[DML] DeLorean magazines.

[Marc Levy <malevy_nj@xxxxxxxxx>]

While I continue to support any effort to serve the DeLorean community, it is apparent that the age of paper magazines is gone.  Ron, and Ken have both mentioned the cost of printing and mailing as the largest cost in producing the magazine.  As most of the articles are written for free by members of the community, I suspect they are the ONLY concrete costs.

This is the exact reason the DMA decided a few years back to go to a 100% on-line format.  One of the bigger costs the club had was printing and mailing the quarterly news letter, and that was on regular printer paper!  Not the fancy glossy magazine stuff.  Our choice was to either raise the $15 yearly membership fee, and risk loosing members because of the cost, OR go to a "paperless" format and also risk loosing members who were not online.  We chose to discontinue the paper, we did offer a service for a small fee ($5 I think) to print the website updates and mail them to members by request.  IIRC, only one member requested it. With the extra time and money were able to GROW our membership.  

Many years back, when James ran the DML, he had the "DMC News 'Zine" that was avaliable for download in PDF Format.  It could be printed so it could be read on the bowl, or anywhere you may not have a computer.   Much more cost efective than the current DeLorean Magazines.

My suggestion to the people doing the magazine would be to publish your content on a website that is printer-friendly.  I am not a fan of the complete PDF format because I'd rather only print the articles I am interested in reading off-line (although it is rare that I read ANYTHING off-line).  The MUCH LOWER cost could easily be covered by paid advertising, and then there will be no need to charge subscription fees.  With a "free" service, you will have more readers and can demand higer advertising fees.  If someone is too lazy, or unable to print the content themselves at home, the go right ahead and offer a service to print it for them.  A local Kinkos (or the likes) can print high-quality magazine style pages, and that cost can be passed along to the few that demand it.

If the publications die, it will NOT be the fault of the community..  But the fault of the publishers who don't change with the times.  Many main-stream publications have gone to electronic-only formats, and there is a good reason for it.



--- On Sun, 1/4/09, dmc_5180 <dmc_5180@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> WE have all gotten so used to the instant gratification of
> Online information. 
> We fail to see that, sometimes there is nothing like going
> "OLD SCHOOL"
> 
> To me their is nothing more relaxing  than spending a
> couple hours reading
>  any magazine devoted to our cars cover to cover. All
> things considered, we
>  are lucky to have what is offered.  The price of admission
> or subscription
>  is minor. I happened to get all three. 
> 


      

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