The covers are the best part of most magazines. I bought Victoria today and already read through it twice! I loved the cherry pink and soft green outside dining set up and the mossy fairy tale setting too. I could do that with my chandelier for Easter! Mosses hanging off the light and on the table with my two porcelain life-like white rabbits sitting in the center perhaps, &etc. How pretty. So many lovelies to look at and give me ideas to try! Want to try some of the recipes, too. I saw that article about the Garden book too. (I thought it was a new magazine?) Anyway, it looks beautiful. Wish there was more detailed info on it.

Here's more of the nuts-n-bolts of the project, I just hope my info helps anyone else out there wanting to get something done and realizing that the only way "its" gonna happen is to do it yourself. First of all, some background: I have worked as a commercial artist, illustrator, cartoonist for around 25 years. Though I make very little money as a book illustrator (projects pay less than the fee for writing), my graphic designs and commercial art publications have won numerous awards both national and statewide. Still, being a graphic artist isn't a goldmine. I currently work for a small scale publisher that produces those free press tabloid style papers you see in every medium to large sized city. I design ads all day long, Monday thru Fri. I also work for a high-end plant nursery on weekends. This is where I got the idea that a local publication focused on gardening would be the perfect home based business for me. I am very active here on Garden Web and organize local gardening events, tours and plant swaps. Even though I've only lived here for four years I love this area and its weather and the gardening potential. They refer to the size of any projects potential customer base as your 'universe'. My universe is huge. This area has over a million people and when you consider that 85% of the population considers themselves gardeners - that's a lot of potential newsletter readers. Within one hour you have 4 major botanic gardens, each with a completely different direction, and about 60 garden themed or "outdoor living" businesses. There is also a dynamic market scene involving plants at both the State run Farmer's Market and a city run Flea Market (combined = 34 year round vendors). The city paper has a decent gardening section every other saturday; their ad rates are outrageously high; they have around 12 year round ad contracts (all small sized ads) and during the spring can swell to almost 2 pages of ads each Saturday. The articles are about half from locals and half from syndicates. I started this whole thing thinking that if 5000 papers (32 pages, 4 pages of full color) cost me only 28 cents each, I could sell them for $1.50 - split it 50% with the vendors (which is a better deal for them than standard magazines), which would equal my postage costs for subscibers. In other words I would at least double my money no matter which way I sold the paper. I learned that you can sell 100 papers through one location in May and only sell 12 in June (spring is OVER!). I learned that the minimum order for webpress printing is 1000 pieces and only one printer would even do that (thank god he was down the street instead of across town). When you're starting out and working 7 days a week, it can be kinda hard to unload 1000 papers all by yourself. I learned that selling ads takes months upon months of rubbin elbows with the businesses - they just don't buy ads on the first visit. They also demand results, if your ad does't improve sales right away they will not be buying a repeat ad. They are exhausted by salespeople calling them every 10 minutes - no matter what you are offering, you are just one more voice taking up their time. If you can't get close to them first thing in the morning you won't be able to impress them (I'm at work at my real job first thing in the morning). Seeing as the average sales per store was more like 12 copies each month (outside of the few springtime months), I would need 200 locations to turn a profit and unload most of my product (assuming subscriptions would increase each month). I don't have this many locations. more bad news... Buying the minimum of 1000 pieces the price goes up to 98 cents per issue. Postage per item is $1.06 instead of the planned for 55 cents because I don't have the required 200 addresses to qualify for bulk rates. So, I'm losing money, lots of money each month. I also don't get many subscribers, the few that I get come from people I meet with face to face at gardening events. They tell me they love the newsletter but I feel that their purchase is more like charity - but at this point I need the money to bad to care. I think the garden centers will change their minds if I stay at it long enough. I think I need to quit my weekend job in order to market this project better. I also think that gardeners do a lot of planning and reading during the late winter and early spring - so my January/Feb/Mar issues will be colorful and feature last years successes and failures in the garden instead of just wintertime activities. The annoying parts - people don't hesitate to tell me about a typo. I get phone calls every month complaining about poor gramar or punctuation - even though the masthead states that I am wearing all the hats on this project for now. And I get plenty of people that want it for free.

I posted a list a while back of interesting websites I found.I added a couple more. http://www.preservationdirectory.com/ Preservation directory. com http://www.nationaltrust.org/ National trust for historic preservation http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/tps/index.htm Info from the National Park service http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/tps/roofdown/welcome.htm From the National Park Service, caring for your home http://www.meux.mus.ca.us/ 1888 Meux home tour http://www.cttrust.org/ Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, with help for anyone http://www.generalwilliamfloydhouse.org/ Gen Wm. Floyd house, with info about their restoration work. http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles.htm British site but can be very helpful to anyone with an old house. ExÂchimney problems http://www.bricksandbrass.co.uk/design/design.htm Another British site with lots of info about old houses and caring for them http://windsweptsoftware.com/myhouse/resource.html A list of sites http://www.cr.nps.gov/habshaer/habs/habsreco.htm From National Park Service Some of the above sites have a lot of nooks and crannies to peer into, so save them for evenings when you just want to sit and rest. I saw an interesting link in the Connecticut site to a pamphlet on common restoration blunders, things that can steer experts onto the wrong path when trying to restore a historic dwelling. I've got some pictures of old houses from my photos and 19th century paintings that can show you how people used their rooms when your old house was new. You're welcome to browse through them at Webshots. Here is a link that might be useful: my albums

Scott says: "BTW Moccassin, I do hope your screen name refers to footware and not water snakes. " I'm glad you asked, Scott. Actually it refers to both. I was gone for months at a time working, and my house sat alone. I was concerned about vandalism or whatever, since it was on a small bayou in the city. It is not right to tempt folks, I felt. So I picked a name which symbolized my moccasins rested here. But also, it implied that the very ill tempered and dangerous water moccasins came around in the tall grass down by the water. I painted the name MOCCASINLANDING on an old paddle, and hung it over my carport. It had a snake slithering in the grass. Also, down at my tiny little dock, I hung a board up with lettering as suggested by a man I met down in Texas: MOCCASIN LANDING--PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE SNAKES. To further this mental image of snakes, while I was working in Louisiana, I picked up a 6 foot long dead snake (road kill) which I mounted on a board and covered with a fiberglas resin. It lasted for years swinging from the tree closest to the water. If a person thought it was killed in my yard, that was an impression I never bothered to correct. I never had any problems in the 18 years I lived there with invasion of my space. Except we did cut up a couple of snakes in the grass catcher of the lawn mower. I was really surprised when the body parts fell out. Spooky, yes? Where I am now, we have a nicer kind of snake--the King snake and the rat snake. The king eats the bad snakes, among other things. And I'm sure the rat snake earns his keep too.