Here and Noun: Like Christmas Morning!

Deanne Beattie

I read some­where this year that mag­a­zines are cut­ting back on illus­trated cov­ers due to cost. This is just nuts. I don’t think I need to say much more on the topic. There’s no need to make much of an argu­ment in defense of orig­i­nal art­work in a mag­a­zine, what­ever the cost: beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tion speaks for itself. 

When Sad Mag received the illus­tra­tion for the cover of our first issue from Vancouver-based Kristina Fiedrich, we sud­denly had a mag­a­zine. And it was so easy! Illustrators, as a group of incred­i­ble peo­ple, take the small­est amount of direc­tion — or no direc­tion at all! — and turn out delight­ful, sur­pris­ing, thought­ful work that makes a page come alive.

When I came across the lit­er­ary mag­a­zine Here and Noun at the rec­om­men­da­tion of Kristin here at the Geist office, I was thrilled to learn that not only are they keen on pub­lish­ing orig­i­nal art­work, they put hours of hand­work into the cre­ation of each and every copy, from screen print­ing to book bind­ing — and all on a very slim budget.

Editor Buffy Goodman reports from Edmonton, Alberta on DIY mag­a­zines, lit­er­a­ture for the inter­net gen­er­a­tion, and illus­tra­tions like Christmas morning.

GEIST.com: I love that a time when nearly every mag­a­zine is jump­ing onto the online pub­lish­ing band­wagon, Here and Noun has emerged as a pur­pose­fully tan­gi­ble, tac­tile lit­er­ary prod­uct. Why was it impor­tant to you to put so much thought and effort into the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of H&N?

Buffy Goodman: It was impor­tant to us to make H&N some­thing that peo­ple would want to pick up and hold, some­thing that would set it apart from a lot of the other lit­er­ary jour­nals out there. I wanted peo­ple to keep it on their book­shelves, not tuck it away some­where and for­get about it.

Personally, I read things online, and then for­get about them a few days later, or I have some­thing open in another tab in my browser that dis­tracts me, or I hear that annoy­ing sound telling me I’ve got a new email, and for­get about what I was read­ing. Picking up a book, for what­ever rea­son, is a com­mit­ment — I allow less distractions.

The first issue (which is sold out now) was com­pletely hand– assem­bled. This was par­tially because we had a small amount of money, and big ideas. It lit­er­ally took us an hour or more to put together each and every copy. We didn’t under­stand the scope of the project we’d taken on until we were already knee-deep in it, but we per­sisted. There was a lot of trial and error, fig­ur­ing out how to bind the books, what mate­ri­als to use, what things would cost us. We hand-numbered each copy, and there are “spe­cial edi­tions” with a dif­fer­ent cover.

People’s pos­i­tive reac­tions to the fin­ished books, how­ever, were encour­ag­ing.  For the sec­ond issue, the cov­ers are screen­printed, and we bound them, by hand, to the book itself, which we had printed. It went a lot smoother the sec­ond time around, but was still hours of work.

G: Here and Noun is the prod­uct of the work of some younger writ­ers and artists. What do you have to say to peo­ple who pre­dict that the “inter­net gen­er­a­tion,” so-called, has no inter­est in long-form or lit­er­ary writ­ing? Is our imme­di­ate read­ing future all about sto­ries told 140 char­ac­ters at a time?

BG: The inter­net hasn’t been around that long, espe­cially com­pared to the his­tory of the novel. I’ve read some hilar­i­ous “tweets” in my day, but can I remem­ber them right now? No, I can’t. I can, how­ever, remem­ber the plots and char­ac­ters from nov­els that affected me grow­ing up, even though I read them 10 years ago. There’s still a place for long-form lit­er­ary writ­ing, I hope, with the “inter­net gen­er­a­tion” or they’re miss­ing out.

It’s strange to be grate­ful to writ­ers like J.K. Rowling, and Stephenie Meyer, but of course their writ­ing can be a gate­way to kids pick­ing up other books, giv­ing the idea of books a chance. There are always those “wait for the movie” peo­ple, but those peo­ple existed 20 years ago, too; they’re not new to the inter­net generation.

G: Here and Noun fea­tures some quirky and clever illus­tra­tion. Something I’ve always loved about work­ing with illus­tra­tors is giv­ing them a few key words, and hav­ing them come back with a draw­ing that’s fun, unique — and totally unex­pected! How do trust and lit­tle sur­prises work into the look and feel of Here and Noun?

