It’s hard to belove that one year has passed since the first issue of Palm Coast magazine was published. And in that year, the magazine has changed in many ways, mostly notably in the number of pages, but also in a number of other ways as we have learned from and adjusted to the market conditions that are peculiar to Palm Coast itself.
When we published the first issue of Palm Coast we weren’t sure of what would exactly it was that would interest readers here. It took us several issues but we came up with a theme for the magazine that has provided us with a blueprint for publishing the magazine for now and in the future.
It’s nothing radical. We just decided that the only information that we would publish in the magazine would have to be focused on Palm Coast and only Palm Coast. Seems rather self-obvious now but in the beginning we were interested in putting together a package of information that would entertain and inform our readers just like we did for any of the previous 11 magazines we’ve published over the years.
However, the current market reality is that publications with a broad-based variety of topics are the publications that are dying the fastest in the internet age. Think daily newspapers. They’re the genre of publications that has been hurt the most by the internet, both editorially and advertising.
If I’m a sports fan, for example, is it easier for me to read a daily newspaper for the information I want or simply go to the ESPN website or the Sports Illustrated website, or a half a dozen others to read exclusively about sports?
You see the problem for a newspaper. And on top of that, Craigslist took most of the classified advertising revenue from newspapers which was always their bread and butter as far as income went. This was a serious blow to their bottom lines and helped precipitate the rapid decline of the newspaper industry in general. In fact, there’s a website called newspaperdeathwatch.com which has tracked newspaper closures in the U.S. for a number of years now.
So we went back to one of the first things we were taught in journalism school many years ago: people are most interested in hearing about what’s happening in their own backyard. So that’s the guiding philosophy of Palm Coast magazine. It’s gotta be about Palm Coast to make it into the magazine.
To take this a step further, in terms of what is happening in the publishing industry nowadays, it seemed to us that the only publications that are thriving in the current environment are ones that have a small, well-defined niche.
For example, Palm Coast and what’s happening here, is our editorial niche and our readers pick up the magazine because they want to know what’s happening around them on a regular basis.
And, if you wanted to find the information that is included in every issue of Palm Coast you might be able to find some of it on websites but it wouldn’t be easy and some of what we publish you would never find anywhere.
Where would you find information on what local charities are doing in the area, who some of the best local artists are, what personalities are helping to make Palm Coast what it is, or a plethora of other topics that would interest local readers and that you can find in our pages? We can’t think of any medium that provides the type of information that we do.
So we think that we have a unique editorial product that provides people with useful information in a timely fashion. It’s the basic recipe for success that publications have been using forever. And if you add to this the fact that people can’t get this information anywhere else then you have all of the ingredients you need for a successful magazine.
So that’s our story and we’re sticking to it. We’d like to thank everyone who has made this sojourn of ours so interesting and even fun so far. We’re committed to continuing to publish the best package of information we can for our readers and we look forward to many more years of publishing that are as rewarding and exciting as this first one has been.
— Tom Aikins
