A Boutique Magazine For The Chesapeake Bay Scene

How many things pop into your daily social media feeds that you either don’t care about, leave you dumbfounded at their sheer stupidity or simply annoy the crap out of you? If you’re like me, the answer is—most of them. But every few thousands scrolls or so, something on social media catches just enough of my attention to inspire me to learn more.

The most recent example of this was a Facebook post by performance-boat fan Shane DeFries of Maryland touting a new print title he’s spearheading called “Chesapeake Powerboat Magazine.”

As the co-publisher of annual magazine supported daily news online, I was curious.

National print magazines, as you know from the last time you walked by a newsstand without buying one, aren’t flying off the shelves these days. But regional or “boutique” titles, if done well and produced with economically sustainable page-counts and frequency, can make sense.

So I reached out to DeFries to learn a bit more about his plan for the regional publication.

“I’m just trying to jump start some ideas and get something out to give out at the poker runs this year in the area,” he explained. “It’s probably something about 50 pages that I am going to put out quarterly.”

In just two sentences, DeFries answered every question I had. And from my perspective as a publisher who started in the print magazine world the late 1980s and still continues to produce one successful “boutique” issue a year, he got all the answers right.

Based on the number of summer events in his region, he’ll have plenty of content to spread across four 50-page magazines a year. Plus, with just four issues to sell to advertisers, his odds of gathering local and national ad support are far better than they would be if he was thinking monthly or even bi-monthly.

DeFries was kind enough to send me a few digital layouts from the first issue, and I liked them—enough so that I even offered to help him. I’m not exactly burdened with free time these days, but projects such as his appeal to my pro bono nature, limited as it is.

And to think I learned about it on freaking social media. Next stop, Las Vegas.

Or Instagram—Matt Trulio

Source: https://www.powerboatnation.com/a-boutique-magazine-for-the-chesapeake-bay-scene/