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The Periodical Publishers Association (more commonly known as the PPA) has opened their doors again to all those wishing to enter the Independent Publisher Awards, 2009. To be eligible for the Awards, each entrant must be an independent publishing company or individual, who are operating with less than a £7 million pound turnover per annum.

For the 2009 event, the PPA has expanded the number of categories to eleven this year, by including Customer Magazine of the year and Team of the year. This year’s event is taking place at Vinopolis, located at the heart of uba cultural Bankside in London, commencing on the afternoon of Tuesday, 1st December. It’s expected over 150 people will attend the awards ceremony which is to be presented by entrepreneur and business mogul James Cann, famed more recently for his fiery joint hosting of the BBC’s Dragons Den television series.

The PPA expects to be inundated with entries as the closing date of the 12th October looms closer. Now in its 6th year of running, the awards have gained great momentum and create a lot of interest in the independent publishing sector, with just a nomination for a campaign being a big accolade to anyone who entries, as it pushes them up the ranks to wider markets and exposure of their brand.

In what must be one of the largest corporate buy outs that America has seen this year, the iconic comic book giant Marvel Entertainment has been bought by the Walt Disney Corporation.

The Disney brand will now encompass all the 5,000 Marvel characters that have graced the shelves of comic book stores for what is 70 years, this year. During this time Marvel Entertainment has seen its fair share of ups and downs, with the business filing for bankruptcy back in 1996 after 57 years of trading, when the comic book sales across the world dropped leaving Marvel with massive debts. It was two years later in 1998 when they emerged as a phoenix company and the sketch books of Marvel were opened once again.

The merger of Marvel into the Walt Disney empire will see the likes of Spiderman and the X-Men now rubbing shoulders with Hannah Montana and Mickey Mouse as the two lucrative industries come together, with the Marvel super hero’s now able to jump the band wagon and expand their presence through Disney’s established merchandising, theme parks, Hollywood studios and third party licensing.

Inks and pigments have been used for printing on to various substrates for many years. By mixing different colours you can achieve a much wider variety of palettes, which is how and why magazine printing only uses a basis four different coloured inks to then produce the spectrum of colours which make up a finished, printed magazine.

The four colours used are yellow, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. When the paper passes through each inking station of a printing press, a cylindrical plate which has an etched image of the text pages picks up one of the specific colours and transfers it on to the paper as the paper passes through the inking station. The paper than passes through the other three inking station which builds up the full colour images on the paper.

The printing plates put ink down on the paper in very small dots, which can be seen with a magnifying glass. If you want to achieve different colours, the density of the dots increases which to the naked eye looks like you are creating a new colour. For example, to achieve an orange colour on a specific area, one printing plate in the yellow inking station will be etched in that specific area, so it picks up the yellow ink and puts it down on the paper. Then as the paper passes through the magenta inking station, that printing plate will be etched in the same area so magenta ink will be put down on the same area, thus creating an orange image, as it contains yellow dots and magenta dots which to the naked eye make orange.

There are other ink colours of course like specials like metallic’s, but cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, known as CMYK, or the four colour process has been used for many years to print magazines in the conventional printing process.

The publishing wing of the British Broadcasting Corporation is widening its presence across the globe by introducing two titles to its Brazilian portfolio.

The Lonely Planet is the most recent title from the BBC’s portfolio to be specifically published for the Brazilian market. The localised publisher of magazines and books, Ediouro Duetto Editorial is handling the print and publishing contract on behalf of the BBC for the extension of the Lonely Planet brand in to South America, with an estimated print run of 40,000 copies per issue of the travel title. The styling for the magazine is following the already tried and tested winning formula of the Lonely Planet guides which have been popular with travellers and holiday makers for years.

The BBC has signed off another deal with the same Brazilian publisher for the title BBC Knowledge. The science magazine which has gained a successful readership across the globe, will be launched mid 2009 in Brazil with an initial print run expected of around 40,000 copies.

Daniel Stycer has been put in place to edit both titles, brings with him over 20 years of print and digital journalism. Establishing these two titles will definitely bolster the BBC’s presence as a global publisher.

Over recent years publishers have seen the migration of readers from the traditional print based publishing in favour of online content. In an effort to pull readers back to the newsstand Future Publishing are forging ahead in the hobbyist market, with the proposed launch of their World of Warcraft series of titles.

Hobbyist titles are the least to be affected during times of recession because when people are faced with financial stresses they will tend to stop spending on holidays, new cars and any high priced items. What they will continue with though are their hobbies, which they can enjoy from the comfort of their own home. There has been a new found lease of life for the World of Warcraft gaming community recently, which has prompted Future Publishing to provide this niche title launch.

At £29.95 per subscription of four issues, it may not attract all the Warcrafter’s out there, but due to the global size of the Warcraft community, Future will only require a proportion of readers from the vast numbers of regular players via the four language versions to make the title a success.

