The Magpie Future
Many thanks to everyone whose suggestions were received on our finances and marketing, following our request for ideas in the February editorial.
We met last week to consider all the ideas put forward, and formed some conclusions about avenues we wished to explore. The first thing to say is that with some further subscriptions, and one or two donations, having come in, we’re not in danger of immediate demise. However, we are very grateful to those compilers who offered to receive less than the stated fee or nothing at all, as again this does help the situation.
The next status quo announcement concerns the magazine in 2012, which won’t be changing much. To some extent, we depend on what puzzles are sent to us; but also we noted there were as many voices claiming that the puzzles had got easier over the years as those saying they had got harder. Whilst there may be a larger body of solvers than our readership who would be more at home with easier cryptic puzzles, our view is that there are other publications that cater very neatly for such tastes.
Perhaps this makes us elitist, but the Magpie came into being for those who wanted clever themed puzzles, some of them difficult. As for the aim of setting “a puzzle that only one person would solve correctly”, this was a mischievous comment by Pieman that came with the vital rider that all those who failed this chimera had to acknowledge the puzzle was totally fair. It is certainly not a real goal in any way. Many people pleaded for the magazine not to change too much.
One of the suggestions we found most interesting was the idea to make some puzzles available as iBooks via iTunes, and we will look into this. If it works, we might consider one day whether this would be an appropriate format for our content generally.
In terms of marketing, we still feel that paid advertising slots are a little out of our reach. Instead we will be exploring advertising channels or cross-marketing with such magazines as Mensa and Cam, where some commonality might be expected. John Green has also agreed to add a few sentences about us to the annual Listener statistics pack.
We are currently feeling our way into Twitter (@MagpiePuzzles), though with no great certainty about how to use it (we’re certainly not going to become random thought tweeters), and you can have a look at our nascent Facebook page if that’s your thing. We will certainly be trying to improve the look and appeal of the website, principally by adding a bit more content more often – like this.
We have listened as hard as we can to all the suggestions offered, and are working on various proposals. It’s likely we’ll be making some changes for 2013, and we’ll announce plans later in the year.
March 26th, 2012 at 8:20 am
Please don’t go ibook, as that would mean having to buy a phone (or whatever you call the thing nowadays) that can support it. I don’t want to buy an extra piece of equipment just for the Magpie crosswords, as that is all I would use it for. Neither am I a facer or a twit. I can accept that emailed grids are cheaper and more reliable than the post, but you don’t need to go any weirder than that.
March 28th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
I meant to say this a while back – but here’s another suggestion – how about selling issues individually as well as offering a subscription at around £4 per issue? I don’t know how easy this would be to set up digitally.