, and be prepared to find a printer out in East Jesus somewhere who's willing to ship the entire print run to you via UPS ground. When I worked on the alternate biweekly at my school, we spent $700 per issue for 3500 copies at 16 pages per copy. You might think, "Well, we won't need to print nearly that much", but in reality, chopping 1000 issues out of the print run may have saved us, maybe, $150. There's base costs involved in setting up a print run that stay the same no matter if you're printing 100 copies or a million. To get this rate, by the way, we had to give up a day in the production cycle (setting our deadlines for a Thursday distribution back to Tuesday morning instead of Wednesday) in order to have it printed in Towanda, PA and shipped to Philadelphia. And we only had to distribute it around campus. A niche magazine like this one would draw zero advertising dollars, and the only way to pay for printing with subscriptions or newsstand sales would be to price it so high that nobody would be willing to pay for it. Printing a paper magazine would cost somebody money every issue, and I don't think anyone here is willing to fork over a check every month to keep SD.net, The Magazine, rolling off the presses. Better to publish electornically, either in PDF or HTML (I'm not sure if my layout program will convert to HTML--I'll check). You could reach more readers and it wouldn't cost any more than the bandwidth.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2003-02-02 08:18pm

I can easily write articles. Shit I have a lot of spare time.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-02 09:31pm

I just whipped up a mock front cover. If anyone wants to host the screenshot, it's about a 350kb jpeg.

EDIT: Found a free image host, here it is.

Just in case you were curious, none of this was done in Photoshop except for creating the screenshot itself. The full size page is 12"x9", and it obviously doesn't have that watermark on the bottom.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-02 10:49pm

honestly, if we were to make something like this it would best be hosted right here on SDN as an offshoot of the mainpage. Each article would be its own page and below the article proper would be a Talk Back section where people can post opinions. Or maybe a link to a subforum here dedicated to the articles in the ezine.

Theres no reason to print, or to use PDFs. HTML is THE universal format, because if anyones viewing the site they can read the articles, acrobat plugin or not. You also don't have such luxuries as copy and past or talkback sections.

seriously, if we were to do an ezine it needs to be all html.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-02-02 11:10pm

Well, it couldn't be called StarDestroyer.Net, obviously, due to copyright issues.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-02 11:14pm

kojikun wrote:honestly, if we were to make something like this it would best be hosted right here on SDN as an offshoot of the mainpage. Each article would be its own page and below the article proper would be a Talk Back section where people can post opinions. Or maybe a link to a subforum here dedicated to the articles in the ezine.

Theres no reason to print, or to use PDFs. HTML is THE universal format, because if anyones viewing the site they can read the articles, acrobat plugin or not. You also don't have such luxuries as copy and past or talkback sections.

seriously, if we were to do an ezine it needs to be all html.

There's no reason why both couldn't be done. If I have the articles and the pictures, I can lay out the entire magazine and distill it to PDF in the course of an evening. Then the whole thing is a one-shot download that can be read offline, printed, whatever, and looks better than an HTML document and is in the proper format for a magazine, as well. Then somebody else can take the articles and pictures and tag them with the proper HTML code (this is exactly what print magazines with websites do).

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-02 11:43pm

Durran Korr wrote:Well, it couldn't be called StarDestroyer.Net, obviously, due to copyright issues.

D'oh! Forgot about that.

Ignore that grey box in the middle of the page. I forgot to drag it out of the way when I made the screenshot. The box in the upper left says "The Official Magazine of SD.net"--I'm pretty sure SD.net wouldn't be a copyright violation.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-02 11:51pm

Red, a printable version would be good, but the html and saveable/printable versions shouldnt be done like you say.

for the printable version we would just use PHP to collect all articles in the past week or whatever the person desires, and put only the articles and pictures into an HTML file. You can download full HTMLs simply by going to "save as" and saving a webarchive, so thats not an issue.

BTW, when you download an archive, it saves pictures and everything. for instance, the archive of this page is indistinguishable from the page proper. its size is a mere 350K.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-03 12:00am

It was my understanding that Raoul Duke's idea was to create a print magazine. The reason I'm recomending doing it my way is because this is the closest you can get to a professional looking print zine (and if anyone's rich uncle ever dies and we can afford to create a print magazine, having them in PDF in the proper format will be necessary to get that done). HTML is good for a lot of things, but not for this. I agree that if someone wants to do it, we can create an HTML version, but there's no reason not to do this as well.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-03 12:17am

its already been said why a print magazine is effectively impossible.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-02-03 12:56am

kojikun wrote:its already been said why a print magazine is effectively impossible.

I'm perfectly aware of that. Point in fact, I was the one who said it. My point in my last post was that if we're to create a reasonable facimile of a print mag, my way is how you would do it, and then, as an aside, I pointed out that if somehow it DID become possible to print it, having it formatted properly and in PDF would save boatloads of time. I really don't see where your objection is coming from. The PDF and HTML versions would be created simultaneously. I'd be doing all the work to create the PDF. It's not like anyone would need my HTML talents to keep the project going. I'm not saying we shouldn't do an HTML version, or make the HTML version an abridged version of the PDF. If whoever winds up hosting it objects to the extra bandwidth usage, then there might be issues, but it's not like webspace is some horrendously difficult thing to come by and they couldn't link to a PDF file stored on another server. Where's the problem here?

Raoul Duke, Jr. · Post by **Raoul Duke, Jr.** » 2003-02-03 01:27am

Durran Korr wrote:Well, it couldn't be called StarDestroyer.Net, obviously, due to copyright issues.

Still like the title SLAM.

EDIT: Oops, looks like Red got it already. Good job, man, looks cool.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-02-03 01:35am

RedImperator wrote:When I worked on the alternate biweekly at my school, we spent $700 per issue for 3500 copies at 16 pages per copy.

When I first read that, I thought "what? $700 for one stinkin' copy of the paper?!?"

Then I figured you meant $700 each run. And, wow, 3500 copies. Big school.