BG: We don’t com­mis­sion any­thing of any­one, and we don’t give writ­ers or illus­tra­tors a theme, but for what­ever strange rea­son, it works out. Many of our sub­mis­sions are totally ran­dom — I don’t know these peo­ple, or how they found us, but sud­denly there’s an email with this awe­some illus­tra­tion. It’s like Christmas morning.

Our first issue was quite seri­ous in tone for what­ever rea­son. Issue #2, aside from a cou­ple of seri­ous pieces, is funny, and I have no idea how that hap­pened. Our art direc­tor Mike Wichuk, who does our cover illus­tra­tions, is bril­liant — myself and the other edi­tors will come up with some ridicu­lous idea for the cover, half-jokingly, and he’ll painstak­ingly cre­ate these mar­velous illus­tra­tions that blow our minds.

For exam­ple, the first issue, we were all, “Oooh! A cir­cus bear with a peg leg!” and what he came up with was so awe­some that peo­ple were con­tact­ing us because they wanted the illus­tra­tion on a t-shirt, or framed on their wall. We printed a few posters of the bear, and they sold out within a day.

Get your copy of Here and Noun at fine retail­ers in Edmonton, AB, or online at their etsy store. The jour­nal is always look­ing for new con­trib­u­tors. Writers and illus­tra­tors can sub­mit their work for Issue #3 and beyond by email­ing sto­ries (fic­tion or non-fiction) and lo-res ver­sions of illus­tra­tions (or a link to illus­tra­tions online) to info@hereandnoun.com.

Images cour­tesy Here and Noun.

Salute to Seniors

Deanne Beattie

There are many mag­a­zines in Canada that claim a social pur­pose behind their pub­lish­ing efforts. Adbusters, This, and Vancouver’s new Granville mag­a­zine aim to change the world in some small way by pub­lish­ing beau­ti­ful, well-written mag­a­zines. I don’t think I had yet rec­og­nized a mag­a­zine that exists in the world as a move­ment first, and a pub­lished prod­uct sec­ond, but was might­ily impressed when I did in Lester’s Army.

Leni Goggins is the brains and brawn behind Lester’s Army, a mag­a­zine that con­nects youth and seniors through its pages. Launched in 2007, the mag­a­zine was cre­ated as a place for youth and seniors to pub­lish their writ­ing side-by-side, while cre­at­ing vis­i­bil­ity for youth and seniors’ issues con­cur­rently. Reading the mag­a­zine is some­thing like sit­ting down for tea with a wise and styl­ish grand­par­ent. It cov­ers top­ics from dat­ing and fash­ion to aging and mor­tal­ity in a sound, level headed, yet acces­si­ble way.

Leni speaks to GEIST.com about mak­ing a mag­a­zine out of a mission.

GEIST.com: Lester’s Army is more of a mis­sion than sim­ply a mag­a­zine. What made you pas­sion­ate about con­nect­ing youth and seniors? How does a mag­a­zine fit into your advocacy?

Leni Goggins: When my grand­mother died, we were 10,000 km apart. I was in Dehradun, India, near her birth­place and she was in Delta. I hadn’t felt the dis­tance between us until that day, and I have been try­ing to make up for it ever since.  

I think that we lose a piece of our­selves when we are not con­nected to our elders. It can be as sim­ple as not know­ing your fam­ily story or as pro­found as never unlock­ing the secrets to your true nature, or never under­stand­ing the weight of your destiny.

The mag­a­zine is my way of bridg­ing that gap between the gen­er­a­tions. Both youth and seniors alike tell sto­ries about their lives with the hope that the other gen­er­a­tion will lis­ten and under­stand. Simply put, the mag­a­zine acts as an intel­lec­tual meet­ing ground for youth and seniors.

G: Geist mag­a­zine holds writ­ing con­tests and writ­ers’ work­shops that cre­ate com­mu­nity around the mag­a­zine. What are some of the things that you do out­side of pub­lish­ing the mag­a­zine that con­nects youth and seniors through Lester’s Army?

