Online magazines are hot right now. The speed and beauty of online publishing, combined with the ease of producing beautiful issues, not to mention the low overhead costs, have made the Internet the venue of choice for professional-rate magazines and indie ‘zines alike. Even traditional print magazines typically have online content these days, whether it’s snippets of stories that give you a taste of what’s to come, bonus short fiction or interviews, or just basic purchasing and contributor information. Whatever the case may be, it’s almost unheard of for magazines not to have an attractive, well-designed website these days.
If you’re interested in launching your own online magazine, or redesigning your established magazine’s existing site, Clockpunk Studios is here to help. We’ve designed the sites for many successful magazines over the years, with all sorts of different types of content.
Hugo-nominated magazine Lightspeed, for example, publishes science fiction and fantasy short stories. Their content is free and fully online. Clockpunk Studios built Lightspeed from the ground up, designing its clean, futuristic look, modern presentation of information, and completing the full coding, as well. And when the editor of Lightspeed decided to expand his horizons and launch a horror fiction magazine, Nightmare, Clockpunk Studios reskinned the Lightspeed site and enhanced the coding to create a striking, sinister look for the new magazine.
In a different vein, The Big Click, a crime fiction magazine, is also one of our pet projects. Clockpunk Studios created a grittier, grimier look for The Big Click, knowing the sort of fiction the editors were interested in featuring. Reminiscent of a private investigator’s case file in a classic noir, The Big Click’s look is distinctive and fresh. And for Inscription, a magazine for teens, we stretched our wings to create colorful, fresh, and eye-catching design for a project meant for young adults.
While these magazines may seem different in many ways, they share many similarities. All were built on WordPress platforms, and many are enabled to produce ebook (epub) editions. Yes—you read that correctly! Clockpunk Studios designs sites for magazines with built-in software that allows editors to prep issues and then easily compile them into an ebook-compatible format that can be downloaded and then uploaded to put up for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or indie sellers like Weightless Books.
All the above magazines are free-content sites. The stories come out weekly, in their entirety, for their online readership. Those who wish to get all the stories at once and read them like a print magazine, however can purchase inexpensive ebook editions from various e-retailers that can be read on an iPad, Kindle, or Nook. Pretty cool!
Clockpunk Studios prides itself on keeping up with the times. Online content is great for reading on your lunch break, but we know readers also like to curl up with a good book (or magazine). That’s why we offer the easy-to-learn ebook generation option as part of our magazine design. Not only does it give readers what they want, it’s a source of revenue for magazines.
Do you have a great idea for a new magazine? Give us a call today and we’ll work with you to create a site for your magazine that does what you want quickly, efficiently, and conveniently.