Our smoking-hot first year
Publishing a new magazine is, in many ways, an act of pathological hope.
No matter how much hard work and market research and promotion you throw at your fledgling publication to make it a success, so many factors remain outside your control. The economy might worsen. Costs might increase. The competition might simply refuse to behave the way you expected them to behave. All this explains why a whopping 90 percent of new magazines fail in their first nine months of operation. Let’s face it: That number isn’t exactly cause for optimism.
So it was against all common sense that when the staff of CULTURE gathered almost a year ago today to put out our first issue, we were filled with an almost irrational confidence that what we were launching would ultimately succeed. We believed we had what it took to be the kind of magazine we wanted to be: a lifestyle-and-entertainment publication for medical-marijuana patients. Some of us were intimately familiar with Southern California’s medical cannabis community, while some of us were plugged into the region’s lifestyle and entertainment scene. Some of us were experienced writers and editors, while others were veterans of the business side of publishing.
What we didn’t have was a model—an existing lifestyle-and-entertainment magazine for medical marijuana patients—that we could try to imitate. There were plenty of weed mags for stoners out there, and no shortage of cannabis pubs for the serious grower or political activist. But a magazine whose sole purpose was to inform and entertain the average medical-cannabis patient? No such creature yet existed. We would be the first, which explains why the three most common responses during our first staff meetings were “Can we do that?”, “I have no earthly idea,” and “Well, why not?”
Somehow we managed to publish that all-important first issue, a modest affair with so many hopes and dreams riding upon it that I’m surprised it didn’t collapse under its own weight. We looked long and lovingly at that beautiful creature, took a brief moment to congratulate ourselves for the accomplishment, and then went promptly to work on the second issue.
Almost immediately, all the things we worried might happen, happened. The economy worsened. Costs increased. The competition simply refused to behave as we thought it would.
But something else began to happen: Word began trickling in that the vendors carrying our magazine were running out of copies. We’d send them more, and in a couple of days we’d hear that they’d run out of them again—CULTURE was flying off the shelves. We started hearing our name mentioned in the mainstream media. Celebrity agents and reps who had avoided our calls like the plague when we were putting together our first issue started to contact us.
Unbelievably, against all odds, CULTURE was resonating with our readers. We were doing so well that after our third issue, we switched from publishing once every other month to every month, and we were off to the races. This issue marks our one-year anniversary—we’ve beaten the odds.
As much as I’d like to say that continued success was and will be the result of our staggering genius, the simple truth is that we’re blessed with the great gift of an audience that has no problem asking for what it wants. All we’ve had to do was listen and obey. As an old vaudeville actor once said, “Give the people what they want, and they’ll beat a path to your door.”
It’s with this philosophy in mind that we’ll be unveiling a host of exciting new features over the next few months, all in keeping with our mission of keeping you informed and entertained. We’re devoting more coverage to medical-cannabis patients with powerful stories of courage and survival. We’re stepping up our coverage of important events with a brand-new political column, and we’ll bring the world to your doorstep with a monthly travel section. At the same time, we’ll continue to bring you all the regular features you’ve told us you love to read every issue.
Here’s to you, readers, for making us a part of your lives! And here’s to our first year in print, and more to follow!
