Prad Prithivi, the well-known designer, has recently posted a thought-provoking and provocative piece on Second Life magazines – The Devil Rezzes Prada. Although he is talking about fashion magazine specifically, I think it’s a good idea for all Second Life magazines (and, for that matter, real life, magazines too) to look at themselves occasionally and see what they’re doing too.
When I started Prim Perfect, it was with a certain remit. There were no Second Life furniture, homes and gardens magazines then available (for that matter, we’re still the only specialist magazine in this area).
My intention was that we should serve three distinct groups:
1) the relative newbies (as I was then), trying to furnish their own homes. We should make clear the range of designers and styles available, and show what could be done with a range of primmages and sizes. We would also supply tips and tricks to help.
2) those people who wanted to be self-indulgent and, heedless of the cost or primmage, have the very best. This, of course, can make for glorious eye-candy!
3) the designers – to give them a chance to get their work out there – through articles, through advertising and through additional features such as the regular Treasure Hunt which was designed to raise awareness and increase store traffic.
I also wanted the magazine to have certain goals. Right from the start, I was determined that it should function as a real life magazine; there would be no cutting and pasting of conversations. Articles would be written as full magazine articles.
I have always tried to make sure that the magazine was available in the widest possible variety of formats. Some people prefer in-world magazines, and some external versions. Therefore we have always had the pdf as well as the inworld version (and the web version is signalled in the in-world version too). And there are a range of distribution methods to get the inworld copy – OnRez, SLEx, vendors and subscribe-o-matics. To be honest, production of all this is a day-long pain each issue, but it’s worth it to ensure that the reader gets the format they prefer by the means they prefer.
I was also determined to have a section for news about charities. I am very proud that we always have at least one article about a charitable endeavour in Second Life in every issue. The magazine has supported a variety of initiatives in the eighteen months of its existence. Perhaps this is less an aspect of creating a magazine that holds its own in the real world, and more a personal idiosyncracy. No matter. One of the things I have most admired about America is the philanthropic energy that is very often a part of the business model. It was something I have always seen as a key part of the whole Prim Perfect Organisation.
Prad suggests that the main intent of the media should be to inform and educate, as well as to entertain and amuse – a very Reithian, BBC concept, I think! But I hope that it’s one we do fulfil, partly in the ways I’ve outlined above, and also as we continue to broaden our remit – with articles about Content Creation and its implications from Gwen Carillon, for example or, in this December issue, reflections of the Open Space controversy by Crap Mariner – something we also looked at in a series of blog posts – such as Trust: the Lindens and the Residents.
And then we come to the question of ads. Advertising in Prim Perfect (or The Primgraph for that matter) is not cheap. But we believe that it is effective in raising awareness and building a brand identity. And we try to offer all the support we can in ensuring that our advertisers get value for money.
How do we do this?
Well, we have chosen an online format that allows click-through of individual ads. When we posted plain pdfs, we did this from as early a stage as we could, embedding Urls and SLurls into individual ads. Now that there are several special formats out there, we chose Calaméo because it allows us to do the same embedding – and to keep our interactivity so that you can click on, for example, the table of contents and be taken immediately to the article you want to read. In effect, it combines the feel of reading a magazine and turning the pages, with the interactivity of a web-site – and we love that – even though it means hugely more work for our very talented designers who have to set the thing up (and Perry Applemoor, who set the whole thing going, is a total star for doing this).
The other complaint that Prad makes about ads – and I have heard this elsewhere – is that there are too many of them in magazines. I agree – and from the start and throughout, Prim Perfect has limited advertising so that you never have to turn more than two pages to find the next article (two pages, because there may be a double page spread). I am well aware that this not only makes us unique among Second Life magazines, it makes us lighter on ads than many real life magazines too. But, despite the fact that it limits income, it is something that I want to stick to. In Prim Perfect, every ad counts – and the competition for placement, particularly in the first part of the magazine, is fierce.
From time to time, I have been asked to place reciprocal ads with other magazines. It is something we have done, but have discontinued. To be blunt, the ads in our magazines are positioned to give prestige and prominence whereas when we are placed in other magazines, we are lost in the hurly burly. Even when it is free, we don’t think it is worth it.
Finally, I’d like to address what I think is a very important question raised by Prad, and one where I think he is slightly mistaken – and that concerns how people actually read magazines. Occasionally people tell me that they read our magazine cover to cover, and I’m delighted, but a little surprised.
You see, I never read a magazine that way – whether in Second Life or real life.
I pick up a magazine, and maybe I flick through it till I come to an article that interests me. Or maybe I look through the Table of Contents and then turn to something that catches my attention. After that, I flick backwards or forwards until something else catches my attention. Or maybe I turn to a place in the magazine where there’s a regular favourite article of mine, and then move on to look at other things. In this way, I may even eventually read the whole magazine – or most of it.
But I never read a magazine like a book.
And that’s how I expect my readers to behave as well. I hope that our content encourages them to read more articles than they initially intended. And I hope (and believe) that ads catch their eye and lead them to make visits to the stores. But despite all the work we put into making our magazine as high quality as possible in terms of the writing and the design, I expect readers to look at maybe half a dozen articles at most. And if the quality of the magazine means they read more – then I’m delighted.
But one thing I will admit too that Prad charges editors with … and that is the size of my ego when it comes to Prim Perfect. I am HUGELY proud of what we have achieved with this magazine – and with what we are achieving with The Primgraph and Meta Makeover. But … a key word in that last sentence is “we”. My ego can be kept in check with the knowledge that I’m one person in a team – without our designers, our sales and client manager, our writers and photographers, our TV production team – all of whom are amazingly talented, creative people – then none of our media productions would work at all.
Prim Perfect 
Well said!!