This is a bold move by Future Publishing in an effort to combat the latest ABC figures pertaining to the consumer magazines, which look to be in freefall with global magazine sales on the downturn. But it proves to publishers they must think outside of the box and can’t continue to churn out women’s lifestyle titles or the traditional lad’s mags.

Quoting the circulation figures of a magazine is something of a grey area. For starters, one common perception is for publishers to look at it with the view that more than one person will read each magazine sold. Partly due to the fact that friends swap magazines, or they are left coffee tables which other members of the family may pick up, or that they are easily accessed by joe public – in libraries, waiting rooms, schools etc.

To try and formulate the circulation figures the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) was created in 1931 as a non profit scheme set up to manage and report on quantities of periodical newspapers and magazines sold.
Should a publisher register a title with this body, they must provide all the sales information they can collate and submit to the ABC for certification. There is a cost associated to registering, but once recognised a publisher can then print their most recent circulation figures within the title they have ABC’d.

The benefits of ABCing a title proves to potential advertisers exactly how many copies are being sold, rather than just take the word of the distribution director who works for the publisher.
The down side is that your competitors can also see your sales figures, plus if you have a few bad months due to recession, seasonal down turn, or poor content, you’ll see and everyone else will see your drop in sales. Advertisers tend to hang on published ABC’s in the hope that any slight drop in ABC will warrant cheaper advertising over the next quarter.

Another point that greys the area of valid ABC figures is the introduction of digital editions of magazines. We are yet to see the full impact on the traditional paper based newspaper and magazines as digital versions become more popular. Publishers will want to include them, as they can potentially get a better rate of return on these as opposed the having the high front end costs which are attached with the print and paper format. The route to market is just a few clicks away, as opposed to the long haul of the conventional distribution channels.

Love them or loathe them, ABC’s have always played a vital part in publishing. There’s nothing in place to say you must ABC your title, but it can help in your favour. The best advice is only ABC when you know you’re selling a lot of copies at very regular intervals, otherwise it’s not really worth shouting about.

Whether it’s your local newsagent or the favourite supermarket, as soon as you enter the shop you are faced with a wall of magazines. The wall is made up of hundreds of fluorescent printed covers, for men, women and children, all vying for your attention. They cover every conceivable topic from hobbies and lads mags, to weddings and celebrity gossip. You name it – there’s a magazine about it.

The perception is that a publisher has approximately four to five seconds to draw your attention to their cover, as you scan across the shelves either trying to locate the most enticing cover which meets the requirements you want from a magazine. Hence why so many 5th colours are printed on magazine mastheads, and the use of oversized polypropylene bags inked with vibrant colours on their tall headers. All this is done to catch the eye of the potential customer is a very short period of time, as competition is high.

It’s not always been as cut throat a market as it is now. What was considered the very first magazine to be published ran its first edition in January 1731 and shared shelf space with books of poems and novels.

Ironically, this very first periodical magazine published fell under the category of being a lad’s mag. Published every month for the disconcerting man about town, The Gentleman’s Magazine provided regular commentary on any subject matter the editor deemed fit for the general public – covering subjects ranging from poetry in Latin, share and commodity values, plus excerpts from various other published works.

The publisher (Edward Cave) found routes to all corners of the English speaking world at that time to distribute his title and built a vast readership up, which others would try to mimic. Edward Cave’s legacy continued in to the 1900’s, when the final issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine ceased publication in 1907.

All be it a far cry from today’s Zoo and Nutz magazines, The Gentleman’s Magazine was the first of its kind and set the president for a whole new industry in modern times for the likes of Rupert Murdock to monopolise and make money from, by printing newsworthy articles relevant to the demographic at the time.

Probably the world’s best know publisher of adult magazines, Playboy Enterprises Inc has reported a slump in magazines sales over the last quarter which will look to affect their current share value prices. This combined with a decrease in advertisers spend and an increase in competitor activity such as free online adult content, are contributing to the deprecation in the company’s revenue for this period. The expectations are that they will struggle to achieve the same profit margins compared to last year. This year’s second quarter reports were filed showing an $8.7 million USD net loss.

The drop in advertising revenue has affected all paper based publishers alike, with advertisers closing their doors to weather out the current economic crisis. Although this kind of cost saving on the part of the advertiser is beneficial in the short term and boosts working capital, it can have detrimental effects to their company in the long term – by not maintaining their presence in their marketplace, they increase the chance of their competitors winning any new business that’s out there.

To combat these hard times, the Playboy brand is diversifying out from the usual routes to market. As well as the traditional print, television and video offerings, further resource is being used to push the company’s branded clothing merchandise and investing in licensing deals with nightclubs.

The now iconic brand, was established by Hugh Hefner at the age of 27, when he published his first issue of the now world famous magazine in December 1953. Little did he know then of the fortune’s he would come to make and where the Bunny girl brand would take him. While his CEO’s push the business in other directions, Hef’s latest personal venture sees him in discussions about producing a film about his life. To be rated 18 no doubt.