{"id":1263,"date":"2008-06-23T14:05:38","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T14:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=1263"},"modified":"2008-06-23T14:05:38","modified_gmt":"2008-06-23T14:05:38","slug":"lulu_for_magazines_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/23\/lulu_for_magazines_1\/","title":{"rendered":"lulu for magazines?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nA new project by HP Labs aims to make print-on-demand magazine publishing available to everyone. MagCloud<\/a> uses a similar model toLulu<\/a> for books, or Moo<\/a> for stickers and cards: upload your digital content here and we’ll deal with fulfillment.
\nIn his post introducing MagCloud<\/a>, founder Derek Powazek<\/a> makes the point that well over 50% of most magazines never make it to a buyer – that the distribution shelves are merely a rest-stop between the printer’s warehouse and the recycling plant. Between sustainability concerns and economic ones, a print on demand model seems a logical step for the ever-more-fragmented magazine market.
\nSo will the days of Xeroxed ‘distros’ soon be behind us forever? It’s hard to tell – it’s still in beta at the moment, and publisher accounts are invite-only. Key to success will be how slick, user-friendly, customizable and adaptable the publishing tools are – or whether it’s a matter of getting a PDF designed somewhere else and treating MagCloud like a slightly complicated printer. Then the magazines on offer for purchase are fairly sparse, and the interface for browsing before you buy is unwieldy. I’d like to see ways of embedding a Cafepress-style link into other webspaces, so as to give ezines and small magazines an easy channel to retail a print version. I’d also like to see and also more tools for users\/readers to review magazines published through the site.
\nBut it seems churlish to snipe too much – it’s very early days, and the idea has considerable potential as a tool for leveraging the Web to service very small interest groups.
\n(Link via Booktwo<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new project by HP Labs aims to make print-on-demand magazine publishing available to everyone. MagCloud uses a similar model toLulu for books, or Moo for stickers and cards: upload your digital content here and we’ll deal with fulfillment. In his post introducing MagCloud, founder Derek Powazek makes the point that well over 50% of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}