Global Pastry Magazines-New Service

[Joe Marcionette]

Greetings Pastry Professionals and Culinary Enthusiasts,

My name is Joe Marcionette and I publish Pastry Art & Design Asia Pacific in Singapore.

At the moment, our company is working to launch a new service called www.ChefMags.com which will aggregate pastry and savory magazines from around the world.

ChefMags.com will allow a User to log in, purchase and download digital editions of a magazine. For an example of a digital magazine, please feel free to visit www.ChefMags.com and click on the magazine example at the bottom of the home page to view this new technology.

What I am looking for is feedback from this community with respect to the digital edition technology and your interest in this new medium. Also, I am trying to gauge your general level of interest in magazines from around the world. At present, we are in discussions with PCG from Japan, Thuries from France, SweetArt from Germany and Pasticceria Internazionale from Italy. We are hoping to translate these magazines into English and offer the digital editions on Chefmags.com for approximately US $4/issue.

Your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated and if you can suggest other magazines that would be great.

Regards,

Joe Marcionette

[nightscotsman]

This is a very interesting concept, and if you can deliver translated version of these magazines I would jump at the chance to purchace. However, I would much prefer the digital magazines be in Acrobat (PDF) rather than Flash format. Acrobat has a much, much smaller file sizes for downloads. Your sample issue is over 21 megabytes, which will take hours for me to download with my dail-up connection (the site says it should take 52 minutes, but that's not a realistic estimate). Viewing the on-line Flash version is so painfully slow as to be unusable - each page takes almost five minutes to load.

I urge you to please reconsider your technology.

[alanamoana]

I'll have to agree with Neil. Have you taken a look at the Pastry's Best magazing web site? They offer their magazine in PDF format as well as print, for free.

click for Pastry's Best Magazine

Please take a look for inspiration. It would be interesting to see all of these things available on one site.

[bripastryguy]

would love it if it would work. all i was able to view was the cover page

[Sugarella]

Hi Joe,

I have windows '98 and a high speed connection. Half an hour ago I went to the site and my screen froze with the animation on the home page, I waited and waited.... then I tried to shut down the browser by pressing ctrl+alt+del.... that popup screen froze... I waited and waited.... my mouse disappeared and would occasionally flicker back on and off the screen but I couldn't control it, and I finally had to shut off my computer from the back, start up again, go through the windows scandisk, waited and waited, then finally got back here online to tell you that your website is broken.

Seriously.... a lot of people won't be able to access it so please seriously consider what everyone upthread has already mentioned.

Having said that, YES, I would absolutely be interested in a service like this. There are plenty of magazines I don't buy because either they're in the wrong language or there's just the expense of purchasing so many magazines from overseas. I think this is a great idea you've got here.

Are you going to be featuring just the current and subsequent issues, or will you be looking into offering past issues that are out of print as well? And will you be offering english language magazines, or just those that will be translated into english?

[Beanie]

I have windows 98 and a dsl connection and I was able to view all of the pages with no problem. However, I also prefer pdf. I found the pages difficult to read because the zoom feature only has two settings. But I would definitely be interested in this service. Good luck.

[miladyinsanity]

I got in, and it loaded pretty fast for me on Firefox--I've Windows XP and a 1.5mbps conn.

I think that single page view should be the default. Not everybody has a 20 inch monitor. And should you choose to keep the Flash, then there should be options to zoom until the entire page on the screen, or until the maximum width of the screen.

Can I assume that all downloads will be passworded? And if so, will the password be linked to the credit card number, like eReader does it?

Will there be a library from which we can redownload copies of magazines we've already paid for, as a backup?

[Joe Marcionette]

Thanks everyone for having a look and offering the suggestions.

Yes, high speed internet connection is best and at present, we are going to forge ahead with the NxtBook technology with Flash because PDF (even with the merger of Adobe and Macromedia) still does not offer page flipping and true imbedding of video and audio. The goal is to make these digital editions fully interactive with across the board multimedia capabilities. For example, instead of just the standard 6 frame photo stills of a Shop Talk tutorial, the Users will be able to click on any of the photos to launch a video of the entire lesson.

As for the foreign magazines in languages other than English, we are going to translate into English so the Users can get the most out of the magazine. I am searching the world for the best titles and we are hopeful to get the site launched by May.

Users will be able to create a log in ID and for each purchase, a new pass code will be generated allowing for download. The system will know when the download has been successful and once completed, the pass code will be expired. No plan for a backup library.

For those who do not have high speed, we are considering the option of being able to burn several titles to a disc and send via the mail.

Thanks again for the feedback and please keep the comments coming.

Regards,

Joe Marcionette

[pastrymama]

I just finished reading the sample magazine and I am very impressed. After I figured out how the different navigating tools worked it was fun. And there was so much great information in that one issue. I can't imagine having access to several different magazines, I'll probably spend all my time and money on your site. Thanks for the preview, eagerly await the site.

