A-M-P wrote:
People want to stroke their own egos and submit work to magazines then end up buying copies of magazines where their work is featured for $35-$50 per copy. Some of the magazines are their first ever issue with no fan base or readers and they price the magazines copies super high to get contributors to buy them because well their work is in it and that is how they make the money. If a contributor ask for a PDF copy of their page they are told they need to buy the digital download at $10 -$20 hmmmm so essentially you supposedly like my work enough to use it but can't even send a PDF copy of the single page.  If the magazine was decently priced at $10-$15 for a printed copy I wouldn't see an issue with a contributor paying for it but Essentially that is how magazines are making money by selling overpriced magazines to it's contributors because you damn well know no one else is buying their magazine at $50 a piece when is their first ever issue out.

The lack of attention these mags get has destroyed my interest in submitting to them. I only like print magazines. All else doesn't seem helpful to me. I did one mag and mostly it was full of my images (and I wasn't happy with the look, etc. and the whole thing) but I had to pay and to consider what I had contributed: insurance, etc., I think on top of doing an editorial recently, that's it for me. Once I get a wide format printer that works it is just commerical, commercial, commercial. If I get going well enough I'll do my own mag and pay a small amount of money to photographers, in return for complete access to all their contacts, etc. I will also try and harvest advertising. I have a strong background in sales, some advertising, and if I do it, I just put stress on myself to make money. I don't like the current wave of submit and the photographers and models and muas really don't get anything out of it, even in exposure.

A-M-P wrote:
People want to stroke their own egos and submit work to magazines then end up buying copies of magazines where their work is featured for $35-$50 per copy. Some of the magazines are their first ever issue with no fan base or readers and they price the magazines copies super high to get contributors to buy them because well their work is in it and that is how they make the money. If a contributor ask for a PDF copy of their page they are told they need to buy the digital download at $10 -$20 hmmmm so essentially you supposedly like my work enough to use it but can't even send a PDF copy of the single page.  If the magazine was decently priced at $10-$15 for a printed copy I wouldn't see an issue with a contributor paying for it but Essentially that is how magazines are making money by selling overpriced magazines to it's contributors because you damn well know no one else is buying their magazine at $50 a piece when is their first ever issue out.

You got it on the button...
That's why some of those magazines try to cram a bunch of photographers in one issue. Some even release multiple mag cloud magazines because they are running a racket, with a ton of photographers contributing so they can sell more..


For cheaper you can get a subscription to Vogue for a year...

Laura Bello wrote:
How the heck do you get published when you're just starting out then?  It's to the point where I've either heard that publishers want you to pay money to submit to them like Dark Beauty or Superior or that they want you to pay to get the digital tears. 

Are photographers just screwed either way and should you just not even bother shooting editorials when you're just starting out or is it worth the small amount of money here and there to make a name for yourself?  What's the right way to go?

If you search the forums, Benjamin K....I forget his last name did a whole thread on this that explains how to do it. He does editorials for Elle etc.

Marin Photography NYC wrote:

If you search the forums, Benjamin K....I forget his last name did a whole thread on this that explains how to do it. He does editorials for Elle etc.

I believe this is the one you're referring to:
https://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=927221

Kendra Paige wrote:

I believe this is the one you're referring to:
https://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=927221

Thanks!

A-M-P wrote:
So I give you free content and you can't even spare a single page digital pdf copy of the feature is not like I am asking you for the whole magazine just the one single page is this how they treat their contributors a digital pdf would cost her nothing. I'm sorry but no I'm not buying your shitty magazine for $35 bucks. I rather never even get to see the feature.

you are such a smart cookie. 

A-M-P wrote:
None of the magazines I have been published in have ever refused to send a PDF digital copy to their contributors as it cost them nothing.

Right, but when your entire business model is to sell only 20 magazines at 35 bucks a pop just to the people who are featured inside because your marketing sucks, giving you a pdf means they lost a sale or 5% of their revenue. I was asked once by one of these magcloud rags to be featured inside and I sent them a quote for licensing the photos for publication. They came back and insulted me for doing so as they were a startup with no budget. My response to them was (just before I told them to go fuck themselves) was that if they had no budget to pay the people who do all their heavy lifting then perhaps they need to rethink their business model.

The sad part is, for every one of us who says no to these "magazines" there are 100 wannabe photographers who jump up and down like monkeys and say yes to them because, "OOH OOH...I GOT PUBLISHED!"

