Friday, April 17, 2009

April 17, 2009

A Cold One In My Hands
Issue No. 2 arrived a few days ago. The 80-foot truck was too big to come down our driveway so I had to meet it on the road with our pickup and transfer the pallet over. After a week of 60°F sunny days, it was snowing again. I drove back down the drive to our office door. Andra helped me move 3,250 copies of the Summer Issue inside. The rest of the print run was on trucks heading to our newsstand and bookstore distributors.
The magazine business is funny. Or maybe it’s the whole publishing world of books and newspapers, too. You bust your butt getting the issue out, reading, editing, proofing, and more proofing, until you know the thing as intimately as your own hand. You know every word and every photo. If you didn’t write the word or take the photo, you know the person who did. You asked them to write the article and take the photo. And then you worked it over. Sent it back with questions first, later for their approval. By the time you ship the issue to the printer you really can’t look at it another time.
Then a week passes. The proof copy comes FedEx from the printer. Once more, yet again, you read the issue word for word, looking for mistakes that eluded you the 19 other times you read it. There always are a few. Corrections at this stage are expensive—something like $50 a page. It adds up quickly, so you fix the worst and let the others go, hoping the readers will never notice.
Despite this over-familiarity with the publication, for some reason you can’t wait to see the REAL THING. To pull out your pen knife, cut the tape on the nearest box, pull out the top copy, and hold it in your hands. As if you expect to be surprised. To find something fresh and different. Of course, it is exactly as you remember it. The cover photo. The blurbs you wrote trying to lure newsstand tire kickers into picking it up and carrying it to the cash register. Willing to part with $6.95. Every page, exactly as you remember it.
And yet, and yet…the real thing is somehow different. You love it. This is why you’re in the publishing business. You can’t believe you made this darn thing. Pat yourself on the back. “Nice job!” you tell yourself.
Once Andra and I had all the boxes moved safely inside, out of the falling snow, we cut open a box and each took a copy. Having spent the last two days inside an unheated truck, they were cold to the touch.
I took mine inside the house, grabbed a cold one of another variety out of the fridge, and sat down to admire both of the cold ones in my hands.
Andra came in and said, “Funny how you can’t wait to get them. And soon as you do, you can’t wait to get rid of them.”
Not that we don’t’ like them. We just want to put a cold one in your hands. Coming to you soon!