Everywhere

Snap a picture, write a post-card, and you will have a magazine you can call your own: Everywhere.

The magazine follows six easy steps in the process of its creation: (1) You the reader go out to see the world. (2) You document your trip with words and pictures. (3) You upload your travel tales and photos to www.everywheremag.com. (4) The rest of the travel community, who did exactly the same thing you did, reviews your trip. (5) The editors choose the storied that go in the magazine. (6) Your trip finally gets published, you get paid and you receive a free subscription.

The entire idea of the magazine reminds me of a former student of mine and a good friend, who would buys postcards and addresses them to himself from wherever he visited. He once told me that was how he kept track of all his travels and all the great places he visited.

At home, he has all the postcards in a folder that opens like a magazine. Everywhere magazine is like that folder.

Imagine yourself writing a postcard and sharing both the picture and the words on the web. Now imagine that you have the opportunity to share it with the rest of the world. All of sudden, you are part of a travel community who are only interested in sharing their trips and comparing notes with each other.

Now, stop imagining because it is no longer a piece of fiction. It is a dream come true. So, sit back, relax and order yourself a copy of Everywhere. You don’t have to take my word for it, but, rest assured, it is not your father’s travel magazine.

Paul Cloutier
Publisher

1. What do you consider the single most important achievement your 
magazine has accomplished in today’s marketplace?

Finding a way to bring the vitality of the web to the brilliance of 
print. By asking the people we want to hear from anyway, real people 
who have authentic experiences, we are seeing places that break free 
of the trends of all the other travel magazines, and we still get the 
incredible presentation and experience of a beautifully printed 
magazine.

2. Looking back, what was the most important hurdle you were able to 
overcome?

Proving that a huge group of passionate amateurs can actually provide 
photos and stories that are high enough quality to go into a magazine. 
We knew after starting JPG that we could get more great photos than we 
could ever use, but Everywhere is a little more complicated in-terms 
of how many more words there are. But amazingly it turns out we have 
way more words that we can use as well, and we think that is because 
we have focused on shorter form writing that we know people on the web 
can do well: comments, captions, blog posts, and things like that. It 
turns out these work really well for the kind of magazines we want to 
make, and it really resonates with our audience.

3. What was the most pleasant surprise?

We started Everywhere with the goal of making a magazine that inspires 
people to travel and we are surprised every day by the submissions 
that make us want to go out and travel. We really think it illustrates 
the promise of this idea that, as editors, we are constantly surprised 
and exposed to new things by thousands of people in our community.

4. What is the biggest challenge you are facing today?

Reinventing circulation growth. We are developing a new circulation 
model for a modern magazine, which means looking at the massive shifts 
in how people interact with media, and how communities organize to 
share the things they are interested in. Working with the existing 
distribution industry can be challenging when we are always looking 
for smarter ways to create sustainable growth for our circulation 
without falling into the trap of cut-rate subscriptions or over 
saturated newsstands. The community has a passionate connection to the 
magazine and we have found that they are more invested in helping grow 
the magazine than the distributors are.

5. Imagine you have a magic wand and you can strike the magazine and 
make it human? Describe that human being.

Everywhere is that person who always has great stories at dinner 
parties about the great places of the world. He isn't a snob about it 
and has a very inviting way of telling people about interesting 
experiences. For this person, travel is more than something you do 
once a year, travel is a way of life. It is something that they do 
everyday, in their own town, or across the world, they take every 
opportunity to enjoy the world and find new experiences.

6. The number of new magazine launches has been on a steady increase. 
What advice do you offer to someone wanting to start a new magazine?

A good magazine is a community - At their hearts, all magazines are 
basically artifacts of the interests of their readers. Good magazines 
embrace this and recognize that those readers aren't just silent, 
passive consumers of content. Any magazine can benefit from the 
expertise of its readers. Which is not to say that all magazines need 
to be completely community created, but the opportunity is to find 
ways to break down some of the walls between editors and readers.

Don't forget that there is an internet - Most magazines were launched 
before the web existed and most that have launched since then still 
tend to act like it doesn't exist. Look at what your people are doing 
online before you launch a print magazine. What parts of their 
behavior and interest are being under-served by the web, is there 
something that print could do better? Good print magazines are going 
to be hybrids that let the web do what it is good at and let print do 
what it is good at rather than treating them like competitors. Start 
the process asking how the web can make your magazine better.

Beware of "The Right Way to Do Things" - Magazines have been made the 
same basic way for a long time, and many of the problems that they are 
currently faced with are caused by resisting change, and not 
recognizing that parts of the model are broken. If your only reason 
for doing something is because that is the way things are done, then 
you should consider if things have changed since that rule was made. 
Some of the smartest people in publishing right now are people who 
have come from outside of the publishing world.

7. Finish this sentence: in 2011 your magazine will be…

The magazine industry is in such incredible flux right now that any 
real prediction that far out is purely fantasy, however our goal is 
for Everywhere to continue it's growth and become the best travel 
magazine for inspiring people to get up and go. We are thinking quite 
a lot about how important participatory advertising is to us as well 
as how the newsstand market is changing. We will continue to focus on 
how we can create a great environment for people to share the stories 
and photos of the places they have been, and to give those people the 
power to make the magazine they want to read.