Suggestion: Run on the Hacker-Monthly magazine model, which used HN as a feeder-source-for-content.

Hacker Monthly is a print magazine version of Hacker News — a social news website wildly popular among programmers and startup founders. The submission guidelines state that content can be “anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.” Every month, we select from the top voted articles on Hacker News and print them in magazine format.

It lasted a few years (2010-2015), and had a decent subscription base. The articles were anyway on the internet, so it wasn't about having "exclusive articles", but the curation and the allure of a well-typeset print mag that worked for them.

Pick existing content from the network (Planet FSCI, LWN, FOSS Blogs etc), run them through an editorial process, and focus on typesetting, distribution, monetization,

I think @Nemo's suggestion is a good starting point (The Browser pulls this off successfully without even being in print!) but we can take this opportunity to do a bit more. First, some comments on the main proposal. These are partly based on my 6 years serving as editor of Snipette (the last 3½ years of which included a print edition).

• Rather than focus only on those in the field and tech-savvy readers, I think there is also interest among the general public (not necessarily tech savvy) for regaining more control over their digital lives. Hence, I suggest editing at least about 60% of the articles with those people in mind—basically, there should be enough in it that most people can pick it up and get something out of it. We should be careful not to become like "Resonance" which is meant to be accessible to the general public but in practice not as easy to follow for people without the respective scientific background.

• Aiming for an international audience is good as it can get us more funds more quickly 🙂 however, we should also keep shipping costs in mind. With the US ending the de minimis exemption, shipping to the US in particular could turn out to be disproportionately expensive. Fortunately, the exemption is still in place for other countries, so we can ship ordinary unregistered packages at not too high rates. My suggestion is to use this and re-send using a registered option if people complain about non-delivery. For the US, perhaps we could team up with some US-based small publication to conduct local printing of each others' copies.

• Quarterly issues is a good idea to start with. We should build a buffer of articles before announcing a release date of the first issue. Ideally, also have an internal timeline of (for example) 1 article per week so that we don't end up with having to rush during the final weeks. This would result in each issue having about 12 articles. (This number can be adjusted based on the type of content like longer deep dives, shorter quick news updates, etc. but works as a thumb rule).

• We need to keep in mind that typesetting also takes time. Sometimes, articles have to be mildly edited to fit better in print. For Snipette (which was also a quarterly magazine) we would aim to have 80% of the articles ready before the printing deadline so that typesetting can begin. By the time they were typeset, the last 2-3 articles would also be included. I don't think we should have separate windows for submission call, editing, etc. but rather have it as a rolling release. Those pieces which don't make it to the existing issue can always go into a future issue.

• 10,000 subscribers sounds like a good number to be able to do offset printing. (For lower numbers, digital printing would be more cost effective but it would be relatively expensive). I am not sure where we would get carbon-netural paper, soy-based inks, etc. but if we decide to go for this I can get in touch with the people behind Sanctuary Asia magazine whom I'm sure would have thought about this. I think The Asparagus also does something similar, but in Canada.

• We should decide whether we want the magazine to be in colour, greyscale, or something in between. Black-and-white and greyscale are obviously more affordable. Colour can be more attractive, but if we decide from the start that we want to remain greyscale, it is possible to design artwork appropriately to make it work there too. There are also options in between like having two colours, or making some pages coloured while others are duotone or greyscale. We are likely to have quite a few screenhots of various software, so it's important to also keep in mind how those perform. That said, I use a greyscale e-paper monitor and "high contrast" mode works well for most things.

My idea for procuring articles is similar to the Snipette model:

1. Hunt down interesting articles (the feeds Nemo mentioned would be a good starting point, but we can also manually flag anything interesting). The purpose of this is twofold: to find potential articles for publication, but also to find authors who might be interested in writing something specially for this publication.

2. Reach out to the authors asking if they want to republish or write (depending on what we decided). Either way, we will eventually end up with a submission.

3. Take the article through our editorial process. The purpose of this is to fact-check the article, add references where necessary, edit the article for style, grammar, etc. and give it a tone consistent with the rest of the magazine (while still preserving the author's voice). At Snipette, we would usually also suggest changes such as adding more sections or taking the article in a different direction to improve the point that the author wanted to make. This takes some skill but it is doable and worth the effort to bring out a polished product. Once the first few submissions come in, the editorial team should meet to come up with some rough guidelines for the magazine, which can be fine-tuned over time.

4. We should ideally also have artists (can be in-house or recruited through a second submission call) to illustrate the articles. While it's possible to use (CC licenced) stock imagery, creating our own illustrations would let us have a more consistent style and also let us make pictures that are more relevant to the article at hand. Good artwork would also the magazine much more attractive!

5. The final step is typesetting. This sometimes happens in parallel to editing and artwork, as it may be necessary to make changes to the text and/or artwork to better fit the page. For Snipette, we used the workaround of adding "factboxes" which let us adjust the spacing without editing the article itself; illustrations and diagrams can also be used for the same purpose. Typesetting can be done in a dedicated software like Scribus. However, I have also been looking into having a print stylesheet in CSS which automatically styles the page into print-friendly format. We never got to use this for Snipette, but I am interested in experimenting with it again and seeing how doable it is. There is also an ongoing NLnet funded initiative on a similar theme.

6. Besides typesetting, I gather from the proposal that we are planning to publish digitally. We could use Ghost for this as it is easy to program for/integrate into other systems, and recently got native support for ActivityPub. The only problem is that the inbuilt "membership" (subscription) system is tied to Stripe; however I had some workarounds in mind and if we come up with a solution it would also help other independent publishers who are based in countries where Stripe is not properly supported.

Regarding articles for non tech savvy users: this would need good editors, ideally including some who are themselves not from the tech community as it would be easier for them to flag when any explanation needs to be improved. I am willing to help mentor in this.

I want to take this opportunity to point out that making articles more accessible and engaging to a non tech savvy audience is not the same as "dumbing it down" or overexplaining. It is easy for those of us who are well versed in a topic to fall into that trap when trying to explain for someone outside our area of expertise. Rather, it is more about having a different context or lens from which we approach a topic, and covering it from that viewpoint. The important thing is not to assume that the reader is less capable of understanding something than you; just that they may have a different initial knowledge base upon which they're building.

A related consideration: how are we going to reach these people, as they are less likely to be on the regular channels like the forums, Fediverse posts, and communities we were planning to reach out to? The answer is that we can reach out to people within the Free Software community as the primary target audience when it comes to marketing and purchasing subscriptions. The fact that it is in print would make it easier for people outside that community to stumble upon it lying around in someone's house. It is at this point that, if they realise there's enough in it for them as well, that they'd be more likely to subscribe or at least start borrowing the print copy from someone who already has. In some ways, this is similar to the Prāv model where we are expecting people who already know about and use XMPP to spread it to those who don't.

Things I haven't covered:

• Besides "articles", we could also have news updates, cartoons, etc. that can either be taken from existing sources or created afresh. Suggestions for this are welcome. Full Circle Magazine may provide some ideas.

• Marketing and outreach (to potential subscribers) are one area the Snipette team was lacking, so I don't have any good suggestions there. Ideas are welcome!

• We should also work on budget finances. The proposal mentioned hiring editors on a three-month contract, so I assume they are going to be paid. Will authors get paid as well? To what degree? What about publicly available content that we decide to reuse (we may not be legally obligated to pay, but would still be nice to offer if we can).