Letters & Journals Magazine Update

Plans for the print magazine of Letters & Journals are continuing to move along; maybe not as fast as we'd like, but moving, nonetheless.

The Minnesota Magazine Publishing Association (MMPA) has a 2011 Minnesota Magazine Mingle later this week. This gathering is for editors and writers and is a great opportunity to see all of the different magazines published in Minnesota.

In February I'll be attending the Niche Magazine Conference in Austin, TX. It's the fifth annual conference created and hosted by Carl Landau. This magazine event is geared exclusively for niche magazines, which is exactly what Letters & Journals will be.

In May I'll be returning to the annual National Stationery Show (NSS) in NYC. I've been to NSS the last two years and am in heaven as I walk the floor visiting all of the different booths; seeing all of the new product as well as the familiar product that we see in stores and online. I think there were over 1,100 vendors last year. It's amazing and a lot of fun meeting all of the people who attend this annual event.

In the meantime, we are still working on our goal of getting to 5,000 names of potential subscribers for the magazine. We are at 2,700 names currently so it's good to see that moving in the right direction!

Letters & Journals Magazine Update

Kathy Forss at DaisyMaeDesign has been busy with more of the magazine's layout. She also recently won the design contest for the MMPA (Minnesota Magazine and Publications Association) Excellence awards. Way to go, Kathy!

In this picture, you can see a sample page of the Table of Contents for Letters & Journals. Next will be a sample copy of the cover. Isn't this exciting?

I love this design- the fonts, the white space, the small images that go with each feature. I also love how the L&J logo goes at the bottom of the page near each page number.

The feature stories and departments are still being defined so the titles you see here are not necessarily what will be here for the premiere issue (although some of them will be).What would you like to see included as a feature story or recurring department? Anybody?

MMPA Conference

I attended the MN Magazines & Publication Association's annual Summit & Expo on May 21. This year's theme was How to Be Up in a Down Economy. The day was filled with four different tracks that include: Editorial, Circulation, Sales and Leadership. Deciding which sessions to attend was a difficult choice with so many valid options. I followed the advice of Hervey Evans, magazine consultant, who suggested I attend the sessions on advertising as I will need to start approaching advertisers at some point in the next year.

The Sales sessions focused on internet/web site sales rather than the print sales. I think it would have been beneficial for me to have more information on the print side, especially as a start-up magazine. But there was some useful information and the presenter, Wendy McHale of the Laredo Group, was an experienced sales professional and an excellent speaker.

The key to online sales is to know who your audience is and to understand your stats (unique views, length of visits, how viewers are getting to your site, what they're doing while they're there, etc). It's important to value the online advertising space and partnership opportunities because historically this space has been seen as less valued than print, when we actually have the potential to know more about our subscribers and viewers than we have with the printed version. Very interesting.

I have begun taking notes on the marketing information I need to gather so that I can put together a sales packet to help prime me for this new role- advertising sales. Definitely going to the National Stationery Show (NSS) this month also helped in that regard as I met stationery store owners and potential advertisers there.