LG: I run a cre­ative writ­ing work­shop at the Purple Thistle Centre so that youth and seniors par­tic­i­pat­ing in Lester’s Army can work on their writ­ing together. It’s very chal­leng­ing to get seniors out to these work­shops, as mobil­ity is a major issue and because seniors oper­ate on a very dif­fer­ent sched­ule then youth.

The most effec­tive approach we have to date is inspir­ing youth to go out and make the con­nec­tions them­selves, in pur­suit of a story or out of curios­ity. At the first level, it’s mak­ing eye con­tact in the street and see­ing the invis­i­ble, a group of peo­ple so often ignored by youth-culture.

The sec­ond level is approach­ing seniors, whether at a bus stop or at a café, and ask­ing them to tell their story. The third level is mak­ing the effort to go places where seniors hang­out. Legions are a fab­u­lous place for inter­gen­er­a­tional min­gling (if you are old enough to drink a beer).

G: What are some of the great­est chal­lenges you’ve found in try­ing to cre­ate com­mu­nity between two dis­tinct gen­er­a­tions and get­ting them to do some­thing cre­ative together?

LG: The list is long! Seniors are a very vul­ner­a­ble group of peo­ple and when this project started in 2006, it was very chal­leng­ing to place young peo­ple in Seniors’ Centres with­out crim­i­nal record checks and a whole lot of bureau­cratic mumbo jumbo that we weren’t inter­ested in pursuing.

So we go about mak­ing the con­nec­tions very infor­mally, through peo­ple we know and those that find us online or through our mag­a­zine dis­tri­b­u­tion in Seniors’ Centres around Vancouver.

The mag­a­zine is col­lab­o­ra­tive, which means that indi­vid­u­als con­tribute to the whole. When we need to fill the dat­ing sec­tion, we know that there will be two young peo­ple and two seniors that bring the sec­tion together cohe­sively. When it comes to lay­out, design and the actual run­ning of the mag­a­zine, it is to date, cre­ated by young people.

My hope for the future is that we will one day have a phys­i­cal space to occupy, where this can hap­pen, but for now, it’s an intel­lec­tual col­lab­o­ra­tion between the generations.

Find Lester’s Army at select Seniors’ Centres and retail­ers in Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. It can also be found online at their web­site. 

Oops, Socialism

Deanne Beattie

Perhaps it will come as no sur­prise that Geist mag­a­zine is a proud col­lec­tor of young hangers-on. The mag­a­zine has accu­mu­lated a healthy sup­ply of interns and vol­un­teers that, on a busy day in the office, actu­ally out­num­ber paid employ­ees.

This is due in part to the fact that Geist is a fresh and feisty mag­a­zine that eas­ily attracts fans and wannabes, but is also due to the wel­com­ing and sup­port­ive atti­tude the pio­neers of the mag­a­zine have toward pub­lish­ing new­com­ers. I know from first-hand expe­ri­ence that Geist is an anom­aly in an oth­er­wise cut-throat busi­ness.

Ross is another of these hangers-on: an intern at Geist and co-founder of his own online mag­a­zine, Narwhal. He was speak­ing to me the other day about the craft of sur­viv­ing when you barely exist. He explained that he makes his online pub­li­ca­tion tan­gi­ble through a vari­ety of bril­liant schemes, which got me think­ing about the pecu­liar posi­tion of being under-the-radar as a brand-new pub­lisher.

I wrote a fea­ture story for the stu­dent news­pa­per at SFU this spring about a stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion, Global Agents for Change, which has nearly mas­tered the art of thriv­ing in untra­di­tional ways. Without an office, any paid staff, or a sig­nif­i­cantly rec­og­niz­able brand, the youth-driven orga­ni­za­tion has raised hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in a few short years for inter­na­tional aid with almost zero costs asso­ci­ated. They’re more pro­duc­tive and effec­tive than char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions that have been around for decades, and pro­duce far less orga­ni­za­tional waste: the group is a lean, mean, fundrais­ing machine.

Their secret? Mark Masongsong, a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors, attrib­utes their suc­cess to an incred­i­ble net­work of pas­sion­ate fundraisers:

By focus­ing less on us as an orga­ni­za­tion, and the bureau­cra­cies and struc­ture, we’ve focused on what we do as indi­vid­u­als within the orga­ni­za­tion. When peo­ple donate to Global Agents, they’re not just donat­ing to some char­ity they saw on the Internet. We can track each dona­tion through a net­work of per­sonal rela­tion­ships. It comes down to the fact that we’re less about sell­ing the brand name of the orga­ni­za­tion, and more about grow­ing per­sonal con­nec­tions with people.