Shot By Adam wrote:

Right, but when your entire business model is to sell only 20 magazines at 35 bucks a pop just to the people who are featured inside because your marketing sucks, giving you a pdf means they lost a sale or 5% of their revenue. I was asked once by one of these magcloud rags to be featured inside and I sent them a quote for licensing the photos for publication. They came back and insulted me for doing so as they were a startup with no budget. My response to them was (just before I told them to go fuck themselves) was that if they had no budget to pay the people who do all their heavy lifting then perhaps they need to rethink their business model.

The sad part is, for every one of us who says no to these "magazines" there are 100 wannabe photographers who jump up and down like monkeys and say yes to them because, "OOH OOH...I GOT PUBLISHED!"

I told the lady to kick rocks, that she can keep the stupid page as I don't need it that badly. I only agreed to submit the content because it would have been my son's first feature even if it was from a crappy mag so it would have been nice to at least see it. If I would have known I would not have wasted my time having them do the interview.

A-M-P wrote:
My son was asked to be featured in a startup magazine, They did an interview and asked for 6 photos. I asked them to send me a copy of the single page PDF where he was featured and this is the response I get.

"You get the whole magazine as Pdf for free when you order a print copy $35. The production cost for this issue is high due to the amount of pages. We do not print and distribute the magazine.



So I give you free content and you can't even spare a single page digital pdf copy of the feature is not like I am asking you for the whole magazine just the one single page is this how they treat their contributors a digital pdf would cost her nothing. I'm sorry but no I'm not buying your shitty magazine for $35 bucks. I rather never get to see the feature.


None of the magazines I have been published in have ever refused to send a PDF digital copy to their contributors as it cost them nothing.

I expect that they think that their magazine is more valuable to you then your contribution to it is to them.  They see your photos outside of the magazine as being worthless, but gaining worth (at least to you) by the act of being published in their magazine. 

It doesn't surprise me that some photographers would gladly pay $35 (or whatever) for a digital tear sheet from a startup magazine to be able to declare themselves "published".  I expect it is way less expensive (in time and money) than creating the photos and establishing the relationships required to have them published in an established successful magazine. 

From that perspective it is a great deal.  Not a great deal for me (I don't have any need to declare myself to have been published), but if that was my goal I expect that $35 would not stand in my way.  I expect that in many cases "having been published" is worth much more than $35 from a marketing perspective.

David Kirk wrote:
I expect that they think that their magazine is more valuable to you then your contribution to it is to them.  They see your photos outside of the magazine as being worthless, but gaining worth (at least to you) by the act of being published in their magazine. 

It doesn't surprise me that some photographers would gladly pay $35 (or whatever) for a digital tear sheet from a startup magazine to be able to declare themselves "published".  I expect it is way less expensive (in time and money) than creating the photos and establishing the relationships required to have them published in an established successful magazine. 

From that perspective it is a great deal.  Not a great deal for me (I don't have any need to declare myself to have been published), but if that was my goal I expect that $35 would not stand in my way.  I expect that in many cases "having been published" is worth much more than $35 from a marketing perspective.

yeah nope their magazine is not worth $35 to me, heck is not even worth $5. I rather spend $19.99 and get 12 issues of Vogue in the mail lol I have been published multiple times before by established magazines I have no idea how they even think they are more valuable to me than I am to them but they can keep dreaming.

The only reason I even agreed to it was because it was a feature on my son  and I thought it would be neat as it was an interview about child modeling.

Kincaid Blackwood wrote:
I wouldn't paint it quite so broadly. Consider a couple of simple logistical points required to put together a magazine:

•Content coming in (commissioned editorials or spec).
•Sorting the content/image selection (again, for both commissioned and submitted works).
•Laying it out.
•Approving it.
•Sending it live.

You have sophisticated variations of those steps as well as additional ones for a given operation, but most will have at least that. If you have a magazine with 100 pages and 10 contributors who shoot a model apiece which sell for $20 each, if you sell to each photographer and model, you've only got $400. Going back to the five points, you have to put in time to do each one of those. Whether one person does everything or you have a skeleton creative team, it's time put in.

Is $400 enough?

No, it is not. Not by a long shot. If it's a Magcloud operation, then $20 just barely covers Magcloud's fees. That means you're getting pennies in "profit" on a $20 magazine. Time and energy for pennies. I highly doubt the people running them are doing it because they think they'll make a lot of money off of those magazine sales. Even if they sold them for $30 a pop and made a $10 profit, that's still $10x20: only $200.

In all likelihood, you're talking about a person or a group of people who have an idea and want to see if they can develop it. Some are vanity projects that are an exposé of the people producing it. Some are trying to get legitimate traction. Others are just labors of love by people who want to see if they can put together and sustain a magazine for however long. If you think that they're doing it to make money off of the sales of magazines, then you're just not privvy to the numbers; they don't work out in favor of that.

