Can someone explain publishing to me? Here is an industry on the cusp of technologies edge. Decades ago, when there was not so much digital in the world that we couldn't just put a finger on it the publishing of periodicals was a difficult endeavor. Imagine that you have to start pulling together your December issue in August because it has to be painstakingly printed and ready to distribute through a slower infrastructure. Type has to be set, plates made for the images. Four color separations extracted from color transparencies so that multiple plates can be made for those. Aligning. Registration. Distribution. Merchandising. Those were far more time consuming "back in the day." Now we are in a global, immediate, satellite instantaneous, digital media, computerized typesetting and printing, multiple output regional printing concern age. What happens today in Urmeyville Indiana can be on the shelves in Adelaide Australia by Thursday evening. Quicker if its downloaded instead of spot printed. So if this is the case, why can't we buy a July magazine in July? Why, on July 5th as I was enjoying a well deserved day off reading a Road and Track at Discount Tire in Greenwood Indiana (while surprising my missus with new wheels and tires on the truck), could I not find that same issue at three different outlets for my own consumption or to share with the same missus? The August issue is out, they are out of the July issue, and I can not buy the current month's issue on the 5th day of the current month. This could easily turn into a rant on time again as you can see. But really, why observe publishing morays designed for the 1920's in this want it now get it now age? Sure I can go to carandriver.com and download the articles and receive bonus material as well if I were so inclined. But I decline. I might want to recline with my car mag, not sit at a Liquid Crystal Display, absorbing it. Is that so wrong in an age where I can hear about Paris' next pimple outburst automatically on my cell if I so desire?

Chuck Pace © 2007
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