I love seeing industries get flipped and democratized using the Internet as a production and distribution tool. MagCloud is doing just that. Think Threadless or CafePress… It’s a classic crowdsourcing methodology. Give the community the power and ease to create while providing a platform for distribution and, in the case of these companies, monetization.
Simply put, MagCloud allows you to publish your own magazine.
MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we’ll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.
MagCloud costs nothing for the publisher because your magazines will be printed on demand. They handle everything, including payment, printing, and distribution – you just provide the content. You can charge whatever you want for your magazine above their production costs. But how does it look?
MagCloud uses HP Indigo technology to custom-print each issue when it’s
ordered. Printing on demand means no big print runs, which means no
pre-publishing expense. Magazines are brilliant full color on 80lb
paper with saddle-stitched covers. They look awesome.
I am currently waiting for an invitation from them to start publishing my first magazine. I have some fun ideas for it… Once they accept me I’ll let you know more…
Update: Digging deeper (actually not that deeper) I found MagCloud to be a project from HP Labs.
MagCloud is an HP Labs» research project evaluating new web services that will provide small independent magazine publishers, online content owners, and small businesses the ability to custom publish digitized magazines and economically print and fulfill on demand.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hi
Self publishing your online magazine, if done right, is a great way to share your passion about a given subject with the world. Be reasonable though and realize that, however rewarding making your own magazine may be, this is definitely a huge task not to be taken lightly.
Thanks