SEA of Ozines 

Scarcity, exclusivity and alignment in printmaking world 

Prompted in his daily reading of Mequoda dailies, an online magazine consulting company’s blog, the author who wants to start an online magazine for the printmaking world considers his position by slightly altering Mequoda’s advice to fit this ozine idea. 

Scarcity 

I read an online advice blog from Mequoda—a Boston consulting company which works on transitioning magazines to online magazines. Their pitch is constantly toward the niche magazines, and this suits me because printmaking, my native art form, is definitely a niche enterprise. It always was, and always will be. This makes scarcity an issue because this has kept the printmaking market alive and gave hope to many printmakers who want to practice their freedom to make prints however they want, in their own way, and yet who hope to earn back their investment in materials and supplies.

Some printmakers have attempted, and succeeded, in earning back enough to make a living. A few got rich, but very few, and none of them did so without opting for conventional market practices—including the illusion, if not the fact, of scarcity. The edition number, for example, you see on most modern prints, is a sign that the artist and his or her publisher are banking on the scarcity factor. The illusion that there is a limited number of prints makes some buyers happy, even if they aren’t crazy about the image.

The ease by which digital prints can be made and distributed has more or less blown away the scarcity illusion. Practically every artist has a web site or a blog and they are likely to publish the images that they make as digital images—virtually free for the taking. Scarcity is an illusion, but two other factors remain which printmakers can use.

Exclusivity

Exclusivity goes hand in hand with scarcity. For Mequoda, they equate exclusivity to the “most important pieces of real estate” in a paper-based magazine, which consist of the inside cover, inside back cover and back cover. The article says if you can sell these to one, two, or three advertisers on an exclusive basis, it is highly profitable.

Mequoda is writing about subscription magazines, just as the paper-base magazines rely partly on subscriptions for their profits (along with advertising). Free online magazines may advertise too, of course, without the readers being required to pay for their subscriptions. This is a blog, actually, and bloggers don’t assume they are making money on their work. If you, who are reading this on my blog, are not paying, you know what this means.

However, in my contemplating an online magazine for the printmaking world, exclusivity means more because at this time there is no online magazine—subscription or otherwise—for the printmaking world. There are social networks, but to date there are no online magazines as counterparts to paper-based magazines. In fact, there are only two paper-based productions that I know of in the English language: Printmaking Today and the Journal of the Print World.

Alignment

This is where there is a shift away from the mega-markets of magazine publishing and the very tiny niche of printmaking. Alignment, says Mequoda’s article, “Technology allows every advertiser to access positions next to highly relevant content. But it’s highest for the niche subscription website publishers we advise, because their tight focus on specific topics gives them an advantage over general interest publishers.”

This means, one, if you start up an online magazine such as I envision, PrintmakingWorld Ozine, you can have a tight focus next to the elements that make printmaking a unique art form. It is aligned with performance art and technology. Performance art and technology are the core values of printmaking.

What this means to advertising, to start with, is that our printmaking press line is the veggies and potatoes of the magazine. Our press line treats printing presses as though they are musical instruments, comparable to the beautiful grand piano and the Casio keyboard. They are part of the public artist’s showcase when he or she gets a spot in a public market, art fair, or street location.

Alignment with editorial content is important, too. In my opinion, art education as it is known in the education world today is lacking in foundations that would, if it weren’t for college art departments, make human creativity more relevant to solving today’s problems and the problems that face tomorrow’s adults. My idea of content for a printmaking online magazine is content that restores the connection between human creativity, technology, and mechanical skills in a time-based, performance art.