Yeah, but the same people who pay their $35 to see their pictures "published" in a magcloud magazine are the same types of people who spend a month's worth of work to make $200 in profit so that they can say they own a "publishing company".

It's just two sides of the same record.

Laura Bello wrote:
How the heck do you get published when you're just starting out then?  It's to the point where I've either heard that publishers want you to pay money to submit to them like Dark Beauty or Superior or that they want you to pay to get the digital tears. 

Are photographers just screwed either way and should you just not even bother shooting editorials when you're just starting out or is it worth the small amount of money here and there to make a name for yourself?  What's the right way to go?

When you pay to have something paced in a magazine, that's not "getting published".

Shot By Adam wrote:
Yeah, but the same people who pay their $35 to see their pictures "published" in a magcloud magazine are the same types of people who spend a month's worth of work to make $200 in profit so that they can say they own a "publishing company".

It's just two sides of the same record.

I'm not sure that people who are doing Magcloud magazines are saying they own publishing companies since it's pretty well articulated that Magcloud is the vehicle of publication but I get your drift.

I don't know, I just wouldn't broadstroke it as such. I've worked on a handful of magazine staffs and contributed to various other magazines. Some were Magcloud operations. There is a stigma around self-publishing but we live in a very different publishing world. There are well-established, big name companies who pay photographers to shoot their Instagram content. We should call it what it is: ad work. But most people here would scoff at labeling it as such.

So as advertisers pulled their funds while print circulation was dwindling, small publications either went belly-up because they couldn't sustain the costs – even to print a 50-page magazine in the range of 2500 copies, you're looking at costs to the publication in the tens of thousands; since that's based on the traditional model, the magazine stand cost would be in the $5 range, not enough to earn what the magazine costs (ad sales make up that) – or went to the web. Like it or not, people are carrying around more tablets and phablets and whatever; they're looking at print magazines less and less. It's a huge barrier of entry to a group of individuals who want to develop an idea.

So HP decided to offer a way for people like that to create a publication. They helped break the barrier of entry. Has it caused a lot of shitty magazines to pop up? Yes. Do some not understand the business model (trying to turn a profit on magazine sales without working towards a point where they can get ad revenue)? Yeah, many do not understand that. But whatever their reasons, I think it's cool that people who might not otherwise have ever had the chance to try it out have a method for doing so. Just like some of the comedy operations that are youtube/vimeo only. I don't attach the same stigma to magcloud that some here do. If it's a good-looking magazine then it just is. If it's simply your pictures in glossy magazine pages, then it just is. But why the cynicism?

Joseph William  wrote:
Most of that money probably goes to mag cloud. I have allowed some of my images to be used by a couple of theses "magazines" but have not order a copy.  They can't be used as tear sheets, so... Why bother.  People I have worked with want to be in them and if I was only going to use the images for my portfolio it does not hurt me to alow it.


But print is dying so really how many of these magazines are going to become real publications?

On the other hand some of them do have good work and designing them.

Some are passion projects
Some are hobbies
Some are put together by delusional people

Even selling to contributors I don't think anybody is gettin rich

I don't know about most of it going to mag cloud, that is well over double the costs if you look at their price lists.

Kincaid Blackwood wrote:
I'm not sure that people who are doing Magcloud magazines are saying they own publishing companies since it's pretty well articulated that Magcloud is the vehicle of publication but I get your drift.

I've lost count the number of times I've shaken hands with a "Magazine Publisher" who's only publication is a magcloud rag as mentioned by the OP. In fact, I think I even have a business card floating around here somewhere from someone who has "Publisher" as their title and it's a Magcloud endeavor. That's just weak.

So HP decided to offer a way for people like that to create a publication. They helped break the barrier of entry. Has it caused a lot of shitty magazines to pop up? Yes. Do some not understand the business model (trying to turn a profit on magazine sales without working towards a point where they can get ad revenue)? Yeah, many do not understand that. But whatever their reasons, I think it's cool that people who might not otherwise have ever had the chance to try it out have a method for doing so. Just like some of the comedy operations that are youtube/vimeo only. I don't attach the same stigma to magcloud that some here do. If it's a good-looking magazine then it just is. If it's simply your pictures in glossy magazine pages, then it just is. But why the cynicism?

I don't knock people for self publishing but you also have to take it in context too. Let's be honest, getting published in an established, print magazine is difficult. That is why the win is so valuable when it happens. Getting published in any one of a zillion MagCloud magazines is not difficult at all, so just because your 5 photo layout got published in one isn't the same. It's like championing that you got accepted to your neighborhood sandlot team as if it were getting accepted into the New York Yankees. The same thing is true for books. If you can self-publish a book and have some success with it. that's awesome, but it's also not the same thing as saying you have been published by Simon & Schuster.

