Nuts And Volts: Possible new Magazine Idea

NWCCTV

I am a subscriber to Nuts And Volts magazine. I really enjoy reading this magazine and it has taught me a lot. However, I notice that most all of the projects are related either to PIC or Propellar chips. Might someone want to join me in starting a magazine dedicated solely to the various Basic Stamps. Could really be a hit I think. Although these forums are a great source of ideas, I enjoy sitting sown and reading a magazine and think with the popularity of Basic Stamps that many others would also. Just throwing out an idea that might catch on.

Franklin

Or you could write articles for Nuts and Volts about and using the stamp.

localroger

Yes, write the articles and I suspect N&V will publish them. I've noticed a tendency among the hardcore enthusiasts to be more concerned with pushing against barriers than with exporing simple and introductory things. We've all used Stamps, I used them pretty frequently for 15 years before discovering the Propeller, and now I will probably never sell another Stamp again. Not that the Stamps are bad products; quite the opposite, they are extremely elegant. But as a guy who makes my living making hardware do stuff for other people, I have to pick my targets, and there is very little I can do with Stamps that I can't do cheaper with the more advanced stuff, because I'm able to use the more advanced stuff.

So what is needed is for someone to take an interest in this as an *educational* project and write it up for the n00bs even though personally it might be like riding a kiddy tricycle. (Is someone looking at me? I'm like, busy. Aren't we all? Do you have a point?)

Duane Degn

I also enjoy printed magazines. But so many times I think "that could have been done a lot better if they'd used a Propeller."

So I guess I'm a "no" vote on the Basic Stamp article/magazine.

bsnut

Jon Williams has written many articles for Nut & Volts and also Scott Edwards has written articles as well for the Basic Stamps. Remember it all started with the Basic Stamps and now it is the Propeller.

If you want to see more articles on the Basic Stamps you should let Nuts & Volts know. Myself, I think they should cover both, the Basic Stamp and the Propeller. What I mean, they can do a Basic Stamp every other month and do same for the Propeller, that's my taught.

Humanoido

There's plenty of material to start a magazine about BASIC Stamps. The infrequent articles in other magazines is insufficient - you have to gather up many months and even years of material to try and satisfy your thirst for the Stamp. I would be very interested in a new magazine that could hold more Stamp material. I'm surprised it was not started sooner. Of course information about Propeller would catch interest too and grow.

Franklin

Of course information about Propeller would catch interest too and grow.

Time to start a second magazine !!

Invent-O-Doc

Send a letter to Bryan Bergeron, the editor. I know him and he is a good guy. In fact, I talked to him about the propeller and he said that it is a cool chip but that he is more excited in general about the Arduino platform. N&V used to do lots with stamps, which are still great. I stopped using them a couple years ago because of the SX and SX/B just made them not worth the per unit expense for me and am now converting to propeller.

Another venue is SERVO. It has the same publisher and editor and some of the robot projects in there use the stamp.

Pliers

A tech magazine starring Parallax products, sensors and all, then add a Maxim feel to it.
I would buy it.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Magazine publishing has got to be one of the hardest businesses in the world to start and manage effectively -- right up there with turning a profit from a restaurant. Without effective cash management, it's all too easy to burn through the subscription money you receive in advance; yet, there's still an obligation to deliver the goods for months thereafter. It can easily turn into a Ponzi scheme of using new subscription fees to pay for current obligations. And attracting advertisers is a real chicken-and-egg game. They don't want to pay for space without guaranteed circulation, but you can't build circulation without advertising money. Then there's the editorial content. Attracting good authors at only $50 a page is not easy, unless you can appeal to their vanity. Finally comes postage costs. These will be significant until you get a Periodicals mailing permit, which has stringent standards and record-keeping requirements.

My recommendation is to provide as much content as you can to an existing magazine and let them worry about the business end of things. Magazines are always hungry for content, despite their unwillingness to pay a lot for it. Eventually, if they're happy with what you provide, they might ask you to write a monthly column. Avoid this trap! By saying yes to your vanity (and a byline!), you will enter the world of deadlines, monthly pressure to produce something fresh, and perhaps even writer's block. So stick with articles written on your own schedule.

-Phil

Chris_D

Phil,

It sounds like you have been down that road too. You are spot on with that advice and the only thing I can add is this...

What Phil said times 10!!!

If you really MUST go the "do it yourself magazine" route, first try creating a web site configured like a magazine. Try to get authors and try to get advertising dollars. Learn the ropes that way and get used to the grind. But frankly, I advise against even that, just try to get some articles published by others - it is much more fun.

Chris

HollyMinkowski

I really enjoy Nuts And Volts too.
I bet they would publish any well written stamp
article you would submit.

I believe that Microcontrolled had an article published by Nuts And Volts.

I also like Circuit Cellar and Military Embedded Systems Magazine.