The new busi­ness men­tal­ity relies on the inter­net in far more ways than the obvi­ous. New pub­lish­ing ini­tia­tives like Sad Mag and Narwhal pub­lish blogs and online sto­ries, yes, but we’re also plug­ging into a new way of think­ing about busi­ness rela­tions. Borrowing from inter­net eti­quette, here are some things I’ve learned about my gen­er­a­tion and our own brand of busi­ness ethics:

Linking in. If you decide to pub­lish a blog, at first you’re only one of mil­lions in a sea of self-published blogs. The only way to cre­ate a route to your site for read­ers is to link into a con­ver­sa­tion hap­pen­ing online. Link to a cou­ple of sim­i­lar out­fits, and if they like what you’re up to, they’ll link back. Before you know it, you’re a part of some­thing — an elab­o­rate net­work of sim­i­larly minded indi­vid­u­als where suc­cess is deter­mined by the col­lec­tive efforts and intel­lec­tual out­puts of the group. As the peo­ple pub­lish­ing online grow to depend on each other, com­pe­ti­tion and pro­pri­etor­ship begin to mean less. In an age where pub­lish­ing is a threat­ened breed of busi­ness, per­haps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for peo­ple who all love the same things to help each other out.

Trade and barter. It’s com­mon for inter­net geeks to help each other out. Post a ques­tion on a dis­cus­sion board, and wait for clever and well-informed peo­ple to help you out with their exper­tise — free of charge. The only catch is that you feel com­pelled to help oth­ers out with what­ever you have to offer. I’m a decent writer and edi­tor, but that’s about where it ends. Still, Sad Mag is run­ning along as a semi-respectable out­fit, thanks entirely to the help and advice we’ve received from oth­ers on visual art, adver­tis­ing, fundrais­ing, web devel­op­ment and vol­un­teer recruit­ment. The mi casa, su casa trad­ing of skills and tal­ents is the only rea­son we have a hope of exist­ing at all. Oops, social­ism.

Make it acces­si­ble. The internet’s ephemeral nature dri­ves home this point bet­ter than does the nature of print-and-paper mag­a­zines, but the resources we have at hand for shar­ing ideas don’t really belong to any­body. With the way that infor­ma­tion moves these days, it doesn’t make any sense to place high bar­ri­ers to con­trib­u­tors or read­ers. Sad Mag will be free in print and online, always, and we will always be look­ing for new con­trib­u­tors. That’s the only way we’re going to make any impact.

So, you can see why I think Geist is going to be around for a long time. When Ross and I, and the many other new pub­lish­ers under the Geist umbrella, make some­thing of our­selves, you can bet we’ll be link­ing back, giv­ing back, and work­ing hard to drive our net­work of writ­ers and literature-lovers for­ward. We owe you one, Geist. Thanks.

Another gor­geous photo from Brandon Gaukel. All rights reserved. 

Interns for Dinner

Deanne Beattie

When peo­ple ask us why we, a group of writ­ers and artists under 30 in Vancouver, decided to start Sad Magazine, the best answer is clos­est to “Well, we have noth­ing bet­ter to do.”

We’re con­tent as new­bies in the indus­try — vol­un­teer­ing, wait­ing tables and free­lanc­ing when the oppor­tu­nity arises — yet, there’s a feel­ing that by the time our grunt work pays off, we will have missed an impor­tant oppor­tu­nity to express our­selves in a time of life that we’re likely to be most dar­ing, cre­ative, crit­i­cal and ide­al­is­tic. Sad Mag is our chance to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for our­selves and many other young, tal­ented and inex­pe­ri­enced writ­ers, illus­tra­tors and pho­tog­ra­phers in Vancouver.

David Beers at The Tyee caused a stir in Vancouver when he wrote and pub­lished an arti­cle titled “Vancouver eats its young” in 2007. He cites the increase in cost of edu­ca­tion, cost of liv­ing and the piti­ful min­i­mum wage rates in B.C. as a risky sit­u­a­tion for the future of the city; Vancouver risks los­ing its young tal­ent and fresh ideas to other cities in Canada or the USA due to inad­e­quate oppor­tu­ni­ties for sur­vival — nev­er­mind growth into lead­er­ship positions.

