The Guardian hearts Stack

A couple of links to recent Guardian stories here – one a shameless piece of self-promotion, the other an interesting forecast for the magazine industry.

So straight to the self-promotion, and digital publishing writer Jemima Kiss, who published a nice piece about Stack last week, describing it as “a great take on the online magazine subscription site” Couldn’t agree more Jemima.

She also referred to Stack as a “lifeline” for independent magazines, and while I don’t think these brilliant titles are going to get washed away without Stack, there’s no doubt that the extra sales and publicity can’t hurt. Several of the magazines on Stack are coming up with interesting new ways of reaching readers at the moment (see Bad Idea’s Printomortis online TV series) and I see Stack as another way of spreading the good word of independent publishing – hopefully at least some of the people reading this will be coming across Bad Idea and co. for the first time. There are plenty of people who will tell you that print media is finished, but that’s just lazy thinking – great magazines will keep on being made and will keep on finding an audience. Of course online offers lots of opportunities, and the best magazines will use the web to make themselves even better, but high quality magazines are here to stay. Oliver Luft’s piece at the start of the month identified the premium glossies and the niche independents as the two sections of the magazine publishing industry that will do best in the year ahead – makes sense to me. Stand back and watch as The Year of the Independents unfolds.