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Oh comely 访谈记录(by Rosa)

这是我们与Oh Comely杂志主编Liz的一次对话。为了避免翻译的不到位,我把原始的英文对话记录下来。


Rosa: Can you please tell us what's Oh Comely about?

Liz: it is a romantic women magazine about culture, stories. It has a really caring approach so people will want to read it and enjoy it. It is playful and kind as well.


Rosa: how do you pitch independent magazine's adverts? what's the diffences from commercial magazines?

Liz: generallly said that there are lot of commercial magazines and some of them are great, but there are lots of adverts as part of their contents. In Oh Comely we also have adverts those readers really like, which fit contents very well. We select adverts very careful. 


Rosahow do you define your readership?

Liz: women who are many 20 or early 30, but i think the people reading magazines are really broad range, we have all the people who wrriten and we have male readers even though it is a primary magazine made for women. And we have teenagers who read it as well, so i think we reallyenjoy it. 


Rosa:what kind of lifestyle Oh Comely try to tell us?

Liz: occasionally people will say a magazine change thier lifesyle, create something or learn from it. I think it will make us very happy, but we try not to be aspiration in terms of lifestlye because of i think there would be lot of pressure actually. Because magazines always relate to lifestlye, kind of Cosmo or Vogue they always have lifesyle presenting thier content, but what we trying to do is we try not to make that feel like something people have to do, we want to people find something they can really enjoy rather something they have to be. 


Rosa:Can you really make profits from this magazine?

Liz: It is not particularly profitable, but i think many independent magazines are for made more for love than money. So i think the reason we can make this magazine is we have really strong base that we really enjoy it. We have some supporters from brands as well. I think the core of it at the moment is the subscriptions, it is very important in terms of this model. 


Rosa:How do you see your magazine in the future?

Liz: keep telling stories in an honest way,  getting new writers and photographers to keep fresher ideas, i think it is really impoartant goes to a magazine's life . we also want to change some forms like people can cut out some pages with printed phisical product, makes it more intresting and playful. 


Rosa: Will you digitalize your contents in the future?

Liz: I think we would love to do ipad version but we are going to wait until we have time to do itproperly. Because i think we are fixing on the printed magazines for now but we would love to expand our market. And i think printed form is really important for Oh Comely, but readers overseas may like digital versions because it will be much cheaper. 


Rosa: Oh Comely是一本关于什么的杂志?

Liz:这是一本充满浪漫情怀的女性独立杂志,关于文化和动人的故事。 同时它也具有很强的阅读性,有趣又温暖,让人能感觉到这是一本真正用心,用爱创做出来的杂志。


Rosa:您能谈论一下在独立杂志里的广告和商业杂志有什么区别吗?

Liz:商业杂志有各种各样的广告,似乎有点杂。但Oh Comely里的广告是读者真正喜欢的,我们很仔细挑选什么的广告与我们的内容相符合,所以不会显得突兀,反而相得益彰。


Rosa:您是怎么样定义读者群的?

Liz:我们有很多20到30岁之间的女性读者,但实际上我们拥有很大范围的读者群,甚至包括一些男性读者和青少年,所以我们非常开心有这么多的不同的群体喜欢我们的杂志。


Rosa:Oh Comely想要告诉我们一种怎么样的生活方式?

Liz:有时人们会说一本杂志会改变他们的生活方式,教会他们一些东西。如果读者这样反应我们的杂志,我当然会很高兴,但是我并不想给读者带来某种压力。像一些商业杂志,他们也推销一种生活方式,就像鼓励读者消费和追求快餐式的物质生活。但是Oh Comely想要表达的并不是一种你一定要去遵守的生活方式或理念,而是想要读者开心的享受他们现在的生活。


Rosa: 创办这本杂志是否能给您带来利润呢?

Liz:实际上我们并不能从这本杂志里得到丰厚的利润,但是我想大多数独立杂志都是因为热爱这份工作而不是只为了赚钱。我们之所以创办这本杂志是因为我们非常喜爱我们现在做的事情,这是一种热情大过于对金钱的追求。现在我们主要的利润来源于订阅量,这是独立杂志生存的根基。


Rosa:您想在今后几年对Oh Comenly做怎么样的改进吗?您有什么期望?

Liz: 最重要的是我们会继续以真诚的态度给读者讲述故事。和更多的优秀的摄影师和作者合作,吸收和保持新鲜的想法是维持我们杂志生命力的重要力量。从杂志形式上,我们想可以增加一些可以让读者收藏和剪裁,使页面更加有活用性。


Rosa:您会在今后出电子版本吗?

Liz:我想我们会出ipad版本,不过我们会等到我们有足够的时间来搭建这个电子平台的时候。我们现在很专注的在我们的纸质版本,认为印刷的质量对于Oh Comely来说很重要,我们的读者也会喜爱纸质阅读。不过对于海外的读者,电子阅读会大大降低成本,毕竟印刷费用很巨大。

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