Here are some of my thoughts on advertising, as it relates to Suspense & Decision magazine.
The magazine, itself, is free. This is to encourage broader dissemination. Anyone is free to print copies of it, either individual copies for themselves or their friends and acquaintances, or to hand out at conventions. If you print them out, and if you want to sell copies to recover your time and effort, or if you want to just give them away after you print them or have them printed, then that is entirely up to you. Again, the object is broad dissemination.
I state the above, to better illuminate why I have opted to pursue a free advertisements approach for the magazine. I want to encourage game companies and individual game moderators to advertise their game offerings. If any of them have no use for free advertisement opportunities such as this one, so be it. Everyone is entitled to their opinions on such matters. That will simply free up space for those that do appreciate such advertising opportunities.
Money freed up by taking advantage of free advertising within the pages of Suspense & Decision can be utilized by such companies and individual game moderators elsewhere. If they want to pass a few copies out at conventions that they attend, they can use the money saved on advertising to print actual physical print copies, for handing out to convention attendees.
Suspense & Decision magazine operates pretty much on a zero budget, minus whatever I allocate in order to acquire a front cover for each issue. One objective, of course, is to demonstrate that pretty much anyone operating on pretty much any budget - or on no budget, at all) can publish a PBM or turn-based gaming magazine, if they are willing to devote the time and energy to doing so. The point of explaining this is to encourage growth and competition, where PBM magazines, themselves, are concerned. In essence, if someone else has a better way of doing things, then by all means, feel free to show me by becoming an active, direct competitor of Suspense & Decision. Competition, itself, such as existed once upon a year ago, between PBM magazine rivals Paper Mayhem and Flagship is healthy for the PBM industry as a whole. That's my opinion on the matter, anyway.
Issues # 1 and # 2 of Suspense & Decision magazine have, admittedly, been imperfect issues. There have been some typographical errors, at least one instance of a duplicate page, and the 4-page increment rule to ensure physical print copies work out evenly was missed in the initial issue. Even still, the first two issues of Suspense & Decision demonstrate that it is, indeed, still possible to publish a PBM magazine, in this day and age. In fact, it is easier than ever, in my considered opinion. If only David Webber of Paper Mayhem had ever had it this easy.
Advertisements help to grow and to spread awareness of individual games and individual game companies. From an editor's perspective, while they do create a potential revenue stream, more importantly to myself, what they do is they help to instill greater visual balance within the pages of the magazine, so that it doesn't become just page after page of uninterrupted text.
Not that a text-only magazine can't be a success. The text serves the role of instilling substance within a magazine of this nature, in my opinion.
Having more advertisements within a given issue helps to facilitate adding more text articles. If no one sends advertisements, a given issue will likely be shorter, rather than longer, in terms of total number of pages for that particular issue.
If all advertisements ceased, would the magazine still go forward? Certainly - or, at least, until the end of the first year's stated goal of twelve issues is reached. At the end of the first year, everything is up for reassessment. In no instance, however, is the next issue to be dependent wholly upon whether advertisements for the next issue come in or not, though.