He writes,

What does it mean that Vancouver, itself only five or six gen­er­a­tions old, feels so unwel­com­ing to its lat­est gen­er­a­tion? For one, the brand doesn’t fit the real­ity. The young city about to host the world’s Olympians in the prime of their youth is verg­ing on becom­ing a pre­serve of afflu­ent, staid boomers. Nothing cool about that.

Even alter­na­tive media in Vancouver has a hard time speak­ing to or for peo­ple in their twen­ties and thir­ties. A num­ber of pop­u­lar pub­li­ca­tions started in Vancouver’s hip­pie days in the ‘60s and ‘70s have devel­oped like the afflu­ent Kitsilano neigh­bour­hood in town. In an area where shared liv­ing com­munes were once the norm, prop­erty prices have risen to the million-dollar range, every­one has long since sold out, but the hippie-trippy rhetoric remains. Some pub­li­ca­tions call them­selves young, fresh and a print alter­na­tive, but won’t pass up the oppor­tu­nity to adver­tise $7000 couches. One must ask of such pub­li­ca­tions, “you’re an alter­na­tive to what, exactly?”

Sad Magazine is not polit­i­cal, but it comes from a group of peo­ple with entirely dif­fer­ent life expe­ri­ences than our suc­cess­ful supe­ri­ors in the indus­try. We live in shared houses and apart­ments, we sur­vive on min­i­mum wage and tips, and we want to write and read about entirely dif­fer­ent sub­jects: drag queens, vin­tage cloth­ing store own­ers and migrant work­ers included.

I can’t wait to share what we’ve pro­duced with the rest of the city come September. I hope our read­ers will agree with us that with expe­ri­ence or with­out, young peo­ple in our city have a valu­able per­spec­tive on the life, art and cul­ture of Vancouver.

Photograph cour­tesy of my com­pa­triot, Brandon Gaukel. All rights reserved. 

one cool word: “A Dream Endeavour”

Deanne Beattie

I don’t think any­one has done an offi­cial count of the inde­pen­dent arts-and-culture-related mag­a­zines pub­lished in Canada, but there must be thou­sands. Add up the zines, the newslet­ters and the small-run pub­li­ca­tions pro­duced by arts orga­ni­za­tions and pri­vate cit­i­zens alike, and I don’t think there remains any fear of the death of print. 

Tracy Stefanucci is the proud and self-professed “mommy” of one cool word, one of the stand-out art mag­a­zines pub­lished inde­pen­dently in Vancouver. The mag­a­zine that started as a late-night exper­i­ment in wish­ful think­ing has blos­somed into a ver­i­ta­ble quar­terly arts event. This pub­li­ca­tion with a 300-copy cir­cu­la­tion fea­tures a vari­ety of lit­er­ary writ­ing, visual art, and music of young Vancouver up-and-comers in a print and audio CD combo package.  

one cool word has a small audi­ence but, nev­er­the­less, a ded­i­cated one. Their launch par­ties and fundraiser events are well-attended art and music shows, leg­endary for bring­ing great tal­ent to an inter­ested audi­ence. Canadian mag­a­zines that are look­ing for ways to make up losses in the con­tem­po­rary pub­lish­ing cli­mate would do well to look at the efforts of mag­a­zines like one cool word, non-profit and entirely volunteer-run mag­a­zines that earn just enough money to pay the print­ers at their suc­cess­ful events. 

In a dis­cus­sion with Tracy about start­ing ocw, here is what she had to say about pub­lish­ing with a pas­sion and direct­ing oth­ers with grace under pressure.  

GEIST.com: What made you want to start an inde­pen­dent arts mag­a­zine?  

Tracy Stefanucci: When ocw began, I had just entered UBC’s cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram and I was really inspired by the amaz­ing writ­ing my peers were pro­duc­ing. I was also going to a lot of local shows and really lov­ing the music scene. I had no idea that such amaz­ing stuff was being pro­duced in Vancouver. It was a shame­less love affair, and a shame that these cre­ations weren’t eas­ily avail­able to other afi­ciona­dos, as they weren’t being show­cased by main­stream media.  

