[sdiy] Audio (and synth) DIY printed magazine idea

[Colin Hinz]

On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 synth at charlielamm.com wrote:

> I come from a family of non-fiction writers and we are constantly bouncing
> ideas off each other for books and magazines that might do a little better
> than break-even (sometime break-even is OK too).
>
> My latest idea is to have a magazine called something like "Audio DIY".
> It would be in English, and come out monthly or bimonthly, and hopefully
> sell to an International audience.
>
> It would cover what I see to be the 4 "thrusts" of the audio DIY biz as I
> see it on the web and usenet
>
> --Synth DIY
> --Stomp DIY
> --Amp DIY
> --Software DIY (Reaktor, Nord modular, roll your own plug ins, etc)

You may want to touch base with Bart Hopkin, who for a decade and a
half (!) single-handedly edited and published a quarterly (bimonthly,
in the early years) magazine called EXPERIMENTAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.

It wasn't a fancy publication (plain ol' black ink on off-white paper,
saddle-stapled) but it was absolutely top-notch in quality, and that's
why it had a really dedicated readership base.

Information on the project, as well as contact info, can be found
here:

http://www.windworld.com/emi/

(I confess that, as a contributor to the magazine, I am not unbiased
about singing its praises....)

But yeah, Bart may have some suggestions on how -- and how not!! --
to approach this.

As for *my* own opinion....my gut feel is that a lot of effort should
be expended on rounding up really good quality content, and then go with
whatever production values you can afford. Enthusiasts will pony
up for good material even if the presentation is pretty plain.
On the other hand, if you've got something that's flashy but thin
on the ground, you'll always be chasing after getting new readers,
as few will hang around for the long haul. Yeah, this sounds really
straightforward, but I've seen it happen more than once where some
publisher gets stars in their eyes about high-profile newsstand
distribution, with results which are far too predictable.

...and I think the newsstand potential of this sort of thing must
be pretty close to negligible.

- Colin Hinz
  Toronto, Canada