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View Full Version : Issue #18 - Focus Magazine - HOT OFF THE PRESSES!



David Spivak-Focus Magazine
4-Aug-2009, 20:32
Literally.

I've received, in the past six months, literally hundreds of e-mails from subscribers wanting to know where their issue, that they paid for with their hard-earned money, was. The truth is - we've had some very difficult financial problems due to the stock market crash last year, advertisers pulling out due to the uncertainty of the economy and so on. When I tried to obtain a loan for the business so that we could print this issue, the loan was rejected because we've never had to borrow money to meet our biggest expense: The printing of the magazine. Since our first issue, we've ALWAYS made a profit. That profit has always been re-invested in improving the magazine, increasing our circulation to meet more collectors and increasing the overall printing quality of every issue.

A little over two years ago, Focus Magazine made the transition from web printing which was a bit like a mass-produced, assembly line magazine (I cite B&W as a perfect example of this) where the actual time spent on an issue is less important than doing everything possible to move this issue onto the printer and getting it off. That's the way, I believe, a large, commercial, web printer makes the most profit. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But overall print quality is not a reason why that is. Many of you can go back through older issues of Focus (2- 12) and look through those issues to find numerous reproduction problems. Pre-press took a day or two and then plates were made and we went to print and that was it. A week later, I had a finished copy. It was inexpensive, affordable and an extremely efficient way to get a finished product.

In June, 2007 Focus Magazine began a relationship with Brilliant Graphics. To my "horror," pre-press took two weeks, minimum, and printing, folding and binding the magazine took an additional 2-3 weeks -- and that was rushing it. After my first experience with Brilliant Graphics -- I wanted to do everything in my power to run back to my old web printer! Where were my 1-week magazines? Where was the speed and efficiency?

Then I received the first copy of Focus Magazine printed by Brilliant Graphics. I was in shock, really. The magazine was GORGEOUS. It was one of the most beautiful piece of printed work I had ever seen in my life. Something on par to the quality of LensWork of one of Lodima Press' books which just always made me relish the overall print quality. For years I had eaten a very good piece of steak at my favorite steak chain restaurant, where speed and efficiency is primary to overall quality and then someone had taken me a world renown steakhouse that people traveled to from all over the world just to eat a piece of steak. Upon first bite of this steak, or upon first view of this magazine, I was hooked. And so were my advertisers, readers on newsstands and subscribers. In the second half of 2007, Focus Magazine sold more subscribers than we had in entire two years we had been in business. We had obtained advertising from some of the highest level AIPAD galleries in the world. Our newsstand sell through rate was in the 70% range, meaning for every 10 copies of the magazine put in bookstores, 7 would sell. While the average sell-through rate for other magazines is in the 30-40% range and we had been averaging high 40s, low 50s.

And we began doing very, very well for some time. We printed four more issues with Brilliant Graphics -- and then last July and August I was kept extremely busy working on Rabbi Sinclair's book. So, I finally had time to begin selling for the December 2008 issue of Focus Magazine around the first full week of September... and then the stock market nearly collapsed. And advertiser after advertiser either went out of business, lost their full time job and had to cancel, or was unsure if their doors were going to be open next week.

I'm sure many of you will ask - "Why didn't you just use the money in your savings account to print the next issue of Focus and wait?" The answer is three-fold. A: To print, fold and bind a magazine is no small expense. By the time all of the expenses are factored, between my time, the time the editors spend on the magazine, the time spent laying out and designing the articles and ads, printing, folding, binding and postage we are in the six-figure range. And once one issue is printed and paid for, what about the next and after that one? Of course, we could cut expenses and run off to the next web-printer and have Focus Magazine printed as an assembly line product with very little care or concern given to its overall product and more care and concern over the time spent on press.

And of course, even if we would approach a bank for a loan that would fund everything for a year, which would run very close into the 7-figure mark, then this magazine would be in debt of over $1 million with interest.

Simply put: It wasn't smart business strategy. The right idea was to hold back, keep in touch with as many remaining advertisers as we had, work to get new ones, keep in touch with all of our subscribers, create a new central location where all of our subscribers can be kept up to the second on the latest news on the magazine (via our Facebook account and fan page) and then when the time was right, we would print.

We have finally approached that time.

Below are images taken from the first day of printing of Issue #18 of Focus Magazine. Every 16 pages is printed on a 25 x 38 sheet of paper. One side holds 8 pages and the other side holds 8 pages (16 page signature) and then the paper is folded, trimmed and bound. There are 12 of these 16-page signatures this issue, plus a cover. The magazine should be ready to ship to subscribers by early September.

I thank all of my subscribers, for their patience. We have never given up and many of you have never given up on us.

Follow us on Facebook for real-time updates on this issue and more.