One night, over tea at Denny’s at 3:00 a.m., I gushed to a friend — who hap­pened to be a graphic designer — how if I won the Lotto I would start a pub­lish­ing com­pany and a record com­pany so I could get these inspir­ing works out there for oth­ers like me to enjoy. He con­vinced me that this was pos­si­ble, in the for­mat of a mag­a­zine & CD combo, and even vol­un­teered to be my part­ner in crime.  

Writing and pub­lish­ing, and any­thing cre­ative, had always been pas­sions of mine. So the idea of our own project, focus­ing on my great­est loves, writ­ing, music, art and Vancouver, was a dream endeavour. 

G: What were some of the great­est per­sonal chal­lenges you faced in start­ing your own mag­a­zine? 

TS: I would say there were two main per­sonal chal­lenges I faced when launch­ing ocw, and that these chal­lenges are ongoing.  

The first was learn­ing how to act with utmost effi­ciency, clar­ity and cre­ativ­ity in the face of extreme pres­sure or cri­sis. For exam­ple, when a dead­line is approach­ing and not much has been accom­plished, when a fundraiser is about to start and the beer was never deliv­ered, etc.  

And the sec­ond was to learn how to shake it off when I do mess up, big time — such as really large, glar­ing typos in the mag­a­zine, or mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions with vol­un­teers, con­trib­u­tors or retail­ers. In three years, I feel like I’ve seen it all. And some­times, all you can do is apol­o­gize, try to clean up the mess and move along, vow­ing to not make the same mis­takes again! 

G: What does it take to make a fundraiser suc­cess­ful?  

TS: Persistence, cre­ativ­ity, flex­i­bil­ity and faith. When it comes to book­ing fundrais­ers, per­sis­tence is nec­es­sary, as it may take many phone calls, MySpace mes­sages and emails to finally get ahold of and con­firm venues, per­form­ers, guest spon­sors and staff to run an event. There’s a fine line between harass­ment and per­sis­tence, and one can’t be afraid to walk this line. 

Creativity is nec­es­sary to find ways to actu­ally make money, above costs, at a fundraiser, and to do this it is best to find addi­tional ways to sup­ple­ment the money made as a door charge (such as mini bake sales, but­ton mak­ing, afford­able art sales, etc.). It is also essen­tial when crises hit. 

Flexibility is nec­es­sary to accom­mo­date both the dif­fi­culty that can come with book­ing venues, bands, guests spon­sors and staff, as well as to deal with crises. 

And lastly, faith. The thing about a fundraiser is you never really know the result until the event hap­pens. You can try to pre-sell tick­ets to avoid this, but in our expe­ri­ence even nearly sold-out events were impos­si­ble to pre-sell tick­ets for. Therefore, our game plan has been to book a solid line-up at a sassy venue; add as many cre­ative twists as pos­si­ble; pro­mote, pro­mote, pro­mote; and then cross our fin­gers. So far it’s working.

You can find one cool word at plenty of Vancouver book, mag­a­zine and music retail­ers, or online at their Etsy shop.

The Print Dilemma

Deanne Beattie

It’s true of a lot of things that a final prod­uct betrays its even­tual owner. It’s impos­si­ble to know what kind of time, resources, or sheer hard labour are invested into any num­ber of goods you con­sume on a daily basis — the cof­fee you drank at break­fast, the news­pa­per you picked up on the way to work, or if you’re lunch­ing at a dif­fer­ent end of town than me, the artistry that went into pro­duc­ing the cou­ture suit you’re wear­ing that tows a five-figure price tag.

My friend Megan pointed me to a video this week from New York mag­a­zine that fol­lows the con­struc­tion of an unfath­omably expen­sive Chanel dress, from cut­ting the pat­tern to hand-beading the out­fit. If you’ve ever won­dered how any gar­ment could cost about as much as it would to feed and house an intern for three years, it’s worth watching.

As new­bies to the inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing busi­ness, the details of con­struct­ing a mag­a­zine have come to fas­ci­nate us. We’ve selected our cover font with the kind of del­i­cacy Kitsilano moth­ers use to pick out cloth­ing for their new­borns (if there’s an organic Baby Gap of fonts, this would be it). We’ve debated and nego­ti­ated dur­ing the edit­ing process with the kind of seri­ous­ness and atten­tion to detail typ­i­cally reserved for the work of bomb squads. And we’ve selected a paper stock and fin­ish with the help of our sup­plier that bal­ances our bud­get with our aes­thetic pref­er­ences against our unbear­able, gen­er­a­tion Y-patent envi­ron­men­tal guilt.

