Focus magazine subscription

<p>Good evening to you, Jim! I hope Peoria, IL is treating you well!<br>

I don't know where you've been, but my subscribers are fat and happy right now. 3 issues in the past year and a 4th one on the way. Earlier this year we split Focus Magazine in two different magazines: One of portfolios and one of articles because the magazine was getting too thick!<br>

Issue #19 was our most successful issue ever - 20,000 people subscribed to Focus Magazine because of Issue #19.<br>

Issue #20 was immensely successful as well. In fact, I just tallied all of our numbers from Issues #18, #19 and #20 and we are the most downloaded fine art photography magazine on Zinio currently. Focus Magazine has been downloaded more than 200,000 times in 2011 and we just released Issue #21 yesterday to all 60,000 readers we have! This is our first NUDES issue ever and we're very excited about it!<br>

Facebook continues to grow as we just broke 7,000 followers on Facebook and I'm about to create a second account for myself because 5,000 is the biggest number of Facebook friends we can have.<br>

Photographers are finding new opportunities to exhibit their work and reach more collectors around the world than ever before! Business is booming here at Focus. We are re-investing money into the product and have a lot of things planned for 2012. I'm going to have to clone myself just to accomplish it all!<br>

There are many people, though, who have wished to see the magazine return to print. They remember the quality we had, they remember the fine paper and printing we had. I spared no expense when it came to the printing of the magazine and made sure every issue that had my name on it was of the highest quality. We are doing the same thing again - only better! So with that in mind, we are taking the digital version of Issue #21 (available on www.zinio.com or the App Store through Apple http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/focus-fine-art-photography/id424183568?mt=8) and offering it in print to anyone who'd like to own a copy before the Holidays with even better quality than anything we've ever had before.<br>

Is it expensive to buy? Absolutely. I'm under no illusion that $29.95 for 144 pages of a magazine that used to cost $7.95 is expensive and a hell of a hike in the price. But with Borders going under, B&N for sale more than a year now with no buyer in sight and their stock price being cut in half (down below $10.75 today per share) the print magazine market isn't reliable. <br>

Now we could have gone the route of JPG and completely folded or we could have gone the route of some other fine art photography magazines and decreased the quality of the magazine in order to just spit out as many copies as we can possibly fill the shelves with. But I decided to innovate and to convert Focus to a digital magazine last year. And there were some grumblings from subscribers who were unhappy. I knew there would be. And we made sure we could do everything in our power to make them happy. Beyond that, 99% of our subscribers stayed happy and have loved what they get in their inbox when Zinio alerts them of a new issue available.<br>

We're taking Issue 21, which as I mentioned above is available to download and read RIGHT NOW and we're going to offer it in print. And if for some unforseen reason we cannot print the issue, I'll personally refund everyone's order. It's very easy to do with Amazon.com - who I partnered with to offer this special sale. I don't know if we'll be able to offer another print issue after this - I don't even know if the paper we're using will be available next year. I do know that when this issue gets printed and arrives in people's mailboxes, it'll the most gorgeous Focus Magazine they've ever seen and will make a wonderful holiday gift.<br>

I completely understand your frustration over the years Mr. Meisenbach. But we've worked out those issues long ago. I fully expect if you would purchase a copy and then not receive it while everyone else does, you would raise hell on here. So would I if I were you! I assure you - we will either have a print issue and everyone who purchases one will receive it, or if we don't have a print issue, everyone will receive a full refund.<br>

By the way, my App publisher tells me we'll be on the new Apple Newsstand next week! Very excited! It's a great time to be in the magazine business as long as you're willing to innovate.</p>

<p>Oh I should mention that I've broken every single record that we ever had for the number of single copy pre-orders for any issue in one day. I've been putting magazines up for pre-order since Issue #4 and I've never sold this many copies before hand. Came close with our BEST OF issue (#15) but this far exceeds that by at least 30%. One thing is for certain, I'm going to make FedEx very happy this holiday season!</p>

<p>am i to assume that my subscription has expired then after receiving a yellow eyes?<br>

jim</p>

<p>No, sir, but I do not discuss people's individual subscriptions in public. Please e-mail me and I resolve any issue you're having with non-receipt of delivery. david@focusmag.info.</p>

<p>Hello - Issue #22 recently came out last week and was delivered to subscribers. If you have not received Issue #22 to your E-Mail address, please let me know immediately and I'll contact Zinio.<br>

If you're in LA this weekend, Focus Magazine has a booth at Photo LA where we're representing over a dozen emerging photographers.<br>

We're making one last call to subscribers and anyone else interested in purchasing a print edition of Focus Nudes. I'll have more information next week. As I mentioned to everyone who has already purchased a copy, I'm trying something slightly different and I think (hope) it just might work. I'll understand if those of you who have already paid for a print edition refuse to wait anymore. You can process your refund through Amazon.com and everything will be refunded, no questions asked. But I'm really trying my best to generate enough funds to sell this issue, so I hope those of you who've ordered the magazines will stick with me. If not, I completely understand. For those who do, you can look forward to printing that will be second to none. Definitely on par with the quality that Lenswork offers (If you're in LA, you can purchase Charles Starke's Footprints of Africa book and see the kind of quality that the printer offers with their stochastic dot screen printing).<br>

Going forward Focus will be split into three different titles: Focus Magazine, Focus Nudes and Focus Portfolios. The digital editions of Focus Nudes and Focus Portfolios will be larger than the print editions, while both the print and digital edition of Focus will offer 96 pages plus cover. I feel this scale back in page count while being more picky about the number and quality of advertising we accept going forward, (no more than 25% advertising) will lead to a more successful formula to return Focus to newsstands to our subscribers. All print subscribers of Focus Magazine (Anyone who subscribed prior to December 2010 and whose subscription has not expired) will receive a complimentary one-year digital subscription to Focus Nudes and Focus Portfolios and I have extended the subscription to Focus Magazine by one additional year for all of these subscribers as well.</p>

<p>Hello everyone! Wanted to update you all! We have launched two new titles, Focus Exposures and Focus Folios! Both are being sold via our iTunes App for Focus Magazine and both will have their own apps later this year. Speaking of later this year, we have received a very good quote from a printer in China who will be providing us with incredible quality printing and paper. I would consider it superior to the quality we had from Issue 13 -18. So, many of you are going to ask: Are we going to skip over subscribers and just get magazines out to newsstands? The answer is: No. I finally believe we have everything we need to return to print full-time, that means 4 times per year. So, what we're going to do is send out an e-mail when the magazine has gone to print and make sure we have everyone's updated addresses. If you have moved since August 2009, or you did not receive Issue #18, we need to know so when we send out Issue 18, it arrives directly in your mailbox. The first issue we will resume printing with is Issue 25 - and it's a fantastic issue. So if you subscribed to our print edition and your subscription did not expire with Issue 18, then we will be resuming your subscription with Issue 25 as if you never received any copies at all, even though all subscribers received Issue 19 - 24 digitally via Zinio.<br>

<br />If you have not signed up for our e-mail newsletter, please make sure you do so now! www.focusmag.info/newsletter.htm. We will be sending out a lot of updates within the next few months and we want to make sure you stay in the know.<br>

<br />Again, all print subscriptions will resume service normally. We base subscriptions off of the number of copies received, not the number of time-period. So if you had a 1 year subscription and Issue 18 was your first issue for your subscription, then your subscription will not expire until Issue 27. A two-year subscription won't expire until Issue 31.<br>

<br />We are hard at work at getting Focus back to print and I appreciate everyone's patience as we bring Focus back to print, back to bookstores and back to your mailbox. </p>