RE: [DL] Magazines (was: combined books)

["Phalen, Pat" <Pat.Phalen@infores.com>]

>Would it be possible or cost effective
>to maybe run a monthly PEG magazine at a reasonable price?  I'm thinking of
>something like TSR's Dragon mag or Games Workshop's White Dwarf mag.  Keep
>it priced at $5-7 and open the submissions up to freelance work.  

Magazines make their money through advertising, not cover price.  If the
Deadlands Mag were strictly a "House Organ" they would not be able to sell
much advertising space (or not want to help promote competitors), and
therefore it would not be cost-effective to produce.  On the other side of
the coin, is a "Magazine" like White Dwarf, which I'm sure is tracked on the
"Marketing and Advertising" line of GW's accounting books...

>There are lots of
>starving authors out there (I am one myself) who are happy to work on the
>cheap.  Pay people who write articles with a signed Deadlands book of their
>choice or something.  You'd be shocked how many submissions you'll get and
>it costs you guys the wholesale of a book plus the 5 seconds it takes to
>throw on your John Hancock. 

I know a *lot* of people have mentioned fan/free-lancer submissions, but I'm
not sure that this *really* would save PEG any money.  Granted they are
always taxing their own creative juices, but someone still needs to select,
edit, and format submissions, plus a whole bunch of other things, to get
them ready for publication.  Plus, there is the added difficulty of
maintaining story line consistency...

Patrick