Jo Upcraft, Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan Singapore, posted this picture to Instagram with this glowing review.
Just read @MagazineDiaries. Made me laugh, cry (a little bit), feel nostalgic for the past, hopeful for the future and more in love with the industry than ever. For anyone who’s been at it as long as I have, or has any passion for magazines and creativity, just order yours.
I stumbled across an old New Yorker cartoon a while back. The forever-missing Wally is sat alone at a bar in his trademark hat and stripes. Four or five drinks in, he complains, “Nobody ever asks how’s Wally?”.
That’s how I feel about working in magazines. Everyone is frantically searching for a sustainable future, endlessly debating where our industry is headed, how best to make money, how best to save money, what new platform will or won’t work. No one ever stops to ask anyone else how they feel about making magazines in the middle of the biggest disruption in publishing history. Continue reading →
The 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.
First things first, by close of play Friday we had well over 100 entries for the Magazine Diaries. We have everything we need to make our wee book… Thank You!
The 100-post limit and Friday’s deadline were all about getting the book put together and printed in time for MagFest in Edinburgh, September 5th. That part of the process is well and truly underway.
But magazine people being magazine people, I’ve had several submissions since Friday and I’m now thinking ‘WHY STOP?’. If people are happy to keep writing 100 words on how it feels to be in this amazing, frustrating, fascinating business, I’m more than happy to keep posting them.
So if you didn’t get your act together in time to write 100 words before Friday’s deadline, if you only just found out about the Magazine Diaries, or if you fancy writing another 100 words, the 100-word page will stay open for business as long as magazine people keep writing 100-word posts.