It’s encour­ag­ing to see that more mag­a­zines are demon­strat­ing an appre­ci­a­tion for sus­tain­able prac­tices, like the stel­lar greener Geist. But it’s expen­sive! The more post-consumer con­tent you have in your cho­sen paper, the greater the cost of the paper. Sad Magazine won’t be printed on recy­cled paper for now, but it will be printed on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) cer­ti­fied paper. The for­est where the pulp for our paper comes from has a respon­si­ble re-growth plan in place.

Shocked to learn that not all forests have a re-growth plan in place? So was I. It seems like the very least we could do to min­i­mize the impact of our pub­lish­ing exploits. Here are a few more impor­tant ques­tions we learned to ask of our printer:

What inks do you print with? What solu­tions do you use in the print­ing process?

It has become an indus­try stan­dard to use veg­etable based inks rather than petroleum-based inks to print, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. In off­set print­ing, a press damp­en­ing solu­tion is also used; an envi­ron­men­tally friendly printer does not use an alcohol-based foun­tain solution. 

What do you do with paper waste in your facility? 

A good printer has a fairly serious-looking recy­cling sys­tem that ensures that all waste paper is dealt with respon­si­bly. Our printer offered us a tour of their facil­ity, and the visual assur­ance that no great amount of waste was being gen­er­ated was enough to make us feel more comfortable. 

Are you FSC cer­ti­fied? Can you pro­vide our project with an EcoAudit?

Some peo­ple say that hav­ing the FSC stamp or EcoAudit num­bers in your mag­a­zine is just for show­ing off with­out invest­ing much money or con­cern. It seems to me that these are just assur­ances to your reader that you’re meet­ing some pretty basic require­ments to ensure we can con­tinue print­ing gor­geous mag­a­zines far into the future. 

What’s old is new again

Deanne Beattie

One nice thing about start­ing a mag­a­zine is near-instant cama­raderie with the belea­guered and battle-weary troops in the mag­a­zine pub­lish­ing indus­try — all the writ­ers and edi­tors I have, until now, stud­ied and admired from afar.

Gudrun Will is one such edi­tor. Will is the edi­tor and co-founder of one of my favourite mag­a­zines, Vancouver Review, a quar­terly art, cul­ture and opin­ions mag­a­zine pub­lished in Vancouver and dis­trib­uted through­out Western Canada.

Vancouver Review—the first — started as a lit­er­ary paper in the ’90s. It was founded and edited by some of Vancouver’s cheeki­est and most tal­ented writ­ers, among them Stan Persky and the late Bruce Serafin. When Vancouver Review folded in 1997, it was Will — then just a vol­un­teer with the pub­li­ca­tion and an emerg­ing local jour­nal­ist — who dreamed up a VR revival that would carry her own cre­ative stamp. Will, together with cre­ative direc­tor Mark Mushet, directed VR’s rebirth in 2004.

Today, the gor­geous, full-colour over­size mag­a­zine enjoys its fair share of suc­cess. VR attracts the tal­ent of cel­e­brated local writ­ers like Terry Glavin, Timothy Taylor and Deborah Campbell, as well as numer­ous award-winning visual artists. The tal­ent and ded­i­ca­tion of VR’s mast­head makes this mag­a­zine a favourite at annual mag­a­zine com­pe­ti­tions, and a fan­tas­tic store­house of west coast tal­ent, new and old.

In a dis­cus­sion with Gudrun Will, here’s what she had to say about Vancouver Review, past, present and future.

Geist.com: You were a suc­cess­ful news­pa­per and free­lance jour­nal­ist before forg­ing ahead as pub­lisher and edi­tor of VR. What was your moti­va­tion for mak­ing the leap to mag­a­zines, and start­ing your own publication?

Gudrun Will: I was inter­ested in cre­at­ing a forum for a kind of story — beau­ti­fully writ­ten cre­ative non-fiction or essays about west coast cul­ture that show a will­ing­ness to be crit­i­cal — that I wasn’t see­ing pub­lished elsewhere.

