Interview with Marlen Kemmet Managing Editor of WOOD

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Douglas Robinson

Doug Robinson
Corporate Member
I know it has taken me a long time to get this together and I apologize. I will not make excuses. At least I am getting posted now.


We had a lot of questions for Marlen Kemmet, the Managing Editor of Wood Magazine. Some people simply seconded another person’s question so the follow is meant to summarize the questions / issues.

Kooshball asked why”it always takes forever to receive your first issue of ANY magazine after you pay for your subscription? I signed up in Jan for WOOD Magazine and have yet to see it in the mail; how hard can it be to mail an issue within a week or so (even an over-stocked back issue)?”

Marlen noted that new subscriptions with any magazine need to be processed. The mailings are done on the basis of mailing lists that are already in the system. Since magazines are prepared months in advance and magazines generally come out every other month, it can take a while before a new subscriber sees their first issue. This is true of any magazine.

Junquecol did not have a question, but instead made a comment: “I admire WOOD for publishing corrections. I wish I could say the same for Woodsmith and ShopNotes, both of whom I have noted errors to.” Marlen noted that WOOD takes pride in publishing corrections of their mistakes and as a total percentage of articles and plans makes very few mistakes. Marlen started with WOOD nearly 27 years ago and has kept close tabs on corrections. "On the average we have two or less per issues, and each issue contains over 2,000 dimensions" staed Kemmet. "That's an accuracy rate of 99.9%. I doubt anyone in the industry can match that." WOOD has people specifically hired to review their material prior to publication. Some WOOD Magazine employees have worked at other magazines and note that the other magazines are at best indifferent to publishing corrections.

Jeff Mills asked “are there plans to add more content than advertisements in the future?” Marlen replied that magazines in general maintain a ratio of at least 60% content to advertising. Thus, if there are more pages of advertising there will be more content. However the ratio will stay the same with content exceeding advertisements. “That’s why many women’s magazine are over 200 pages in length,” explained Kemmet. “The more ads that sell the more content you have, to keep the ratio. A 200-page woman’s publication does have a lot of ads, but it also has a ton of content.”

Manfre the following comment: “Here's a minor rant. Why are cut out coupons printed with the backing page being actual content? This means the readers must sacrifice the archival value of the issue to use the coupon.” The answer was that advertisers pay to have their ads placed in certain places.


Alan in Little Washington noted: “After getting today's WOOD Online e-newsletter I thought it would be nice if WOOD (actually all the magazines) created their own (or a joint) searchable tip library for woodworkers AND the magazines. I wish the editors would then search these tip libraries to see what has already been published- I really get tired of seeing the same tips over and over.”

Marlen replied that there are no plans to do this, or coordinate with other magazines. Yes tips are repeated. Marlen has even seen his own material submitted as a tip. This is usually not done consciously by the submitter, but the person just did not recall that they had read it somewhere else before.

MarkE’s comment dealt with an issue that was echoed by many, namely renewal notices. A lot of people did not like the repeated notices that they receive quite often. Mark’s solution was to call the subscription department and ask them to stop sending them.



Marlen pointed out that in accordance with how WOOD Magazine’s parent company Corporation, runs things; renewals are handled by a separate entity. This entity handles all of the renewal notices and WOOD has no say in this. But, renewals are pretty much handled the same way throughout the publishing industry. Once they get you one board, they want to keep you on board.

I would be remiss if I did not let you know that Marlen was more than generous with his time and did not shy away from any topic.

Doug



 

MarkE

Mark
Corporate Member
Thank you for going through this process for us. It's nice to know that a publisher really is interested in knowing what subscribers have to say.

One thing I did not see in your Q&A with Mr. Kemmet was the question about the DVD of Wood issues. I love having Wood Mag on DVD, but it just not make economic sense to have to re-purchase the entire library every year. I wish that Mr. Kemmet had been able to address that issue.
 
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