Adam Cherubini asked a question over at his Arts & Mysteries blog as to how to fit his words into the two page space Popular Woodworking allocates to him. The comments from his readership are fascinating, informative and worthy of review by any publisher and I hope the Popular Woodworking people are paying close attention.
My suggestion is simple, follow in the footsteps of the many great nineteenth century avocational and trade journals and serialize. It worked for Work. It worked for Woodwork. It worked for just about every nineteenth century and early twentieth century trade journal. I think it's about time Popular Woodworking followed suit and serialized important and relevant topics when it's clear that two pages is short changing the readership.
Adam feels he is too wordy. Nah. Nope. Not true. He is as wordy as he needs to be in order to make his point and in order to instruct. I'm clearly one of his readership. When I get my copy of Popular Woodworking, I first check to see if he has an article therein. Same goes for the Editors Blogs. Same goes for Bob Lang and a few others.
I subscribe to Popular Woodworking not for projects or new tricks. I subscribe to learn about woodworking and it's history, about hand work, about furniture and about people. It's one of the few magazines that offers up this mix. Not all the time, but enough times to make it worth my cash to maintain my subscription.
As such, I appeal to the powers that be to serialize when the topic calls for it instead of force fitting knowledge into a layout to meet the needs of the issue. What better way to sell future issues than to serialize? Joseph Moxon did it.
If I can't get a book written by Adam, at the least I want his articles serialized.
Till next, Gary