abolwell's dashboard

Yes, we call this 'push publishing', hopefully available by end of June!

Check out the info on creating a magazine using Photoshop in our online publisher's guide: http://magcloud.com/Content/MagCloud_.... One idea might be to check your Photoshop dpi setting is at 300 dpi. There are also some tips on reducing file size in the InDesign section that might also be applicable. The dimension change should not be a problem, our system allows for this tolerance.

API stands for 'Application Programming Interface' and is a way for 3rd parties to access a service programmatically (vs through a website). I'm not sure this would help your use case, but we've received a lot of interest from other folks about providing access to our services this way. – abolwell, on May 07, 2009 01:11

Agree! We definitely want to connect publishers and buyers/subscribers and see the value, and that is exactly what we are working towards. Re-reading my post above I see I've used the term 'opt in'. As it relates to that particular point, maybe it might be more accurate to say 'opt out'. With a responsibility to support everyone's right to privacy, we feel we also need to provide a way for buyers to 'opt out' of having their contact information passed on to publishers, should they not want this. Also please note that this specific approach relates to one-off magazine purchases vs ongoing subscriptions (when this feature becomes available). For the latter, as with today's magazine subscriptions, there is an implicit expectation built in to the business model that publishers need to know subscriber contact details, and I don't see any reason for us not to follow this convention too. Anyway, great discussion and REALLY appreciated here!

Yes, we will allow more pages shortly, but unfortunately we have no current plans to get into the 740pp bookmaking business. Sorry!

Acess to tracking numbers through the site is coming shortly!

James, if this is still an issue for you, please let us know at www.magcloud.com/home/contact. Thanks!

Lee, please let me know if you've got past the sign-up problems. I've checked and confirmed this is not a system issue, and that we haven't yet seen this problem elsewhere. If it remains an issue for you, please let us know at http://www.magcloud.com/home/contact.

To answer your question on our definition of page, it is one side of an 8.5x11 inch section.

With respect to providing a quote for 100,000 mags, would be happy to do so, and will email you about this at the email address you have posted.

Thanks!

Unfortunately it's not possible for us to do this for you, but of-course if this is for personal use you can hole punch afterwards, or if for others, order in bulk, hole punch and then distribute.

Nichi, please email me at andrew dot bolwell at hp dot com. To answer your question on rev share, publishers can set the selling price of their magazine to whatever they want above the production cost, and keep 100% of the difference on each magazine sold.

Just wanted to let you know that we haven't forgotten you all, and are actively working on increasing our coverage in Europe and Asia. I wish it was as easy as it sounds, but it involves all sorts of legal, customs and logistical gymnastics, so appreciate everyone's patience! :)

Hi Denise,

Yes, if you are not happy with your order please let us know and we will address it for you.

With respect to trim, while we try to get our trim as close as possible, it is not unusual for there to be a slight variance, which is the reason we include a bleed in our PDF specs. If you leave the bleed area white on your design, this will cause any variance in the trim to be much more noticeable.

To avoid this, we recommend that you extend your images/content into the bleed area that extends 0.125" from the top/bottom and 0.25" from the outside edge of the 8.5" x 11" PDF you upload to MagCloud. This way, if the trim on your magazine is slightly off, there won't be a noticeable white border around your pages.

For more information about designing with a bleed, please see our Publisher Guide (available in print and PDF versions at http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/11563).

With that said, if the trim on your proof was off by more than an eighth of an inch, please let me know, as this is outside of our expected trim variance. In that case, we would like to reclaim the proof for closer inspection by emailing you a prepaid FedEx label. The FedEx label can be affixed to any box or envelope for drop-off at a FedEx location or a scheduled pickup via FedEx.com. So if the trim was off by more than an eighth of an inch, and this is something you are willing to help us with, please let me know and I will process the return label as soon as I hear back from you.

With respect to use of different printers, this is not always possible to guarantee, but we are working hard to ensure a consistent output across all our print network. Given all magazines are printed on HP Indigo Digital Presses we have a fair amount of control over this.

With respect to changing the return label on shpped magazines, can you say more about what you are looking for and why? At the moment we are processing all undelivered mail on a publisher's behalf, which allows us to manage refunds, returns and addressing mistakes etc, which is why we currently have the return address point back to us.

Best Regards,

---andrew

Just wanted to clarify our current intent. We are planning on starting out with a feature to enable publishers to message people through the site who have bought their magazines (and opted in to receiving messages directly from the publisher). This will allow publishers to interact directly with buyers of their magazines, and request direct contact information as appropriate. Moving forward we are also looking into ways we can aggregate buyer information for publishers, as well as streamline the sharing of contact information between consenting buyers and publishers. We hope to have the first phase above in place within the Summer timeframe, but will be aiming to have this in place quicker if we can. Lots of other requested features vying for our attention too, including support for longer page counts, coupons, more countries, a revampted and simpler publisher UI and a public API, among others :)

Hi Brittani, in your case do you mean if your magazine sells more than 2500+ single copies to buyers fulfilled by MC one at a time? Assuming you do, or regardless :) please feel free to give me a call or email me at andrew dot bolwell at hp dot com so I can talk to you more about what you are looking for and how we might support you. Cheers!

Hi Scott, just wanted to let you (and everyone else) know that we're listening. Our trick here is to prioritize and implement all these feature requests without you guys thinking we're ignoring all the wonderful suggestions you're making :) On the subscription front, we've decided to do this in phases. The first step being worked on now is to allow you to do a push distribution. This means being able to order and send an issue to multiple recipients at the same time. For those of you managing subscriptions directly, this will allow you to fulfill these subscriptions through MagCloud much more easily. Moving to MagCloud managed subscriptions is a little trickier, and would require us to manage subscription financials as well. We've received a lot of feedback suggesting that many publishers would rather handle this directly with their customers, but we're also aware that many of you without existing subscription management in place would like MagCloud to do this for you. So we're still in 'listening mode' on this one, and would appreciate your further thoughts. – abolwell, on April 27, 2009 17:53

Hi Will, first of all thanks for taking the time to take and share the photos, it really helps. This appears to be a low incident problem, and I'm working with the printer involved to understand the root cause and address it. In the meantime, if you decide to move forward with the bulk order, and the trim is not right, please let me know and I'll refund your purchase. We only want happy customers here :)

At this point, can you please retry once more and then submit a 'problem' report via http://magcloud.com/home/Contact? Doing so will allow our support engineers to locate data and log information specific to your session in order to better troubleshoot the problem for you. Thanks.

Molly, how large is the PDF you are uploading, and how fast is your Internet connection?

The PDF you are uploading should be for the entire magazine (i.e. includes all pages, not just for one page),

just upload all of them at once. Page 1 will be your front cover, page 2 your inside front cover, the last page will be your back cover, your second last page the inside back cover. Does this help?