How we fooled a magazine and highlighted the vagaries of the modern trade media
Trade magazines basically have three basic ways in which to make money. The most common way is to sell advertising space alongside their carefully-crafted editorial. The second is to sell the magazine, either via subscription or over-the-counter sales. The final, and least scrupulous method is to charge for printing contributed editorial. Some publications are totally transparent about this and sell space on the basis of it being an “advertorial”; others are less honest and charge instead for “colour separations”, the creation of print films that no-one has done this century.
Either way, the charging for advertorials or colour separations says a great deal about the credibility of the magazine and its content.
And, to prove that point, we can report that we have just received an email from a bi-monthly magazine with the catchy title Selfbuilder & Homemaker offering to run our press release on the theft of a Norwegian tower block for just £85.
Perhaps they’re in on the joke. But the fact that they’re offering to print an April Fool joke in an edition that isn’t even out yet makes us wonder if that’s the case. We’d hate to think that a paper-based publisher was merely trying to make a fast buck, regardless of the content.
