Sega Blue Skies

This isn’t going well..

For some reason I thought an article about magazine covers - and how the new Forgotten Worlds cover evolved - would make for interesting ‘content’.

But after trying (and failing) to write that feature I’ve had to admit defeat. 

Turns out, it’s just not that interesting. And the number of people who want to read a step-by-step breakdown of how the cover went from an image of Sonic The Hedgehog to a die-cut collaboration with DvlsBlsh is limited.

All you really need to know is that the final version of the magazine comes with a series of Sega Blue Skies inspired postcards, which you can use to create your own front cover. Or, if you’re feeling inspired, you can just make your own cover with whatever image you have lying about. Like in the example below.

I’m not sure where the die-cut idea came from. All I know is that my wife didn’t like the original Sonic cover when I showed it to her. So I went back to the drawing board.

Why am I telling you all this? The awful truth is I have a new magazine to sell, and the marketing campaign is currently in a state of purgatory. After a strong opening weekend, sales have petered out. There are promo copies en-route to various websites and folks who can help spread the word, but that takes time. Especially if we’re talking overseas mail - which can easily take two weeks. 

In the meantime I’m trying to “keep the conversation going,” with a variety of ad-hoc content. Which is how we ended up here.

So, if you get nothing else out of this ridiculous blog post know this - you should plan your marketing campaign weeks / months ahead, so that you can align everything to roll out in a smooth sequential order.

Ideally, you want the people who are going to write about your magazine or promote it online to receive it a couple of weeks before your official public launch. That way they can get their “ducks aligned” and you can go out to the public with a ‘full court press’ of promo. Which should help keep sales ticking along… and not leave me looking like Sega’s former marketing director Hidekazu Yukawa (below).

The alternative is whatever I’m currently doing. Waiting. Refreshing the sales data. Thinking of ways to paper over the marketing schedule. Writing super meta blog posts. Existential dread. Etc..

So yeah, if you’d like to help out you can purchase a copy of the new issue here.