Behind the scenes of creating an indie magazine
Kai Brach’s exclusive insights from our last Insiders event
by eFounders
On Monday night, we had the great pleasure of welcoming Kai Brach in our office for our third edition of Insiders event. Kai is the editor, designer, publisher, distributor, and everything else of Offscreen, a leading print magazine that shares the human story, the creativity and the hard work behind startups and projects. He is also creator and tips scout for The Modern Desk, a weekly newsletter showcasing a hand-picked selection of apps and accessories for the modern office.
A peep through the keyhole of real startup stories
Kai started his print adventure after realizing that all his digital work from his past 10 years as a freelance web designer had disappeared into the ether that is the Internet. Inspired by a year of travelling around the world and meeting people, Offscreen mag is Kai’s attempt at building a legacy and creating something that lasts longer than a year or two, longer than a blog, and e-book or a podcast.
In Offscreen magazine, Kai shares anecdotes about people failing and succeeding with their startups. He tells the real story behind startups, instead of the inflated “TechCrunch headline romance”. He interviews digital creators from all around the world to “document stories about creativity, passion, and hard work that enables our digital lifestyle.”
According to him, the real stories are not just what you read on TechCrunch or Forbes. Our society emphasizes success too much. The “he came up with an idea and became a billionaire overnight” myth is tiring and quite demotivating for the real entrepreneurs who struggle every day and fight for their ideas.
“99% of the time, it’s just about showing up every day, working hard, and not being sidetracked by other people’s success.”
The indie publishing dream — from the first draft to the 10th issue
How to make a print magazine from scratch
Albeit a novice in print literature and design, Kai opted for the magazine format, his favorite medium while traveling. His goal of building a legacy motivated him to start looking into how to make a magazine and self-learning editorial design from online courses and inspiring magazines. Kai contacted some of the people he met during his trip, and three months later, the first issue was out.
But the project came out with a price. After missing his $16,000 goal on Kickstarter by less than $4,000, Kai had no choice but to invest his own savings into making the first issue.
His initial goal was to create one issue that would last. Only to discover a great audience longing for his magazine.
“It’s not like launching an amazing app and all the sudden it gets crazy. It was growing very slow, but the right people gave me good feedback. The people that I respected told me that they really liked what I did, and that was surprising because I thought it was all pretty immature. And that’s what kept me going.”
Reflecting back on his Kickstarter experience, Kai acknowledged the fact it may not have been the right option. The first step to publishing a magazine is building an audience, and initial success on Kickstarter can be a bit misleading, as it doesn’t create a faithful audience in the long run.
Indie publishing is no picnic
A fun fact about indie publishing: there are always things that go wrong.
“With the web, you put your product online, hoping it will break so that you can fix it and improve it. With print, you work towards a final file that you send to your printer, hoping everything is okay. But every issue comes out with flaws. And it’s final, you can’t change it. That’s very painful.”
When the bookbinder doesn’t change the glue, resulting in pages falling out, it’s the paper manufacturer that catches fire.
“It’s what makes print as a medium so awesome, but also what makes it so frustrating.”
Another tricky part is getting people to accept being interviewed — such as Slack’s very famous founder Stewart Butterfield in the 10th issue.
“The funny part about it, sometimes you try to interview someone that no one knows, and he emails you 6 months later with a “Sorry I was busy” excuse, and then you email someone that’s super crazy “famous”, CEO of such and such that you hear about everywhere, and they get back to you in three hours.”
Big shoutout to Stewart Butterfield for staying so accessible despite his fame!
By time and toil we sever what strength and rage could never
Kai is extremely modest about his work and the success of his magazine.
“Print magazine is not like the web, growth is really slow. Sometimes you print an issue that sells really well, and sometimes it doesn’t happen. The tendency is upwards, but it doesn’t compare to most of the success stories that you hear from the web.”
Regardless of what he says, Offscreen actually grew from 2,500 or 3,000 copies to 5,000 copies now, and gets sold out every single time, with a rather limited community and no marketing whatsoever to start with. Besides, not aiming at becoming huge takes the pressure of constant growth away from your life. And it leaves more time and room for thought.
Kai’s secret sauce for engaging with his audience? Make something that’s worth sharing and be honest and open about it.
“If your make something that’s worth sharing, people do want to spread the word.”
Creating an offline magazine in a digital world — the keys to success
A counterintuitive craze for paper and ink
Despite the fact that new generations are used to consuming information on the web, people still appreciate print magazine for several reasons.
“My generation (30 something) knew magazines when we were younger, and we are missing them. And the newer generation, the early twenties, never really had magazines in their lives, but they discover them now and they’re like “Oh man, that’s really cool. It smells, it’s got ink on pages.” It’s a totally new experience for them.”
According to Kai, if you constantly focus on digital, if you only read on a screen all the time, you will start realizing everything you read feels unsubstantial and temporary. The myth of print literature being dead is nonsense.
“Our relationship with digital stuff will never be as intimate as the one we can have with something manufactured, let alone handcrafted.”
While news websites are killing the newspapers, there will always be room for thinking and absorbing content properly. People can read more thoroughly, and studies show that you remember printed material better.
Thus, Offscreen and other indie magazines have a bright future ahead of them!
Keeping in touch with your offline audience
Although Kai doesn’t create an e-book nor a digital version of his magazine, he still interacts with his readers between two issues. On his blog, he shares his journey, his questions and emotional breakdowns for the world to know, and people do relate to that. Being authentic, that’s how you build a loyal community.
“I share the success and the failure and the pain and the struggle and the sweat… And the pain.”
Also, the way print works, it’s harder to get feedbacks from your readers: you don’t have a “comment” section at the bottom of your articles. In an attempt to get in touch with his readers, Kai recently sent out a survey to his subscribers, asking for feedbacks and areas of improvement. Surveys can be tricky, you can very easily get trapped into asking biased questions, leaning towards what you want to hear.
While considering this bias, Offscreen’s readers seem overwhelmingly happy about the magazine. One surprising result though, the cost of the magazine are covered by the sponsors’ section at the center of the magazine, and readers astonishingly do like those pages.
So readers, quit the fear, Kai has no intention of changing your fav mag!
Last piece of advice for entrepreneurs and creatives out there: Kai’s recipe to stay motivated
Just like everyone else, Kai has his dark moments — almost every day he says. So when its happens, his spur for getting up and keeping the good work, in addition to having a physical object to hold on to, is winning his audience’s love.
“When I attend a conference, and people come and tell me they love my magazine, and they’ve bought every single issue since the beginning, that’s really amazing.”
Having your readers, users, customers or whatever praise your work is what we should all aim for.
Thanks again Kai for coming and sharing your insights and behind the scene stories about Offscreen magazine so openly, this was most definitely animating!
And readers, don’t miss the next Insiders event, keep in touch with us on Twitter: @efounders.
Photo credits: @welcometothesky
