Have you bought your copy yet?

BoxesThe Magazine Diaries is on sale now.

This little book, designed to let magazine people tell the world how they feel about making magazines in the middle of the biggest disruption in publishing history, is all about raising money for a great charity.

For just £5, you get 100 magazine professionals telling their stories, 100 words at a time. All magazine life is here, the optimists and pessimists, veterans and newbies, pixel heads and page sniffers…

Every penny of that £5 will go to MagAid to help them get magazines into schools and develop a love of reading in under privileged school children.

Buy a copy. You’ll nod your head, shake your head, throw it across the room then rush to pick it up so you can read the next 100 words.



Grub Street Journal

Words, images, stories

This is a hugely challenging time to be working with magazines, but I firmly believe if you’re open-minded about what a magazine is today and might become, you have a great opportunity to be a part of an exciting future.

I love the print tradition, and believe there’ll always be a role for the physical, analogue ‘thing’ alongside digital streams. But as a designer my real love is the way word and image can be combined in a magazine to reinforce the story.

In that respect I’m as excited about the potential of digital as I remain about print.

Jeremy Leslie | Creative Director, Magculture



Grub Street Journal

Quit moaning, get busy

I’m sick of hearing how terrible things are for magazines. They’re not – they’re bloody fantastic!

We’ve been given this GIFT of social media – massive engagement with brands, for free, that we could only have dreamt of twenty years ago. AND it’s measurable! Oh ‘Boo hoo’, now we’ve all actually got to prove effectiveness to advertisers – quit moaning and get busy.

And stop producing rubbish and expecting people to buy it. Crap design and lazy editorial – do us all a favour and stop bringing the reputation of other beautiful magazines down – income from OUR readers and advertisers depends on that reputation.

Anonymous



Grub Street Journal

Dare to think differently

Magazines got boring; magazine publishers got bored.

Baffled by the digital era and panicked by falling revenues, most publishing houses lost their passion, churning out the same old formats instead of embracing innovation.

Fortunately, some dared to think differently. We can all learn from Vice, Monocle, The Drum, Gentlewoman, Delayed Gratification and other new wave publishers celebrated by magculture.

Inspired by our experience with Hot Rum Cow, we’ve thrown ourselves into new ways of imagining magazines. For us, the future is about collaborative journalism, it’s about big ideas and it’s about a new magazine we’re launching this summer called Poppy.

Fraser Allen | Publisher, Hot Rum Cow



Grub Street Journal

Happy, Not-So-Happy

Happy Publisher

Writing the story of Gary the Lovelorn Giant.

The pinging noise my inbox makes when an illustration arrives from one of our artists.

Receiving letters from our little fans.

Smelling a new edition.

Seeing our mags on the shelves of happy stockists.

The moment when that idea for a new magazine won’t let you sleep properly until you launch it.

Not-so-Happy Publisher

Only doing four issues a year.

That week in between sending files to the printers and getting issues back.

Emails from subscribers moaning they’ve not received their edition, THIS MONTH. We’re quarterly.

Another bookshop closing down.

Cathy Olmedillas | Editor, Anorak

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Want another 99 magazine professionals telling their stories for just £5?
Every penny of the cover price goes to MagAid to put magazines into schools and help develop a love of reading in under privileged school children. Buy it here now.

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Grub Street Journal