[NickLam]

Hi Joe,

Would there ever be an option to purchase in Singapore dollars so that Singaporeans won't get hit by conversion charges?

Also, have you considered hooking up with Japanese magazines like Cafe-Sweets.

I think its awesome, here in Bangkok, all these mags cost SGD$20 and above and I'd reather get it online and print it off myself.

[Tepee]

No problem downloading it at all. Love it and awaiting your launch with great anticipation from Malaysia...

[miladyinsanity]

Would there ever be an option to purchase in Singapore dollars so that Singaporeans won't get hit by conversion charges?

←

Excellent question. I want to know too.

[Joe Marcionette]

Hello Everyone

What we are working on with our payment system is the ability for the end User to pay (with credit card or PayPal) in their own currency and we will handle (be charged for) the currency conversion. So, for example, in Singapore, when the User logs in, the User will have the option of paying in SG dollars at around SG $5.60.

Thanks Nick for the question and the sugestion of Cafe Sweets. I am off to Japan in two weeks and will try to schedule a meeting with the publisher.

Joe

[SweetSide]

No problems with downloading, viewing, or saving -- I really liked this.

My question has to do with browsing. Before I buy a magazine, I often like to browse it to see if there is something in there that I want. I'm new to the profession, want to develop, but some things are just beyond my reach at the moment because of access to ingredients and equipment.

Will there be a way to browse what is in the magazine before committing to purchase? That would be great, but I know you would want to prevent people from printing off content and then not making the purchase. Not sure how you would do this though...

[miladyinsanity]

My question has to do with browsing.  Before I buy a magazine, I often like to browse it to see if there is something in there that I want.  I'm new to the profession, want to develop, but some things are just beyond my reach at the moment because of access to ingredients and equipment.

Will there be a way to browse what is in the magazine before committing to purchase?  That would be great, but I know you would want to prevent people from printing off content and then not making the purchase.  Not sure how you would do this though...

←

To follow onto Cheryl's question, will the table of contents be available to viewers without purchase?

[Joe Marcionette]

Preview

Yes, the Users will be able to review the Table of Contents and the Cover for each issue.

Again, if you can recommend foreign titles that you would like to see offered on ChefMags.com please let me know.

Regards,

Joe Marcionette

[Tweety69bird]

Hi,

I am very excited about your website and I think that I would subscribe on a regular basis. Living in Canada, I'm finding it quite difficult to locate Pastry Art & Design on a regular basis, and this is not for lack of trying to find it. I have been searching for a copy since the beginning of the year, and still haven't found one. As for the suggestion of getting myself a subscription to be delivered to my home, well, if I could get the professional rate from Pastry Art & Design, I would still be paying 45$ USD for 6 copies per year which would work out to be (once conversions have been considered) at least 1$ per issue more than what I would pay in the store, which doesn't impress me at all. I won't even do the math for the regular rate of 65$ USD I would be more than happy to pay 4$ USD per copy to make sure that I have the current issue and don't have to drive all over town to find it.

As for other magazines that I would like to see available on your site, Cakes & Sugarcraft magazine from England would be one. I'm sure there are other mags from England that would be appropriate to be included on your site, but I don't know of any specifically.

[Sugarella]

^^ .... I was just going to say that!

Cakes and Sugarcraft published by Squires Kitchen in the UK. They also publish Wedding Cakes - A design Source .... both magazines would be tremendously popular amongst the sugarcraft crowd, especially if you could eventually offer back issues.

[Tweety69bird]

Thanks for the backup Sugarella! I had thought of Wedding Cakes - A design Source also but thought that I would still purchase that magazine so that I could have it in hand. It's a great mag to show people when they are looking for ideas, so I didn't think that having that one on the computer would really benefit me... but it deffinately wouldn't hurt. And for the time and ink that it would take to print out that mag, I would prefer to buy the physical copy. And doesn't it figure that I can find the mag that comes all the way from England....

[sanrensho]

Joe, as I mentioned to you in my PM, I think this service sounds very promising and fills a void.

I'm not a baking professional, but I would definitely be interested in PCG and other Japanese publications at this price level--translated or otherwise.

Good luck with your venture!

[Joe Marcionette]

Ok Sugarelle, thanks for the suggestion of Cakes and Sugarcraft. Sounds good and I will contact them asap.

Regards,

Joe

[Tepee]

The Australian Modern Wedding Cakes and Chocolates magazine is also very popular with wedding cake-decorators.

[Wendy DeBord]

I really like this concept!

......stick a chat board onto it and you'll have a busy site........

What about indexing articles in each magazine so when time goes buy we'll still be interested in back issues?

[Joe Marcionette]

Yes...once an issue is no longer current, it will go into a searchable archive that will be kept on ChefMags.com. Thanks for the question.

Regards,

Joe