No Depression to publish again

[Nathan Golub]

Sorta:

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Conten ... d%3A266927

Interesting solution to a problem that's facing a lot of print media these days.

[Ron Whitfield]

...I guess. However, I may have to do my reading at the book shelves at $20 a pop.

[John Macy]

Yeah, but it's only twice a year, so it's not too far off the same price of 6 issues at 6 bucks... I'm buying in...

[Ron Whitfield]

Twice a year? Missed that...
Hell, I'll forget about it when it's on the rack at that rate and never see it at all.

[Craig Stock]

I'll buy it, I miss it already. Because of 'No Depression', I have been introduced to many new bands that feature Pedal Steel Guitars in lots of exciting new and old bands.

[Donny Hinson]

I wonder how many millions of potential customers just glanced at the title on a news-stand and hadn't the faintest idea the magazine was about music?

cryptic title + poor advertising = now defunct magazine

Who would'a figured?

[Mark Eaton]

You have a point, Donny, but it is my understanding that the accelerated decline of the recording industry in the past several years, coupled with the nature of the advertisers, being well outside of the mainstream, were major contributors to the demise.

[Nathan Golub]

Mark, you're absolutely right. When No Depression published their final issue their readership was not in decline, and they had very little competition from other magazines covering the roots/country genre. They had to stop publishing because the money from advertising wasn't there anymore. The independent small record labels that were purchasing ads couldn't afford to do so anymore. It sounds like the new ND will not be dependent on advertising, but instead on the profit from sales of the magazine itself. Which in this case could work out better for them.

[Glenn Suchan]

From the fall/winter Univ. of Texas Press catalog:

"In early 2008, No Depression announced that it's May-June issue, ND #75, would be it's final bimonthly magazine. To ward off the disappearance of No Depression in print, the University of Texas Press stepped into the vacuum, arranging for a new semiannual ND "bookazine" to be published each fall and spring. The first installment - to be called No Depression #76 , reflecting continuity with the magazine's history - will be issued this fall and will carry on the publisher's tradition of outstanding long-form writing about major and influential American roots musicians, along with quality photographs and other elements all presented via the graphic design imprint of ND art director Grant Alden. This book/magazine hybrid is essentially ground-breaking territory in both of those publishing worlds."

For those interested, here's a link to order the fall 2008 issue of No Depression with a 33% website discount, making the total cost $13.37

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/ald76p.html

The forthcoming editions will be:
No Depression #77 , Spring 2009, ISBN 978-0-292-71929-3
No Depression #78 , Fall 2009, ISBN 978-0-292-71930-9


Happy reading, y'all!

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

[Stu Schulman]

I played pedal steel on the Whipsaw's "Lonesome Joe",they live up here and Peter Blackstock really likes the band.Not a perfect track but cool.
http://www.nodepression.com/lyric.aspx

[Dave Mudgett]

This looks very good, I'm gonna do it. There is precedent for this type of operation. For example, the magazine "Just Jazz Guitar" operates on a similar format - 4x/yr, $12.00 single copy price, and minimal advertising restricted to ads that really relate to the jazz guitar community. They've been going continuously since the mid-1990s.

I actually prefer the no-ad or minimal-ad format. If they give a quarter's worth of content in an issue, I don't think $13/issue is unreasonable at all.

I don't want to drag this off-topic, but if there was a serious and really packed quarterly on steel guitar that I could buy by the issue like this, I'd do it in a second. But I think there's a lot of trust issues to overcome on both the publisher and reader side to make that happen, unfortunately. I don't think "No Depression" has this problem at all. Donny - the name may be cryptic to you, but not to an awful lot of roots music players and fans - IMO, of course.

[Nathan Golub]

Stu, I dug the Whipsaw track. This has probably been talked about here before, but the music fans who read No Depression are some of the biggest pedal steel fans out there. At least that's what I've found to be the case when talking to folks at gigs. Any effort to support a fanbase for the Americana/roots music genre sounds like a good idea to me.

[Drew Howard]

"No Depression's advertising funds had dropped 64 percent in two years."

I wish them well this time around.

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Conten ... d%3A266927

[Glenn Suchan]

Drew, in the new format, advertising revenue is a non-entity. Just as with a book, advertising space won't be included or needed. The cost of publication will be recovered by the sale of the "bookazine". I suspect the number of copies of each new edition will be based on the total sale of the previous edition.

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

[Stu Schulman]

Nathan,Thanks for listening to the Whipsaws track,They're half my age and twice as smart,just a blast to play with.I usually do a few passes in Pro-Tools and they glue my stuff together,sometimes they'll put in something that I thought was wrong harmonically and somehow they make it work.I really loved No Depression for finding steel players that I'd never heard of and checking out their take on playing songs most of the time non traditional yet very cool.Drew your Cd is on my list of things that I must have,Stu