文章基本信息

标题：Publishing's rising rebel - Rozek's - Brief Article
作者：Keith J. Kelly
期刊名称：Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management
印刷版ISSN：0046-4333
出版年度：1994
卷号：Feb 15, 1994
出版社：Red 7 Media, LLC

Publishing's rising rebel - Rozek's - Brief Article

Keith J. Kelly

An off-beat publication called Rozek's is rebelling against all the accepted norms of the magazine business--and building a small but growing following from its Seattle base.

The publication--somewhere between a lengthy newsletter and short-form magazine--is named after its founder/editor/publisher, Michael Rozek. He had a successful run as a freelance journalist in the 1980s. His byline turned up on record reviews in Rolling Stone, "Sports Clinic" pieces in Esquire, and other publications from Sports Illustrated to Ford Times.

Rozek's eschews the pop celebrity world and instead writes one long (7,000 word) interview in each issue. It contains no pictures and no ads. The idea is to capture an obscure but interesting American with a good story to tell. One issue featured a housewife who thought she was going to die from her cancer. So she took the time to become a champion bass fisherman.

Rozek prides himself on accuracy and allows subjects to review most stories before publication. "I'm not on a warpath against conventional magazines," he says, "but if you've ever been interviewed by magazines, they rarely fact check and there is always something wrong."

By 1991, he was writing 40 stories a year for an in-house magazine for one of the Baby Bells. After two and a half years, it folded. "I did not want to go back to freelancing," he says. "I said, 'why not take a risk--take a huge risk?'" At first, he offered his magazine at six issues a year for $10 and attracted 200 subscribers. "It was suicide," he says, "it was priced too low." He soon upped the price to $39 a year for eight issues.

Today, word of mouth seems to work better than direct mail. He's been featured in a national wire-service story and got a plug on the CBS radio network. Now he has about 1,500 subscribers. For a while, he was behind on his mortgage, but is now current. And he's still looking for avid readers--and offbeat subjects. He's at 3424 Tenth Avenue West, Seattle, Washington 98119.