david_spivak1

#16 is being sent out this week. It was barely even done being printed and shipped to newsstands 4-5 weeks ago. The Summer 2008 (#17) issue isn't anywhere near done and won't go to print until 2-3 weeks from now. Originally it was going to be a June issue, but this issue is delayed. Not because of finances, but because I'm trying to put together a comprehensive list of exhibitions taking place this summer in hundreds of galleries and museums worldwide for our Summer 2008 Exhibition Guide. This is not something you can find anywhere else. I've already received a guarantee from the printer that when this issue is printed, all subscriptions will go out the same week as our newsstand editions.

Focus Magazine launched with 2500 copies overall. We will have, by the end of this year, a total overall circulation of 30,000. Focus Magazine is outselling B&W, Aperture, Eyemazing and Blindspot on newsstands worldwide. Our sell-through rate is consistently above 70%, while our competition staggers around barely able to reach the 30% range. Focus Magazine is not only healthy, but due to the overall demand of Focus, we are doing many more things than just running a magazine. We are receivng more and more advertisers and more money for ads each issue. We just launched, a month ago, a new book publishing company. We are launching a new online photography bookstore, plus re-launching our online exhibition guide. In 2009, we plan to launch an fine art photography art fair that would be the biggest photography art fair ever seen in New York City.

We have been, as I have admitted, disorganized with subscriptions since starting at our new printer. I have apologized for this and have extended everyone's subscription by one year or six issues, whichever comes last.

George, your subscription was originally good for 3 years OR 18 issues. Whichever came first. This has been stated on our website. With the subscription extension, your subscription is good for 4 years OR 24 issues. Again, whichever comes last.

Inside of every single issue of Focus that you've received since issue #13, the reproduction has been second to none, the editorial content is triple that of our competition and is also much higher in quality. Our in-depth interviews allow our readers to see inside the mind, heart and soul of our subjects. Bruce Davidson, who is well into his 80s today feels that the interview done with him in our April 2008 issue is "the finest edited and printed magazine edition of his work to date." Try finding the quantity and quality of our editorial in those web press magazines you're going to subscribe to, Don. You won't.

Nowhere in any of the E-Mails did I blame this on Don. In fact, I apologized to him twice. Obviously, if I cannot fulfill orders and a customer is unhappy and it appears as though there is nothing I can do to make a customer happy, I no longer want them as a customer.

Michael, you asked: "My subscription with another US magazine gets to me before it reaches the newsstand so why can't Focus do it?"

It is because of the way Focus Magazine is printed and handled vs. the way other US magazines are printed and handled. Other US magazines sacrafice quality for speediness. They mass produce magazines within a week and mail it out to you automatically. Within a week, my printer is still going over every single image inside of that issue of FOCUS and making sure they're each perfect and if they're not, correcting them for contrast, color balance, etc. Every image is carefully looked over and esnured the highest quality of reproduction and detail. By the fourth week, our magazine has finally finished printing and is off to the bindery. It then takes another two weeks to bind all of the copies of FOCUS and manually place every single copy in boxes. We don't use a cheap in-house binding machine. We use a bookbinder to bind copies of FOCUS, ensuring a level of quality that is unsurpassed. All of the finished copies of FOCUS are then seperated into 4 groups: Newsstands, galleries & museums and subscriptions and extras. We have a trucking company pick up the newsstands and galleries & museums copies and then my printer picks up the remaining copies. My printer then, once again, when they are able to, takes the subscription list and one-by-one by hand inserts every single magazine into pollybags and then into seperate containers for the post office and then the post office comes to pick them up and mail them out. By the time they're done with this process, the newsstands have already received their copies.

A major US magazine printer would print, bind, box and ship magazines to newsstands and to subscrtibers at the same time. The level of quality is far inferior though. Compare one of the latest issues of Focus to one of the latest issues of B&W. There is much more detail in Focus than there is in B&W. Our paper is of higher grade and quality and is triple if not quadruple the price... as is the printing. Yet our subscription prices are less than B&W's are.

Yes, I suppose we could ship out our magazines to a mailhouse and they could rush the subscriptions. But that costs a great deal of money for us to do and we would have to increase the cost of our subscriptions much higher.

