Want to Publish Your Own Magazine?

Now you can.  The New York Times is reporting today that HP is offering a low-cost printing solution for consumers with start-up magazines.  The new service is called MagCloud.  The magazines are printed on-demand and cost 20-cents per page.  This new type of business model presents a great opportunity for those "consumer journalists" to experiment with what they think might be a cool, niche idea.  My initial thought: if you have a magazine idea, why wouldn't you just start it as a website?  While I read magazines, I am not sure of the general readership these days.  With the newspaper business declining, it makes sense that the magazine business will be close behind it.  Many magazines are already offering their content as a monthly subscription through Amazon's Kindle and online, but these outlets just don't have the same feel.  You can read newspapers on the Kindle and not miss much of the experience, but magazines need that slick paper and those glossy photos that contribute to the experience of reading them.

"It is not clear how big a market there is for small runs of narrow-interest magazines when so much information is available free on the Internet. So far, users of the service, which is still in a testing phase, have produced close to 300 magazines, including publications on paintings by Mormon artists, the history of aerospace, food photography and improving your personal brand in a digital age."Aspiring publishers must handle their own writing and design work, sending a PDF file of their creation over the Internet to the MagCloud repository. H.P. farms out the printing jobs to partners scattered around the globe and takes care of billing and shipping for people who order the magazine. While H.P. charges the magazine publishers 20 cents a page, they can charge whatever they like for the completed product."

I hope this takes off.  I love the idea of being able to experiment with an idea to understand its salience before dumping a large investment of money and time into it.  And, I think the more people we have talking about their passions out in the world, the better.