Some of you certainly already know about book print-on-demand (POD) companies like Blurb, Lulu, etc.
Now for those who secretly dream of creating and publishing their own paper magazine with a glossy cover, HP labs launched
MagCloud, an online POD service that takes care of the printing, promotion and diffusion of your mag. You still have to create it in whatever layout software that's able to output in PDF format, following MagCloud's recommaendations for page size and bleed margins (see their
Publisher Guide).
Basically, publishing a mag is free. The mag will be sold to your customers at the base price of $0.20 per page (production cost) + shipping. Then you can specify your desired markup on sales, which MagCloud will transfer to a Paypal account (min. payout = $10). You may even include advertising in your mag, to help finance it. You can keep your mag private, if it's just for internal use (club, association, company,...). Then you can buy each copy for the base price of $0.20/page. (see the
publication TOS)
For now, they only ship to US, Canada and UK, but they should add more countries later.
Who will be the first to publish "Microstock News" or "Microstock Weekly" ?
Erick