I think the point being with the OP though is that when you have to pay to see your own published photos, and pay 5X more than most high-end magazines charge, then perhaps the win is really a fail. At that point, you're almost better off just making your own magazine on your Epson printer at home with your own photos and saying you're "published".

studio36uk wrote:
Two words

vanity (- - - and - - -) publishing

They value your work for exactly what they can get out of you to publish it.

Studio36

One word.... publishing.

This is very much the way it is with photo books these days, unless you are a very big name or have a ready market, publishers want some £££ input.

Shot By Adam wrote:

Kincaid Blackwood wrote:
I'm not sure that people who are doing Magcloud magazines are saying they own publishing companies since it's pretty well articulated that Magcloud is the vehicle of publication but I get your drift.

I've lost count the number of times I've shaken hands with a "Magazine Publisher" who's only publication is a magcloud rag as mentioned by the OP. In fact, I think I even have a business card floating around here somewhere from someone who has "Publisher" as their title and it's a Magcloud endeavor. That's just weak.


I don't knock people for self publishing but you also have to take it in context too. Let's be honest, getting published in an established, print magazine is difficult. That is why the win is so valuable when it happens. Getting published in any one of a zillion MagCloud magazines is not difficult at all, so just because your 5 photo layout got published in one isn't the same. It's like championing that you got accepted to your neighborhood sandlot team as if it were getting accepted into the New York Yankees. The same thing is true for books. If you can self-publish a book and have some success with it. that's awesome, but it's also not the same thing as saying you have been published by Simon & Schuster.

I think the point being with the OP though is that when you have to pay to see your own published photos, and pay 5X more than most high-end magazines charge, then perhaps the win is really a fail. At that point, you're almost better off just making your own magazine on your Epson printer at home with your own photos and saying you're "published".

Absolutely right!

As you point out, writers have been doing this for years, especially poets. Poetry isn't mainstream enough to warrant space in most publications so they would publish their own journals with a subscription type model. They were printed and available but I'm not sure how widespread that availability was. A friend did this to see her stuff in print.

This was all before the Internet! I'm dating myself badly!

Anyway, you had it right when you told them to go fuck themselves!

Shot By Adam wrote:
I don't knock people for self publishing but you also have to take it in context too. Let's be honest, getting published in an established, print magazine is difficult. That is why the win is so valuable when it happens.

I don't think anyone here – certainly not me – is disputing that. I think every single one of us would take that as a given.

Shot By Adam wrote:
Getting published in any one of a zillion MagCloud magazines is not difficult at all, so just because your 5 photo layout got published in one isn't the same. It's like championing that you got accepted to your neighborhood sandlot team as if it were getting accepted into the New York Yankees.

Well, if you put it that way, the ridiculousness of the bragging depends on how long I've been playing baseball, if I've ever made a team before, who else is on the team, are they any good, is the coach my dad, some random asswipe or a retired scout who coached a college team, etc? There might be a hundred reasons why I might be stoked about that and brag about it. There might be a hundred reasons for me to be ashamed of it and keep my mouth shut.

Some of those Magcloud rags are shit. They are. Run by people who don't know what they're doing, have never been published and would never be published were it not for them doing it themselves. Others, however, are run by people who might actually be onto something. They're fewer and further between but there are a lot of shitty magazines on shelves in B&N, too. I've seen some pretty slick publications on Magcloud that would never have built the numbers to get the backing of a major distributor, which just would never have put together the ad revenue to get off the ground. Or they would never have been able to get a nationwide distribution package. Meaning, none of us would ever see it if we lived outside of, say, New England or South Florida.

Anyway, again: I don't think anyone is saying being published in a random magazines on Magcloud that's been around for a few months is the same as being published in an established magazine on the shelf. Not saying they're all really great looking endeavors; some of them look bad. But I would say that see them for what they are and judge them accordingly: they're the works of creatives who put something together on their own. If it looks good, then it can be validated on its own merits compared against other publications that are similar.

Mikey McMichaels wrote:

When you pay to have something paced in a magazine, that's not "getting published".

I get that and I know there's 'magazines' like Institute that charge up to $200 for submissions, but I've also been in small magazines where I wasn't charged anything to submit but wasn't directly given tears either.  I didn't actually ask for them but being that the digital magazine was only 10 bucks and I like their content I figured it wasn't a bad thing to get it.  After I re-read the guidelines though on the ones I've been accepted to I realized they offer free tears if you ask, whoops! :p So yeah everyone just ignore what I said.