Happy Monday

Happy Monday magazine people!

Have you missed us?

Well, the last three weeks or so have been a wild ride. Between launching?The Grub Street Journal, releasing a report on artificial intelligence and writing about human consciousness for MENSA, we’ve also posted a shit-tonne of magazines and started trying to get our heads around our difficult second issue.

Anyway, we’re here.

‘Here’ is actually a London-bound train. We’re heading to the Smoke for the PPA Festival tomorrow and The Publisher Podcast Awards on Wednesday. Living the dream! This is actually the first chance we’ve had to sit quietly and contemplate the Grub Street launch, and we have thoughts…

Keep up page-sniffers — thermal label printing is where the real highs are

I’ve heard so many magazine makers talk about the buzz they get from opening the first box of a shipment and getting that olfactory hit. Well I’m here to tell you there is nothing, NOTHING, to beat the rush of your first 100 labels firing off a thermal printer. The speed, the noise, the names spooling on to the floor… I literally cried.

People are clueless when it comes to postal charges

[SPOILER] Magazine publishers are not pocketing a fortune from excess postage charges. At ￡3 a copy, we lose money on every copy of?The Grub Street Journal?we post, paying ￡2.65 to Royal Mail for 2nd Class Delivery and 39p for an envelope. There are way better get rich quick schemes (Paypal me ￡25 and I’ll tell you what they are).

Too many words, too little space

One of the things about the first issue of a magazine is, well, it’s the first issue. We thought we knew exactly how many words we needed to fill a page, but we overcooked it. Next issue, we’ll have fewer words, more subheads and way more white space.

Post-Creative Downers are a thing

Joanna informed me — while lying on her face on the sofa — that there is such a thing as?post-creative depression, which apparently occurs when you have ‘birthed’ a project and it goes out into the world. We’re not convinced it’s actually?comparable to post-partum depression?but we definitely hit a dip about ten days after print day. Just a heads up.

The feedback we’ve had on?The Don Quixote?issue has been brilliant, and we are genuinely grateful to every single reader who has taken the time to tell us what they think. Here are a few of our favourite comments:

I've been waiting the past ten years for what feels like a magazine written for me, and today it dropped through my door.

The cover story on ‘What kind of idiots still make magazines’ is worth the price of admission alone.

A magazine about putting together magazines? I think I'm having a nerdgasm!

It’s maybe a wee bit self-indulgent to be sharing these, but we’re buzzing. They reflect perfectly what we set out to do… make a magazine for magazine people, with strong stories that speak to people who really care.

Our other favourite comment is?‘OMG! Where can I buy a copy?’

Well, if you’re in the UK, right here:?grubstreetjournal.com

And if you’re elsewhere, right here:?newsstand.co.uk/grubstreetjournal

Remember, we made a special Spotify playlist for?The Don Quixote Issue… the ‘Fools & Dreamers’ lineup is dedicated to all you wonderful idiots still making magazines ??

Tell us what your favourite track is.