From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Sep 13 7:28:11 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from blackhelicopters.org (geburah.blackhelicopters.org [209.69.178.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1563237B42C; Wed, 13 Sep 2000 07:28:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from mwlucas@localhost) by blackhelicopters.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA69903; Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:28:05 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from mwlucas) Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:28:05 -0400 From: Michael Lucas To: Ignacio Cristerna Cc: freebsd newbies , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD Magazine Message-ID: <20000913102805.A69843@blackhelicopters.org> References: <20000913081530.A69493@blackhelicopters.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: ; from ignacioc@avantel.net on Wed, Sep 13, 2000 at 08:59:34AM -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I actually have some experience in publishing, and working with publishers. There's two ways we could make this a reality. 1) Do it ourselves. This is a pain, and less "legit" looking. We could put a plan together and try to get some fancy corporate backing (i.e., BSDi), but then we need to assemble distributors, handle record-keeping, etc. It's not a small job. Doing it single-handedly is a really, *really* sucky and thankless job. (I used to work for AGIS; believe me, I know "sucky".) With corporate backing it would be a full-time job. 2) Convince a media conglomerate to do it. Media companies will publish anything that there is a market for. They need print runs of a good 5,000-10,000 magazines to make it even vaguely worthwhile. The editors need to know that they can sell that many copies of a magazine. This boils down to, people need to ask for the magazine. Just like in software support. Polite grassroots efforts, and so on. The editors also need to see articles on the same topic in other magazines, for cross-pollination. My summation: if you want to see a BSD magazine, make a two-pronged effort: a) contact editors and ask for it. Politely. b) sell BSD articles to print magazines c) Involve the other BSDs in a) and b). This is a case where numbers matter big-time, just like counting page views. I'm giving a talk on b) at BSDCon, and will hopefully make a revised paper available after the conference. ==ml On Wed, Sep 13, 2000 at 08:59:34AM -0500, Ignacio Cristerna wrote: > After seeing all this Linux frenzy, I keep wondering and thinking about the > same thing. There are currently 2 Linux magazines that I know of. Is it too > much to ask to have a BSD magazine. I think that we should aim for a more > streamlined format, maybe a PDF or PS file that everyone could print out or > a magazine with a few pages. I believe the point would be to create a sense > of community and let the rest of the world that we are here, that we are > have a good "product" to offer. > Just my 2 centavos. > > Greetings to the FreeBSD community (with or without magazine) from > Monterrey, Mexico. -- Michael Lucas mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas/ Big Scary Daemons: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/Big_Scary_Daemons To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message