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=1304525325&k=Z5E2Q56X3Y31UCEHWAY3UUY

http://focusmag.info/issue18/BackOfSteveMcCurryForm.jpg
http://focusmag.info/issue18/CoverAtColorConsoleOnPress.jpg
http://focusmag.info/issue18/CoverInQCBooth.jpg
http://focusmag.info/issue18/Form5Front.jpg

Greg Lockrey
4-Aug-2009, 22:16
Yay! :)

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
4-Aug-2009, 23:06
http://www.focusmag.info/issue18/new.jpg

Donald Miller
4-Aug-2009, 23:09
David, I know that you and I have had our times over the past but I wanted to take this opportunity to applaud your dedication to the task at hand. In my opinion you have made a giant step to redeem yourself and your publication. I wish you the very best going forward.

Best regards,
Donald Miller

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
5-Aug-2009, 04:49
David, I know that you and I have had our times over the past but I wanted to take this opportunity to applaud your dedication to the task at hand. In my opinion you have made a giant step to redeem yourself and your publication. I wish you the very best going forward.

Best regards,
Donald Miller

Thank you, Donald. I appreciate the kind words.

http://www.focusmag.info/issue18/F1Front.jpg

William McEwen
5-Aug-2009, 09:11
I've always liked the Herb Ritts photo of Christy Turlington that's on your back cover. What is she doing there? Is it an ad for a gallery?

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
5-Aug-2009, 10:23
I've always liked the Herb Ritts photo of Christy Turlington that's on your back cover. What is she doing there? Is it an ad for a gallery?

Yep -- Willem Photographic over in Monterey, CA.

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
5-Aug-2009, 10:34
http://www.focusmag.info/issue18/InsideCovers.jpg

Kirk Gittings
5-Aug-2009, 11:31
It looks like a great issue David.

William McEwen
5-Aug-2009, 11:57
David, are you any relation to TV newsman and magazine publisher Lawrence Spivak?

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
5-Aug-2009, 12:07
David, are you any relation to TV newsman and magazine publisher Lawrence Spivak?

Not that I know of... I'm actually not related to any Spivak's. The Spivak side of my family (my father's side) is very small. If you lived in Tampa Bay, FL in the mid-late 1990s and you liked good Jewish deli food, my father owned a very popular and famous NY style deli in Tampa. It has since closed down, unfortunately. There are so few places left in the world to get a GREAT pastrami on rye.

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
5-Aug-2009, 12:09
It looks like a great issue David.

Thank you, Kirk!

Greg Lockrey
5-Aug-2009, 17:41
I think it would be fun to own an uncut and bound issue. The galleies (if that's the correct term) look cool. ;)

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
5-Aug-2009, 17:51
I think it would be fun to own an uncut and bound issue. The galleies (if that's the correct term) look cool. ;)

I dunno... the sheet sizes are HUGE. 25 x 38. Maybe in NYC our offices and apts are too small, but that's a pretty big piece of paper. To have 13 of them... but to each their own... I'll see if I can get them all for you.

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
6-Aug-2009, 04:32
http://www.focusmag.info/issue18/mccurry.jpg

David Luttmann
6-Aug-2009, 05:24
Can't wait to get my hands on this issue. Nice work David!

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
10-Aug-2009, 13:24
http://www.focusmag.info/issue18/F7Front.jpg

http://www.focusmag.info/issue18/F8Back.jpg

I will be announcing in the coming days more information about this contest that you see printed in the above images.

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
16-Aug-2009, 17:54
Issue #18 is pretty much done printing. One last sig to go on Tuesday. Headed to the bindery later in the week and we should be done early next week. From there, the distributor will pick it up and send out all subscription copies. Dependent upon the speed of the bindery and the distributor, all subscription copies should be mailed out by the 28th or the 4th at the very latest. If you received a copy of Issue #17 - you will receive a copy of Issue #18. We're looking at early December as a target date for the next issue's distribution.

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
21-Aug-2009, 08:50
what I don't understand is this

So thousands of people paid good money to subscribe to his magazine, many others pay good money to be published in his magazine, he sells his magazine in book stores and brags on this forum about how well it sells there compared with other mags. Then he also sells ads for his magazine.

All of this is correct, so far.


So how exactly did the bear market in US Stocks hurt his magazine? In any business slowdown you would want to ramp up marketing efforts which would mean placing more ads not less.

Specifically, it was not just stocks. As I mentioned, galleries with existing contracts with FOCUS feared they were going to be unable to pay for their next ad, the market for photographers to advertise had nearly dried up as well. Around last Autumn, there was so much fear prevailing in the economy that no one was able to do anything and if they could, they weren't sure how to pay for it.

Even if we did pay for the printing and distribution of the next issue, which wasn't a problem, we were unsure how much longer the problem with the economy was going to last. Would it be a few months? A year? Two years? Longer?

How much longer would we need to dip into our savings account for to pay for the printing and distribution of an issue? How much would we need to cut down our overall controlled circulation that directly reaches collectors which would decrease the value of the magazine overall? These were questions we did not have answers to.

We print and distribute magazines for one full year, losing tens of thousands of dollars on each issue. How long does this go for? How much money do we lose? Do we reach a point where we can longer fund the continued printing of the magazine? Again, all of these are unknowns.


