More done, more to do. If the last time you checked the pages of yours were good, check them again and please comment to that effect. It's amazing what you don't notice one day, and then do another, spellings, wrong names entirely, omission of a MUAH person.... If you know your page is solid, please comment APPROVED. Now I know for a fact there's only about 50% of the pages that might be there. Over the next 3 days I will get a lot more tightened up. By Thursday I hope to be ready. We are behind schedule based on what I wanted. Again, the blizzard in February that gave me a solid week to work on issue #1 would sure come in handy now.
Even though you should have it bookmarked, here's the proofing gallery:
password is rl2
I will be glad to have this off my plate as there are a LOT of promotional things to be done. Many to-do's.
OK now I am going to jump around a bit.
E-mail responses from me will still likely be slower than normal given the spot I am in.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
You know, I am pretty amazed. I put subscriptions up in the store as a handful of people asked about them. What I did not expect is how many have come in. It is pretty phenomenal to think that after just one issue people are willing to sign up for 6 (don't want to say a year as I don't see it.... and the listing states this pretty clear, one year or 6 issues) And it is not cheap. All the incentive is...is the $8 pre-order pricing. People are shelling out almost $80. There has been several international ones too and with that insane shipping.... those are silly expensive. This is exciting and at the same time for me, daunting. I'm setting aside this funding for those copies. The thing is I need to have in place an exit strategy, and not to sound morbid but if I got hit by a bus tomorrow... all those people, the money they spent, the potential inconvenience it could leave for my family etc... well it's just another "thing" to be mindful of. Now no one among you have mentioned this to me yet. What about subscriptions that come in, that are from people who ordered issue #1 based on your promotional efforts? Won't that "take them off the market" for future issues? Isn't the space driven by what each of us contribute promotionally? Both points are true, and to not realize this would not be fair. SO, what I propose with subscriptions is this.... I will go through those already in-house and monitor all moving forward. If a customer buys a subscription we will arrive at a "value" that earns you more space in subsequent issues. When I have the time I want to do this with issue #2 pre-orders just in case a few early purchasers missed the mark with the use of your coupon or store entry. Additionally I intend on producing some promotional postcards to provide anyone who wants them where you could at events, offer them up and as someone is being wowed by the samples you have you might well mobilize them to consider a subscription. It could be a way to make great strides at gaining space etc.
DISTRIBUTION
It's a bit ironic, just today a firm from the UK, Newsstand UK, contacted me about their carrying Retro Lovely. They claim to be the largest on-line magazine retailer in the UK (Perhaps Terry Mendoza can tell us if they are). That they are online means it would simply be the benefit of my sending them a few cartons and they doing there, what I personally do here. This is attractive as the international shipping means I MUST go to the post office and while I can do the forms online, it's only really weekends I can get to the post office, so having them handle the UK would be great. But it leads me to Distribution in a lager sense. Many of you, just as I have myself, have had friends and family ask "where can I buy it?"
Some people just don't buy things online. Some are impulse buyers. Long term I want to see Retro Lovely in stores. Specialty stores at first I imagine but this leap has a price. There is a middle man in there, actually 2.... you add in the distributor who has their expenses and an expectation of making a profit and then the retailer who needs to pay rent, and utilities and so on. Now at $10 a copy we are actually in a pretty good spot. If the perceived value holds up and that $10 in a shop does not seem crazy we aren't far from print runs being large enough that we could have a wholesale that would allow those 2 middlemen some profit. Mainly because there is risk on the publishers end, you see those places that sell magazines... they don't buy them, they grant companies the space to gamble product. They only pay for what sells. What does not sell typically get's shredded. What gets shredded was paid for by the publisher. We're close to that gamble but not for issue #2. And when we do give it a try, it will be regionally, not nationally, it will have to be grown, but if we manage some success in those test markets.... watch out....
TABOO EDITION
More on this next week but please do know it will be a different setup than the normal publication. People interested in it will be partnering fully. Content and money. I think it can happen that we know it will cost $X per page but also do some work to have that amount decrease as we go... pre-sales etc....
Enough.
M
Also please begin using this email address for me, my other one is dropping a lot of mails for some reason and I am not trusting it..... please now use
michael@retrolovely.com
