A magazine about books – what a novel idea
Spike's own boy wonder Gary Marshall sends word that he's now freelancing for a new UK magazine dedicated to books. It's called Ink and it's currently on its second issue. Blimey. Has anyone else seen it? What do you think about it? From what I can work out from their website, it looks pretty good - a literary version of Empire or Q. Which, funnily enough, was a magazine proposal I put forward when I used to work at Future Publishing. It didn't get anywhere. And that's the interesting thing with Ink. It's easy to launch a mag, but it takes 18 months to two years to move into profit. There's a huge amount of advertising money belonging to book publishers and retailers that could be tapped to fund such a mag, but how successfully they're managing to do it remains to be seen. It appears they have a distribution deal with all the major book sellers in the UK too - Smiths, Borders et al - so perhaps they're getting subsidised by them too.
Anyone wishing to send a copy to Perth here in Australia (where it's currently so hot I'm sweating through my teeth) will be suitably lavished with praise.
Mind you, Marshall also sent me this - "what do you do when boy bands and girl bands aren't enough? Yes, according to Universal Music in France, you need SHEMALE BANDS!!!!!"
