Publishing a magazine in 31.5 hours

Derek Powazek — one of the earliest thinkers about building community around websites — has written a post about the day-and-a-half turnaround time he had to produce a one-off magazine called Strange Light.

The magazine’s subject is that amazing and gorgeous duststorm that hit eastern Australia last week. From the idea to the final product — which featured 54 photos of the storm, each use with the permission of its photographer — took less than two days.

News organizations have, over the years, gotten pretty good at quick-turnaround books; I’m thinking of the sort of thing that papers put out when the local team wins a Super Bowl. But those still require a lot of advance planning and the work of a lot of staffers. Derek’s post is a reminder that, with today’s digital production tools and advances in small-batch printing, one person can assemble a high-quality print product in hours.

Derek produced Strange Light using MagCloud, an HP project he’s been involved in. I’ve written before about how Time Inc. is experimenting with customized single-copy magazine runs. At the book level, I’ve used Lulu to print two different paperback books — each with a print run of one — and I’ve been happy with the final product. Whatever the vendor, small-batch niche publishing doesn’t have to be solely an online affair; it can live on paper too.

Kenneth Crews on copyright and openness

Kenneth Crews, director of the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia, gave a talk here at Harvard yesterday about issues of copyright, publishing contracts, and open access. He looks at these issues from the perspective of the academic world, where openness in scholarship is getting lots of momentum (including from my employer). But a lot of the same issues apply to journalists who own copyrights, do work for hire, or get entangled in less-than-reasonable contracts. What’s the best path — openness, control, or something in between?

If you want the quick version of his talk, read David Weinberger’s liveblog of it. The full hour-long video is also available, as are Crews’ presentation slides.