Thoughts on new magazine...

[Methuslah]

I'm writing this to hear people's thoughts on the new pay-PDF magazine, Almanac. It launched on Tuesday, and so far has recieved some excellent reviews (one avaliable at: http://www.tongue.fsnet.co.uk/alrev.html), and I am interested in people's thoughts on various aspects of the magazine.

Is a PDF magazine welcome?

Is Three Dollars too much?

Should adventures be featured in the magazine?

Should reviews be featured in the magazine?

What are people's general thoughts on the layout, writing, artwork, etc?

As an additional incentive, one of the respondents to this thread, chosen at random, shall receive a free copy of our August Bonus Pack (Consisting of Almanac Two, Lemurian Dreams Zero and One, and Concept Horizons Zero).

 

[Buttercup]

I hadn't heard of this magazine, so I followed your link. Here's what I found:

Object not found!
The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again.
If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
Error 404

 

[Methuslah]

Ok - I've fixed the link. I made an error when I was coding it into the text - its working fine now.

 

[Eternalknight]

I hadn't heard of this magazine, so I followed your link. Here's what I found:

I'm not having any trouble.

The problem that I see with a PDF ezine is that there are a plethora of free ezines out there. You need to differentiate yours from these in some way, rather than making it just another ezine.

However, I do wish you the best of luck with this, as I am a big fan of zines in general.

 

[Methuslah]

Well, as far as distinctive features go:

It is lavishly illustrated, by some excellent artists, submissions are paid for, which means (IMHO) that we get a very high quality of writing. It is a monthly magazine, out every month on the first - totally regular, which very few zines are. (As a fanzine editor myself, I admit this!) We've got excellent work lined up for Issue Two (more deatils shortly on the TP website). It is my opinion that paying for artwork and articles leads to a higher quality - and that $3 is very little to pay for 44 pages of content. (That's less than 6 cents a page!)

 

[Eternalknight]

Aye.

However, I say the same thing about the ezine we released. 40 pages, excellent articles, excellent artwork, and totally free. Two five-star ratings here on EN World (until they removed free products from the database).

That's what I mean. I think you need something 'special' as a selling point. A focus of sorts for each issue.

For instance, we have the first issue of a quarterly product coming out shortly. Our foucs for issue one: Over 100 pages, including a 36 page mini-steampunk setting. And totally FREE. Our articles are all driven by creativity and passion, and are community submissions. Personally, I think the articles are of very high quality (especially the steampunk setting).

 

[Methuslah]

Don't get me wrong - I know that fanzines can have a very high quality of material.

As for true distinctiveness, its far easier to speak of ditinctiveness when I talk of the other pay-PF mags we have coming up.

Lemurian Dreams, launching on August 1st, will be a bimonthy fantasy fiction magazine aimed square at D&D readers. As well as the stories themselves, it will contain notes to enable the stories to be easily used in a campaign.

Royal Griffon, launching on November 1st, is essentially a module with a magazine wrapped around it. We take a full-length module (Issue 1's is being written by Jeffrey Quinn) and wrap a magazine around it - a couple of short site-based adventures, and a couple of articles reinforcing the main module.

Concept Horizons, launching on September 1st, will basically be covering D20 Modern. It will be monthly, and will cost only $1.50 (but will be shorter).

As for Almanac, it was designed as a basic D&D magazine, covering the whole spectrum. Each issue has a specific theme (Issue 1 was 'Dungeons', Issue 2 is 'The Apocalypse', Issue 3 is 'War', and so on...) The magazine is designed around ideas rather than rules - rules are available in spades on the net, but idea pieces seem to be harder to come by.

 

[Eternalknight]

Lemurian Dreams definately sounds interesting

Good to see Jeffery's still around; he was supposed to be writing something for us but seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Glad to see he is still around; he has talent.

 

[Zerakon]

My thoughts as a long-time gamer, recently getting back into D&D after a long hiatus... I don't buy a lot of D&D stuff, make my own adventures, house rules, etc. so take this with a grain of salt.

I won't pay $3 for this Almanack magazine for 2 reasons:

(1) There's no sample pages to view. Maybe if you had some snippets from some articles, you might persuade me to buy. Especially a snippet or overview of the adventure(s) in the magazine, as I view everything else as mostly fluff and the adventures are the "meat" of the mag.

(2) The website seems a little unprofessional. I could get over this if #1 wasn't a problem, but having both these problems is a virtual lock that I won't pay for the mag.

Just my 2 cents... good luck!

--Zerakon the Game Mage

 

[Methuslah]

Well, if you want an example of the layout, you can take a look at OD&DITIES - it is very similar in many ways (although Almanac has much more artwork).

What would you want to see in a demo?