Synopsis: Illustrator and Black Sheep Studios co-owner Tyler Jenkins explains the fiscal realities of starting indie narrative mag Vehicle in today's environment . (For more info about Tyler visit blacksheepstudios.ca or vehicle-magazine.com)
Vehicle magazine is a publication in the process of giving birth to its third issue. My name is Tyler Jenkins and I am the boss.
Funny, huh? I like to say that ... it has a very enervating feel to it. I say it all the time, and my wife’s eyes are suffering from repetitive strain injury from all the rolling. One day they’re gonna’ get stuck that way ... isn’t that what our mothers tell us? My wife’s name is Hilary, she has very emotive eyeballs.
About six months ago, I had roughly fifteen minutes of time that wasn’t crammed full of activity, and in all my wisdom and foresight, I am the boss remember, I figured maybe we should start a magazine.
Now let me explain a few things about myself, and my wife’s self.
We are the owners of Blacksheep Studios and are full-time, working freelance illustrators. We enjoy our jobs immensely (usually), and spend a great deal of time working at them.
It is amazing to note, that as an illustrator, I can lay in the bathtub (with water of course), drawing Vikings pounding on each other in a sketchbook, or reading magazines (on art of course), and that is working. I can also sit at my desk, surfing the net, looking at other people’s art, and this qualifies me to ‘claim’ my internet costs as a business expense, and it implies, that while doing so I am indeed working.
So our situation is that we are working illustrators, who are, if I may say so, quite brilliant at business ... why else would we start a print magazine at the exact point in history when so many magazines and newspapers are going under? Good question. Well, I figured that there wasn’t a magazine like this in all the world (almost correct), and that people would love it (completely correct), but let me explain the nature of things chronologically.
Chapter one : Issue one
Our first issue started as a place that we and our closest friends could produce art and stories about anything we wanted and in any format; really experiment with storytelling, different styles, techniques, processes, etc.
At this point I would like to introduce Kurtis Wiebe. Kurtis is a writer and the editor of Vehicle magazine. He wrote Snow Angel. We worked on that together and you will have the pleasure of reading it for yourselves when it hits shelves in a few months, you’re gonna’ love it.
Anyway, issue number one of Vehicle, is the brain child of Hilary, Kurtis and myself. We form the guiding hand of the magazine. As you will notice in issue one, 90% of the content is written and drawn by the three of us, with a few exceptional guests.
It was a very successful first issue. We printed 1,000 copies and have given away most of them ... and even sold a few. I’ll explain the ‘given away’ nonsense in a minute. The feedback was tremendous, people loved it. Those that commented had almost universally good things to say, and universally, people thought we were doing something significant and important. And, many people wanted to be a part of it. We were shocked and of course pleased.
Let me bring up the only problem so far in the equation: cost and the internet.
Today, it is possible to get a tremendous amount of content for free online. I realize that there are many people, like myself, who still love print and will always put money into it, but let’s be honest ... I consume far, far more material online.
How do you pay for a print magazine? Advertising. How do you pay for a print magazine with a print run of 1,000 copies only, that costs about $7,000 to print (money that comes out of our own pockets)? Another good question. We managed to raise, in advertising revenue, approximately $1,500 bucks, due only to the tremendous generosity of friends who also happen to own businesses. On top of that, we had advertising, travel and convention costs. So, say our entire cost was $8,000. We sold maybe 200 of the thousand printed and gave away over 600 of them. The math goes something like this:
Total cost of printing -$7,000
Cost of peripherals -$1,000
Advertising revenue +$1,500
Sale revenue (@$5/book) +$3,000
That works out to about $3,500 in the hole. For us, that’s a lot.
Despite the numbers, issue one was a success in my books. We had small hope of breaking even, and no chance of actually making money, but the response was great. We had a couple of kick-ass launch parties, did several radio shows, and connected with a ton of great folks. And this merrily propelled us into issue two.
Before ending here (we'll continue on issue two next time), I’d like to take a moment to introduce the catch-22 law I have sadly discovered about advertising and new magazines:
A company will choose to advertise in your magazine, or not, based on your circulation. The higher your circulation, the more money you can ask for, and from bigger advertisers. To get a bigger circulation you have to spend money on printing, advertising, distribution, etc. This is very expensive and you need a lot of money, the amount that can only be provided by large advertisers. But large advertisers won’t advertise with you because your circulation is too small ... because you don’t have any money. See the circular problem here? Can’t get better circulation because you have no money. Can’t get more money without better circulation. Couple that with our complete and utter lack of any knowledge around selling ad space and voila ... no money. Magic.
So to summarize our feelings at the end of issue one, we were ecstatic. And to this day I am still extremely pleased with what we accomplished. The format may have to change, and the business model may need developing, but overall, we really believe we have something here.
Coming Next Month … Vehicle Magazine - Chapter 2 : Issue 2
