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Easy Magazine Publishing for Schools & Students
by Jim Vanides

Looking for a new fund-raising opportunity for your school? Do you want to teach your students how to write for an authentic audience – and actually publish their work? You may have heard of print-on-demand for books – but now you and your students can publish high-quality magazines with HP MagCloud – and there is no up-front cost!  - and now there's a special offer for educators...

Three years ago I shared my excitement about self-publishing using “print-on-demand” services for self-published books (Books 3.0 – Revisiting the Possibilities of the Printed Word). What’s amazing is that you can create your book, convert it to PDF, upload it, and you instantly get a storefront that handles orders. You set the price, and the system sends you the net profit. There’s no inventory to buy up front because it’s all “print-on-demand” – literally, each book is printed and shipped as it is ordered (thanks to HP Indigo digital printing technology).

Now with HP MagCloud (developed by HP Labs), you and your students can publish high quality magazines! Simply upload a PDF of your magazine and HP MagCloud takes care of the rest—processing payments, printing magazines on demand, and shipping orders to locations around the world. All magazines are printed to order using HP Indigo technology, so they not only look fantastic but there’s no waste or over-runs, reducing the impact on the environment.

I am excited about this because:

• Students can have an authentic audience for their publications - REALLY authentic, as in worldwide!

• Students can learn the BUSINESS side of being creative – marketing, sales, running a business…

• Schools (and students) can actually make money doing this! Imagine fundraisers from:

  • Special sporting event editions

  • Quarterly creative publications from students

  • Custom magazines targeted at key donors

  • Yearbook supplements

  • Specialized club magazines that can now produce small-runs that were not previously practical

 …and just plain old end-of-year fun, like one-of-a-kind gifts for your friends or favorite teachers (a printed equivalent of a mix tape, such as creating “This-year-in-review: Facebook highlights”?)

The only limit is your imagination…

I also just heard that the HP MagCloud team is offering a special 25% discount to educators for the first magazine edition you publish! There’s still no up-front cost for creating the magazine and putting it online for sale, and the reduced printing cost means more net profit to your school when the magazine is ordered. See www.magcloud.com/Welcome/education for details.

If you do end up creating a magazine on MagCloud, let me know!