G: Vancouver Review, as it exists today, is a re-launch and re-imagination of a Vancouver lit­er­ary mag­a­zine that stopped pub­lish­ing in 1997. Why did you work to bring it back, and what improve­ments did you bring to the magazine?

GW: I was inspired by vol­un­teer­ing for the old VR for four years in my twen­ties. The cheeky spirit of the old ver­sion always stayed with me, and I wanted to bring back a mag­a­zine with a sim­i­lar role and per­son­al­ity while kick­ing up the visu­als and broad­en­ing the con­tent to reflect our new team’s inter­ests and experiences.

G: What were some of the unique chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties you had as a new mag­a­zine tak­ing on an old name, Vancouver Review?

GW: None, really, given that it is a type of con­tin­u­a­tion — a “new gen­er­a­tion” VR, per­haps. We think it’s an ele­gant name. We fully involved the for­mer edi­tor, the late Bruce Serafin, in the ini­tial stages of devel­op­ing a new VR, although he stepped aside before we launched. The only down­side to keep­ing the name is that some peo­ple may cling to misty-eyed mem­o­ries of the old one.

G: Speaking as an inde­pen­dent pub­lisher, what do you see in the future of mag­a­zines? What kinds of sup­port does an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine need to sur­vive far into the future?

GW: I believe the future of qual­ity print mag­a­zines that fill a spe­cific edi­to­r­ial niche — in VR’s case, long-form arti­cles about local cul­ture, accom­pa­nied by beau­ti­ful art, which you can expe­ri­ence swing­ing in your ham­mock — is solid. But mag­a­zines will need a lot of direct sup­port and engage­ment from a vari­ety of sources to sur­vive in this print-challenged cli­mate: gov­ern­ment, phil­an­thropic, and above all the cul­tural and read­ing community.

You can pur­chase Vancouver Review at BC book and mag­a­zine shops, or sub­scribe online.

How to Start a Magazine

Deanne Beattie

Look, we know we’re crazy.

Given the mouth-frothing glee that the gen­eral pub­lic derives from watch­ing young publishing-hopefuls trot into the pro­fes­sional slaugh­ter, over and over again, it’s dif­fi­cult to for­get that mag­a­zine pub­lish­ing is a non-option … espe­cially now. Long hours, small pay­cheques and stiff pro­fes­sional com­pe­ti­tion would make mag­a­zines appear slightly less awe­some than a career in pretty much any­thing else.

It was not long ago that I began respond­ing to the ques­tion of what I’d like to do with my life with, “Oh, writ­ing or edit­ing, or some­thing,” in place of the flat-out lie, “I’m still fig­ur­ing that out.” I have cov­eted a career in the glossies from the days when I picked up Mom’s Canadian Living in lieu of a Nancy Drew mys­tery, but I haven’t been totally thrilled with the idea of telling other, well-adjusted peo­ple about this small dysfunction.

It wasn’t until I met a fel­low writer at a party about a year ago that I choked up the truth, and asked him if I was, word for word, “going to be okay.” He threw back his head and laughed, “Oh you’re doomed. But there’s no rea­son to be down about it.” If it didn’t sink in then, I think it did a cou­ple of months ago, when Anna Wintour responded to ques­tions about Vogue and its plans to face the global reces­sion by say­ing, “You have to remem­ber exactly who you are and not panic.”

So, I’m start­ing a mag­a­zine with some pals with­out any money or sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence. Sure, we’re a lit­tle crazy — nutty enough, that yes, we feel in a small way that the death of big mag­a­zines these days has a lot to do with a dearth of good con­tent that makes sense to today’s audi­ence. As free­lance writ­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers and artists under 30 in Vancouver, we feel des­per­ate to cre­ate the kind of work we feel is rel­e­vant to us, and to the peo­ple we inter­act with in this city on a daily basis.

We’re going to run a quar­terly art and cul­ture mag­a­zine, Sad Magazine, out of our bed­rooms in col­lab­o­ra­tion with like-minded writ­ers and visu­als artists. Everyone will work for free; we’ll raise just enough money to pay the print­ers, and give away the mag­a­zine for free.

This blog is the online account of my adven­tures with Sad Mag, and expe­ri­ences with Canadian pub­lish­ing at the start­ing line. Yeah, we’re nuts, but we really wouldn’t have it any other way.