Back In Print!
by Ian Koss
Ink 19 is back on the streets, after a 22+ year hiatus. Pictured below is the September 2023 issue in its entirety.
Those who remember Ink 19 from the ‘90s will notice this is a very different publication from the not-quite-final issue in December 2000. The old format was a 32-40 page newsprint tabloid; we were printing 50-60,000 copies, and distributing them throughout Florida and in the Atlanta/Athens region. The new issue is a single z-fold brochure, 500 copies via digital printing, distributed in Western Colorado’s Grand Valley, a significantly less demanding operation.
In the new format, one side of the magazine is the cover and our beloved listing of live music events for the coming month, aka “Michael’s New World Calendar.” This was indisputably our print readers’ highest priority when opening a new issue. The other side contains some selections from full articles online, a handful of short items of local interest to the Grand Valley, and a table of contents for additional articles that Ink 19 has published recently. You can view the contents on the issue page we’ve created, or if you happen to be in the Grand Valley, you can pick up a copy at our sponsor, Triple Play Records, in downtown Grand Junction.
Why are we doing this? Ink 19 continues, as it has for the last 32 years, to produce an abundance of text, images, opinions, and judgments, all of them available online — this website currently has over 32,000 articles, and that number goes up every day. Calling people’s attention to this fact has become increasingly difficult, as social media dominates people’s online reading time, and the cost of getting even a tiny slice of that is prohibitive.
The purpose of a printed edition is to serve as a notification, here in the real world. Our readers already have the latest issue, and every issue that came before it, in their pockets. We just need to remind them we are here for their music obsessive needs, simply by existing in the physical plane, and ideally, by having our concert calendar pinned to their fridges for frequent viewing.
Despite working on this project for a few months already, and setting aside its periodical nature, we are nowhere near done. We have managed to put our first issue out, and are already working on the second, but the to-do list is still growing faster than we can knock the items out. We need to figure out things like subscriptions, an online concert calendar, and many other features that we haven’t had time to get to or don’t even know we need yet.
We are excited to see what we learn in coming months. A huge heartfelt thanks to everyone — our readers and staff, and all the musicians, managers, publicists, etc. that make this possible — from Ink 19, for all your support and excitement!