The solution to all of this is for us to be one issue ahead of newsstands. This is something we're working on, but it is a difficult and time consuming and relatively expensive process to come out with two issues at once.

If you feel you'd rather receive a lower quality magazine with little content to offer just so you could receive it at a faster pace, please go ahead and do what Don did. You have triple the editorial content and triple the quality in Focus for the same price. It just takes longer and I ask for people to just be patient.

How interesting. I've gone away for a while to run the magazine and work on the next issue, thinking that if I go away, the people who complain will go away as well.

Unfortunately, that is not so.

I've tried being patient with some of you, who seem to be just here for the sake of complaining.

Focus Magazine is NOT a web press magazine. Great time and care is put into each issue and when the final product is finally created, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that they have received something of great quality and content.

I will give you a list of magazines that are printed on a web press: People, The National Enquirer, Newsweek, PDN, GQ, Vogue and B&W. All of them are printed and mailed at the same time to distributors and to subscribers. There are machines that automatically pollybag and label each issue, put them in a box and send it out to the post office.

Some magazines even hire subscription houses for this so that at the end of the week, every subscriber receives the next issue that is to go out on newsstands before it actually does. These magazines are printed on low quality, web presses that are made for printing magazines. The printer itself may have their entire business surrounded on printing magazines. Their magazine will take about a week after the files are sent to the printer to have a final product.

As I have explained, as of June 2007, we left the printer who was just interested in printing as many magazines as possible without regard to care or concern of the final product and went to another printer who was interested in printing incredibly high quality photography, something you would see on exhibit at your local museum. Focus, on average, after all of the files are uploaded, takes about 6-8 weeks to print, bind and ship. Then, the subscription copies have to be hand-inserted into pollybags and the list has to be maually updated. Everything is done by hand here and nothing is done on cheap, mass-assembly.

A subscription to Focus Magazine does two things:

1. It saves you a great deal of money on the price of a magazine from snewsstands ($39.95 for 1 year, $54.95 for 2 years and you get the third year free with this). So that's 18 issues for $54.95 vs. $143.10.

2. It guarantees you a magazine, whereas if you go to a bookstore, you may see that they are completely sold out.

There is nowhere on the subscription form, on my website or even in our corporate by-laws that guarantees you a magazine by a certain date. A February issue may come to you in April and an April issue may come to you in June. Issues only have dates on them for newsstand purposes and not for any other reason.

I am at the mercy of my own schedule and the schedule of my printer, which do not coincide all of the time. If you are on the subscription list, you will receive a magazine.

When we are able to have subscribers receive magazines before newsstands do, we will try to implement that. Our next issue is a Summer 2008 issue and the issue after that is an October 2008 issue. I do not foresee the Summer issue being mailed and received anytime after July and the next issue anytime after September.

If you would like to confirm you are on the subscription list, please send me a brief e-mail with the subject line of "Subscription confirmation" and I would be happy to find out if you actually have a subscription with us. If you would like to stay up to date on the mailings of Focus Magazine, please subscribe to our free newsletter. I guarantee that all e-mail addresses are kept strictly confidential and are never sold to any outside party whatsoever.

Now Don, I've sent you 3 magazines already, 2 of great expense to me. If you would have mentioned to me, at that time, that those magazines were damaged, I would've happily sent you replacement copies.

An overwhelming majority of our subscribers (topping 4000) seem to understand this and have no problem with this process. They are patient and understand the magazine they receive in the mail when they receive it will be of a much higer quality in printing and editorial content than any other magazine on newsstands today.

If you absolutely cannot wait for the mercy of the postage system, I can offer anyone with an existing subscription, the opportunity to upgrade their subscription so they are put on the "comp list" and will receive their copies via FedEx Ground when everyone on that list receives it, which is usually 2 weeks after the magazine is off press. Shipping charges are around $10-$20 per issue. Please let me know, once again via E-Mail if that is a choice you'd like to make.

Please don't take this as any kind of a message or statement that subscribers aren't important to us. Of course they are, however; and I don't know how many times I have to say this, you are not subscribed to a web press magazine that arrives like clockwork in your mailbox. I would rather a magazine of extremely high quality arrive 2 months later than the cover date to someone's mailbox than a magazine of garbage quality arrive on time. If you want a garbage magazine, please look somewhere else.