And what goes on in your mind is turning into stone

[flexagon]

Wheee. I ordered my bridesmaid's dress for Y's wedding. I'll probably have to hem it and/or take in the waist, a fine little project for the new sewing machine (which is all set up now, but not used for anything real yet).

Today is clearly going to be a "stop thinking and get going already" kind of day. Two reasons: first, I am overwhelmed by my reading about the publishing industry. I see it now: I will not, no way, be able to run a cute little quality magazine with a hundred local subscribers and break even and not spend too much time on it. Getting started is hard... there are numbers to be crunched, and then all these things I never really thought of like maintaining mailing lists. My best option may be to start very slow, put out one trial issue and then the next year go for 5 or 6, with the goal of becoming monthly after a few years. See now... that's a more reasonable plan for a magazine. But all this talk of years and years depresses me. How do people scrounge up enough faith to put in time (and money) like that?

Second reason: stupid existential angst plus bad dreams about the world ending. Ugh. Stoppit, brain. I'm going out to lunch with aykroyd in an attempt to shake the mood.

Comments

Cool dress...

[bluechromis.livejournal.com]

You should look great in that :)

I understand your angst about the magazine...years does sound daunting. On the other hand, doing one issue might scratch the itch for you.

Hope you had a good lunch...

Re: Cool dress...

[flexagon]

Waaah! Itch scratching is just what I'm trying to avoid this time... trying to have an actual Viable Business Idea here.

The "standalone issue first" idea is valuable in other ways though. Like not having to deal with (commit to) subscriptions right away, and things like that.

Even if everything worked, it'd take a while until I was making enough to quit my day job. Say, 3000 subscribers with a profit of $1/issue, or 6000 with a profit of $0.50/issue...

Ah well. Thanks on the dress. I like it too. This is a Chinese wedding, so I'm getting some kind of red & gold wrap thing to wear during the ceremony. Should be very colorful.

Re: Cool dress...

[bluechromis.livejournal.com]

VBI's may spring fully formed from heads, however they generally still take a while to actually come to fruition, especially if you're not filthy rich, really well-connected, etc. You know this though.

I think there's merit to the one-issue start-up phase...it's like a test batch a) to find kinks in the process and b) figure out if it's really something you want to devote that much time and effort to. I'll subscribe though, if that helps :)

Kinks...

[flexagon]

Heyyyy now, this is a children's mag. Kinks are for that other business venture I was thinking of. ;)

*putting you on the list for starter issue now*