Do-It-Yourself Magazines, Cheaply Slick

Use any page layout software, mark up a multi-page magazine, save it to PDF, upload to MagCloud and they’ll print a full color magazine for you at .20 per page.

Making a Magazine with MagCloud

To me, the great thing about this service isn’t this part of the process, although it’s pretty darned good, it’s the fact that you only have to make one at a time to get that pricing. And, you can make the magazine available for others to buy online through MagCloud. So, this is a great process coupled with print on demand.

I have yet to use it but it’s on my list for sure and I’ve bought many publications through them to see what the printing looks like. It’s quite good. Is it good enough for a photographic portfolio? I’m not sure but it might be if you use trial and error to get your processing just right for the printing process.

The barrier for casual users or experimenters is desktop publishing or layout: one has to actually put together the document and that takes some time. In this world of instant gratification and one click web sites the time and focus necessary to put a decent document together may be a bit of a hurdle for some. This is why the NY times used the phrase “solution in search of a problem” to describe MagCloud. I think it’s right on the money for anyone who is willing to put a document together but will enough people do this to make it profitable?

I found out about MagCloud through Derek Powazek who uses it to publish his magazine/book Fray.