And at some point you may realize that having it pointed out that you have posted misinformation is not the same as being accused of lying. And maybe, just maybe, you'll learn to recognize what things you don't know, and not try to act like an authority regarding matters in which you are ignorant. Should that day come, you'll be doing a favor for everyone, yourself included.

But for as long as you are aggressive in your ignorance, for as long as you act like being corrected is an affront rather than a service, you will continue to come across as though you have some deep-seated psychological problem, deluded and striking out at those who may fracture your delusions.

========================

I suggest The Source as a possible publishing base because the publication of a magazine size and thick comic is something that may be better embraced by a magazine publisher than by a comics publisher. They may be more effective at targeting a fixed demographic, better at drawing ads for that demographic and may not be so quick to toss in the towel. Certainly, there have been such attempts before -- Penthouse and Hustler come rapidly to mind. The Source is big enough that they could use a few pages each in a few issues to build interest, and then put out a mag mixing SinCity-ish hard-edge stuff with some hip-hop-Mad-for-the-new-century humor material... I think it could stand a chance.

(I sometimes wonder how a Boy Scouts comic would do -- not that I have any love for that group, but they have some interesting comics material in Boys Life, and they pay good creators reasonable wages.)

Pat:

Out of curiosity: How many exceptions does there need to be before your rule-of-thumb is seen as something less than a rule?

I'm reasonably certain that I can find MANY other magazines that do 250 pages for less than $4.95. Why ust this morning I was at a diner and I saw the new issue of Vanity Fair. Well over 250 pages, with a $3.99 cover price.

jay

Given the huge number of mags published today, something more than the three cited so far. (BTW, $3.99 is less than a dollar under my rule-of-thumb price for a package that size; I think it's more an example than a exception. You certainly wouldn't expect to get Vanity Fair for under three bucks, would you?)

Certainly there are economies of scale that come into play for the larger publishers (VF is from Conde Nast, a part of the huge Newhouse conglomerate), as they can take certain overhead costs (accounting, human resources) and spread them among all their projects. But for smaller publishers (and that's most of them) that isn't the case.

Okay, here's another one I just happened across:

GQ April 2001 issue -- $3.00 cover price, 262 pages.

More later, I'm sure, when I make it down to the newsstand.

Jay

LOS ANGELES Magazine
full color heavy glossy pages
April 2001 issue
184 pages, $3.50

OTOH, I happened to run across the February issues of Vibe and The Source still sitting on a rack at The Wall last week.

Vibe--175 pages, $2.99
Source--185 pages, $3.99

Which means simply that each of these mags appears to have a set cover price, no matter how many pages an individual issue might have.

Which means the low page-count issues (like February) wind up helping pay for the high page-count issues.

I'd bet the average page count/price ratio over the course of a year comes damned close to my above rule-of-thumb, though.

Wow, that's impressive, Pat. Now tell me: just how did these folks print an odd number of pages? Since each sheet generally has two sides, did they each print one page as a Moebius strip, or what?
Doncha think that the high page-count issues also come with a much higher number of ads, with the additional content more than carrying its own weight? Just maybe?
Still trying to present your false absolute statement as a rule of thumb, eh?

More Nat-picking, of course. I was estimating from memory, Nat. I didn't take notes in the store. I remembered each as being in the mid-170s and mid-180s and took 175 and 185 as the numbers to report. Fine--maybe it was 176 and 184. My point still stands.



The high page-count issues do not have more ads on a percentage basis, not if these magazines are following generally accepted periodical principles.

And ad revenue does not generally pay for distribution costs. That's what the cover price/subscription rate is for.



All rules of thumb are presented as absolute statements, Nat. Learn the uses of rhetoric and language.


[Edited to fix coding]


[This message has been edited by Pat ONeill (edited 04-18-2001).]

It's one big pile of money, Pat. More money is more money. I'd be shocked if anyone ever said "we're making $200,000 profit per issue, but we'd better cancel this magazine, because our advertising costs are allowing us to keep our cover price down."

And if you can't learn to state "rules of thumb" as different from actual statements of truth, how are we supposed to tell the difference? (Oh, right, we're supposed to wait until your statement has been disproven by simple contradictory evidence, at which point you'll explain to us that you didn't actually mean what you said in the way you said it, but rather something else.)

As for your 176 page and 184 page magazines, those are closer in length to the 250 page mark discussed earlier than the 100 page mark.

False. Many rules of thumb are buffered by modifiers, such as "usually", "generally", or even "as a rule of thumb" -- things that clearly suggest that that this is not something that's true in 100% of cases.
Because after all, if Pat says something false, it can't be that Pat was blathering on without sufficient information to back him up. Naw, he was just creatively exercising such tools as "falsehood", the "inappropriate and unmitigated exageration", the "dishonest restatement", and other such things we all should embrace, eh?

Oh, please. One obviously can (and arguably should) express "rules of thumb" in such a way that indicate their intrinsic generality.

The absolute statement "All dogs bark" is incorrect and can rightfully be called false. However, one can easily make more accurate statements such as "Generally speaking, all dogs bark" or "As a rule of thumb, dogs bark" or "Most dogs, with notable exceptions such as basenjis, bark" or any of an infinite number of such more correct statements.

Moreover, if one really intends to convey "As a rule of thumb, dogs bark" but actually says, "All dogs bark" then there is absolutely no reason to expect others to correctly intuit that one's true meaning is something other than that which was actually stated.

As for the uses of language and rhetoric, remember that a fundamental use is to accurately explain one's own ideas and opinions so that others can comprehend them. Although there are obviously instances where vague, confusing, or obfuscatory language and/or rhetoric are called for, it does not seem that the construction of a logical, persuasive argument intended to bring others around to one's own way of thinking is one of those instances.