Originally posted 2009-06-08 04:41:06. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
I’ve been thinking about this often in the past week. Publishing a magazine is hard, and often thankless work. Not only do you have to deal with printers (who often miss deadlines with new accounts) and the Post Office (many of whom have no idea how to deal with mailing magazines), you have many other worries as well.
You have to balance advertising and editorial space. It isn’t as simple as running this article or that ad in addition to what you have, magazines come in whole pages ands the pages must be filled on both sides. So you don’t add a single ad, you add two or three, and you add most of two pages of articles. What if you don’t have enough stuff for two pages? Something gets cut.
You have to balance the needs of your readers with the capabilities of printing. Stitchers want and buy hand painted canvas needlepoint, overwhelmingly. But they don’t work too well on the page. So the author needs to translate it into something which will. One approach is to do what Cross Stitch & Needlework does, turn it into a chart. That’s what their readers want and expect. Another approach is to turn the canvas into a line drawing, which I have also seen. A third approach, which Needlepoint Now has taken in the current magazine is to include the stitch guide and let you buy the canvas.
I like this the best, the canvas can be more complicated and it is likely to give me some good ideas I can use elsewhere.
You have to balance the needs of stitchers at many levels, encouraging the beginners, but not alienating experienced stitchers. You need to excite new and younger stitchers, but not make aging baby boomers (the main needlepointers) feel left out.
You have to find your voice and make it distinct. Publishing a magazine is not publishing a blog, it isn’t there every day and even so many blogs take years to find a voice. It’s one of the hardest things to do.
You have to encourage new contributors and keep the old ones. People like continuity and many buy a magazine for one or two authors. Lose them, for whatever reason, and people might look elsewhere.
I’ve got to say I am tremendously impressed with what Elizabeth has done in one issue of Needlepoint Now. I thought the magazine had gotten tired and stale of late and had dropped my charter subscription. Several other stitchers I know had done the same. Talking to Elizabeth and looking at the current issue, I think she’s made a remarkable start. She has several columnists continuing and has added some new ones with new voices. She has continued series which were ongoing and she has added coverage of what stitchers buy most, painted canvases.
But no magazine is perfect. What would you like to see?
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There’s no question that publishing a needlepoint magazine is hard….it’s a narrow field of interest. I, too, have been impressed by this latest issue of Needlepoint Now, despite some very harsh criticism to the contrary on one blog recently. I like the publication of a stitch guide, with the ability to purchase the canvas. I also like when lesser known designers are highlighted, particularly those who are not often or regularly seen in local stores, or perhaps might be up and coming…new to the industry. In those instances, I’ve seen NN offer, at the end of the article, the option to contact & purchase the canvas, or the guide, or the kitted project from the designer. I have to say in the past few years I’ve done that almost every single time it’s offered, when it’s a line drawing or painted canvas. I think NN was greatly improved and should keep up the good work!! Denise
I agree – this last issue that Elizabeth did by herself gives us new hope – it’s great! I’ve been trying to hold up my end in presenting more painted canvas also – but would love to hear what people want to see. Too much counted stuff was getting stale, indeed. But then I’ve been a painted canvas designer for 40 years, so am biased in that direction. I love it!! I’m renewing my efforts to make my own article better.
Well, Janet, as you know as I have contacted you about it I wrote a long response yesterday and there apparently were some web problems of some sort and my response just disappeared without having been published so here I am again giving it another shot, sort of speak (grinning).
First, I fully agree that publishing a magazine is hard work and very difficult to please everyone. Ideally you want to put a little of everything so that no matter what the readers’ tastes are, they are bound to find something that they will like and be useful to them.
There is nothing worst than receiving magazines after magazines and never being able to find anything in them that are of interest to you. No wonder people just don’t renew their magazine subscriptions when that is the case. That is what happened to me with another magazine, not this one though as I have all the issues.
I have never been big on painted canvas, not because some of them are not absolutely beautiful, but no matter how beautiful a painted canvas is, if you don’t know what to do with it once you got it home, then what’s the use!
I am just not very talented and not inclined at all to research threads and stitches to give any painted canvas its full credit.
I know that some stitchers absolutely adore this part of it, but I hate it and feel that I am loosing precious stitching time sitting in front of piles of threads and mountains of stitch books and trying to make decisions and decisions. This is just not for me.
Unfortunately most painted canvas do not come with a stitch guide. I can certainly understand why that is the case but that leaves out all the stitchers out there who feels a bit like me, which is out in the cold
I can almost see some of you getting ready to say something like, well, you can ask someone to create a stitch guide for you. Yes that is absolutely true, but my answer to that is “will I like the finished product”?
On the other hand, if I see the painted canvas together with the stitch guide and the finished stitching, then I like it or I don’t and I also know exactly what I am purchasing and how it is going to look like.
A painted canvas is almost always a bigger financial investment than a chart, so I want to be happy with it if I go that route.
The idea of writing a stitch guide in a magazine and sending the viewer to the store to purchase it if they like it has its own merits, and if the magazine goes that route then I would like to see a nice assortment of painted canvases, small and bigger, of various styles, as we all have different tastes. Your argument that we can always use these ideas on some other project is also a valid one but I think I could get fed up with this approach pretty quickly if there were never any that I would like to stitch.
I still would like to see lots of charted projects or line drawing projects with full stitching instructions.
Something that I would really like to see much more in stitching magazines are projects that use multiple techniques like for example, you have a project that has needlepoint with either some pulled thread, or blackwork, or silk ribbon, or brazilian embroidery and so on, incorporated in them. It makes for much more interesting projects to work on and add variety to our stitching experiences.
I do understand that there will be hits and misses during that new phase of the magazine and that is ok. The important thing for the production team is to stay in touch with what stitchers really want to have. That could be easily done through questionnaires as I have seen that they now have a blog, so no added expenses for them either. They could easily write something in the magazine sending readers to their blogs to answer specific questions.
Need to end this now or it will turn out like a dissertation of some kind. Best of luck to all those involved in the publishing of this magazine and I am looking forward to all the wonderful things they will be coming up with to keep us all happy stitchers
Pierrette =^..^=
I would, of course, love to see a needlepoint magazine cover more contemporary needlepoint design and styles. So much of what I see seems so 19th century to me or holiday oriented or…(everyone who knows me knows my basic rant).
There are so many unexplored or under served areas in needlepoint and bargello. I would like to see a current publication open it up some. I would also like to see the needlepoint community more open to new people and ideas, it seems like it is always the same ole club of same ole people. (the not open to new people comment specifically excludes a few fine and open people, you know who you are)
Janet, I can’t thank you enough for the posting on your blog. I appreciate the feedback that it has generated. It is invaluable to me. I am the physical owner of Needlepoint Now but I don’t consider it “MY” magazine. I consider myself the steward of “OUR” magazine. I can make it better when I know what the subscribers want in a needlepoint magazine.
My goal is to cover what is going on in the needlepoint world today not the history of needlepoint. We all have our favorite designs, threads, tools, techniques,etc. I hope by offering diverse content I’ll have a better chance of pleasing everybody some of the time. That is the best I can hope for right? I encouraged the existing contributors to stay with me. I also want to encourage new artists and teachers to show me what they have. I am looking for projects that will excite the readers and make them want stitch. There is so much knowledge out there. Needlepoint Now is your source to share it.
Yes, publishing a magazine is hard work and long hours but it is what I have dreamed of doing for a long time. I’m going to do everything in my power to make this magazine the best I possibly can. I truly appreciate all of the support and encouragement you all have given me.
Thank you,
Elizabeth Bozievich
Needlepoint Now