LoopyByteloose

A bit of history...
I bought a lifetime subscription to Nuts & Volts many moons ago, when it was a newspaper tabloid format that primarily had classified ads of all and everything electronic. It has changed quite a bit, but the business side is pretty much the same - subscription fees pay for the printing and postage in order to have a circulation; the larger your circulation, the more you can charge your advertisers and that is usually your profit. In those early days, they were handing out free copies as ham radio swap meets just to get started.

But one also must consider that your advertisers desire content that will reach their kind of customers. As a tabloid classified, Nuts&Volts didn't have much content - that was easy. But now, you pretty much have content that is related to what the major advertisers sell. The classified business has all moved to EBay and similar media.

Nuts & Volts did start Servo to reach a different audience for different advertisers that felt they could do better with another kind of focus. It seems to be doing well.

If you really want to consider another publication with a specific focus, it would be best to consider what your advertisers are willing to buy - otherwise the whole enterprise is rather pointless in terms of profit. You may note that Parallax has bought the back cover of Nuts&Volts for ages, for a long long time Netmedia bought the inside cover. Others have regular full page positions. The advertisers that buy the first few pages, the last few pages, and the centerfold (if there is one) are the major sources of income for a magazine. If you want those advertisers to add your new publication to their media buys, it may be a hard sell as they pretty much are committed to what is working for them now.

Finding other advertisers may even be a bigger challenge unless you have built up circulation. (That is why Nuts&Volts gave me a lifetime subscription -- they wanted to be able to get more money from their advertisers.)

And so....
I tend to agree that you might be better off writing for Nuts&Volts with maybe asking Parallax what they are willing to do as a sponsor if it is all about BasicStamps. If you want to shift from one platform to another, I suspect that Nuts&Volts would be interested - especially if you bring in new advertisers. But it would be the life of a writer with regular deadlines and so on. You don't have to write every month - you can skip months or just write a series on one theme and take a rest.

RobotWorkshop

NWCCTV wrote: »

I am a subscriber to Nuts And Volts magazine. I really enjoy reading this magazine and it has taught me a lot. However, I notice that most all of the projects are related either to PIC or Propellar chips. Might someone want to join me in starting a magazine dedicated solely to the various Basic Stamps. Could really be a hit I think. Although these forums are a great source of ideas, I enjoy sitting sown and reading a magazine and think with the popularity of Basic Stamps that many others would also. Just throwing out an idea that might catch on.

I've had articles published in both Nuts'N'Volts and SERVO so I have my own comments on this....

Many of the articles you see are just the things that people are submitting for publication. If you want to see more articles using the BASIC Stamp then find something NEW to write about them. I'm sure that if you have a well written article they would consider it. In my opinion the hardest part will be to find something that hasn't already been written about before. Since the BASIC Stamp has been around so long it has been used in many different projects. As an example start reading through all the columns that have already appeared in Nuts'N'Volts here:

http://www.parallax.com/tabid/272/Default.aspx

After going through all of the articles do you still have a long list of new projects for the Stamp? If so great!! Get busy and start writing. I think trying to start a NEW publication just for the Stamp would be a mistake but if you have many new projects that use the Stamp and ideas for how it can be used then by all means send them into the Nut'N'Volts or to SERVO (if it is robotics related) If it is new they would probably like to see it.

Robert

David G

Coincidentally, I have an article in the new February issue of Nuts and Volts. Although my project did not use a Basic Stamp, I did slip in a mention of the Parallax BOE board.

Dave Goodsell

Jen J.

And if you would like to review past articles, we have them all available for download here: http://www.parallax.com/tabid/272/Default.aspx

Cheers, Jen J.

JoeFranko

I'm a little amazed that there isn't more call for a web magazine covering Stamp, Propeller, Hydra and Chameleon. Seems to me like it would be easy enough to get started, cheaper to do a startup, and much easier than a print magazine to keep up with every month. Since the whole thing would be electronic there would even be opportunities to share projects described in the articles. The Parallax site is wonderful and has more information than I could use in twenty years, but a magazine has more in it than projects and programs. An on-line magazine could give a sense of WHO is working with these things.

I recently attended the last webinar and enjoyed hearing how folks in industry are working. Being in education I don't much get a chance to see that side of things! I've heard that all any good teacher really teaches is him or herself and that what a good teacher teaches is not facts but an approach to solving a problem. A good online magazine would give folks a chance to see not only a project, but also an approach on how the problem was solved.

I think starting a magazine would include a better feasibility study than can be gleaned from this forum and some kind of detailed business plan to cover the first three critical years of any business. A web magazine can be done in a much more experimental way and bandwidth could be added when and if the site became succesful. It just seems to me it would have less risk, less work, and less chance of failure than starting right off with a print magazine. On the other hand, if an online magazine is succesful it would then be less work to move toward a print magazine.

Of course, your mileage may vary...

Joe