If I owned a gallery and my sales were down why would I not want to do everything I could to drive more sales my way. I would also take a serious look at what my marketing efforts had done for me in the past, and pull the plug on wasted efforts. If ad revenues are down that can only mean that they found little to no value in running ads in said magazine.

Because most galleries do not increase their overall sales by anything meaningful by advertising in a magazine. If you're a new gallery, or you have a MAJOR exhibition coming up, then yes, but ARTFORUM doesn't have hundreds of galleries advertising in every issue because they think they're going to increase sales. The purpose for advertising an exhibition inside of a magazine is to increase AWARENESS of the gallery. People in the art world have to be "in the know" about the latest exhibitions, the up and coming hottest artists (photographers) and they get this information from magazines and galleries, at most times, like to make themselves be known and be made aware of. It was not until after AIPAD that we had any idea if this 40-something year old trend was going to continue. Galleries had no idea, either, which is why many held off on advertising.

If collectors aren't buying from reputable and established galleries, they sure aren't going to buy from unknown photographers.

All of this began changing after the AIPAD Show. So around April or so, we began putting the work in for the upcoming issue, #18. 4 months later, a beautiful issue is completely sold out of advertising and will be on newsstands in a week or so and we are hard at work on the next issue and have already received amazing interest in the next issue. Things are so good right now, we may publish two additional issues next year to go to 6x per year -- this is completely dependent on the amount of advertising we generate and how well we sell on newsstands. In addition - we have a new competitor, COLOR Magazine, B&W Magazine's sister publican, that we must be aware of. So many factors go into not only publishing one issue of FOCUS, but publishing an entire year's worth of issues.


] One also has to wonder why when you have paid subscribers, book store sales, and paid submissions from photographers, why you even need to worry about any outside ads and you are so dependent on them that if they dry up your magazine can't even be published. Brooks Jensen at Lenswork runs no ads at all, does not charge photogs to be published, and yet somehow he manages to put out a high quality magazine every other month just on paid subscribers.

First I will state and have stated that I am a huge fan of LW - and of Brooks Jensen. LW is most definitely a high quality publication. Your question is sort of its own answer.

If they just print enough magazines to go to their subscribers, which presumably is around 10,000, then they print close to 1/4 less than we do. In addition, the size of LW is so small you can fit 16 reproductions per side of paper rather than 8 as you see above. Meaning a 96-page magazine for BJ is only 3 signatures, while for FOCUS a 96-page magazine is double that because of our size (9 x 10.875). Additionally, LW is only printed on duotone, 2/2, while FOCUS is CMYK + duotone, 5/5 and in some instances 6/6. Our costs to print one issue of FOCUS Magazine are much, much higher than it is to print probably a year's worth of LW. Because Focus Magazine weighs about 1.5 lbs, it also cannot be shipped the same method that LW is shipped, so our shipping expenses are dramatically higher than LW's.

Finally, we have to, absolutely have to, keep the magazine on newsstands -- it is a huge source of income for us that we have been without and will continue to be without until October. So we need newsstand copies to survive. We have to ship magazines to the newsstand - and that's close to $10,000 all by itself.

In the end, to produce, print, ship and distribute a copy of FOCUS takes close to $100,000. This is why we MUST have advertising and why we rely so much upon it.

Dave Wooten
21-Aug-2009, 10:39
Thanks Dave,

and I appreciate the e mail updates you have been sending to subscribers....

William McEwen
22-Aug-2009, 09:12
I see you're featuring Lawrence Schiller. Truly an amazing man. Over the years he's arrived on the radar from time to time, and I'd always wondered if there were several people with the same name. Surely one person couldn't be involved in such a variety of projects. The feature of Schiller in the March 2009 issue of B&W finally confirmed it -- yep, one person. Amazing.

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
22-Aug-2009, 11:19
I see you're featuring Lawrence Schiller. Truly an amazing man. Over the years he's arrived on the radar from time to time, and I'd always wondered if there were several people with the same name. Surely one person couldn't be involved in such a variety of projects. The feature of Schiller in the March 2009 issue of B&W finally confirmed it -- yep, one person. Amazing.

Features are always nice. Our interviews are what really separate FOCUS from the pack.

William McEwen
22-Aug-2009, 13:43
And it looks like you were smart enough to feature a large version of Schiller's Marilyn Monroe pic! B&W ran a contact sheet very reduced and a small reproduction of one of the pix.

David Spivak-Focus Magazine
22-Aug-2009, 18:36
And it looks like you were smart enough to feature a large version of Schiller's Marilyn Monroe pic! B&W ran a contact sheet very reduced and a small reproduction of one of the pix.

Schiller's work was reproduced in 400 line screen via a duotone. I don't believe his work has ever been reproduced in such fine detail before. I hope he will be pleased.

William McEwen
27-Aug-2009, 12:05
Schiller's work was reproduced in 400 line screen via a duotone. I don't believe his work has ever been reproduced in such fine detail before. I hope he will be pleased.

I've no doubt he will.

It's time he did a book, too. He should enter your contest.