Filament magazine

Issue 3 is go!
Issue 3 is at the printers and arrives in lovely boxes on the 1st of December. Pre-orders are available on the website now.

I've been playing with the cool online magazine software Issuu and made a preview. Warning: One penis



Please do add ratings and reviews!

( Distribution etc )

Have a nice weekend everyone!
- Suraya

There's bad news and good news...

Coco de mer have decided not to stock Filament. They have been 'thinking about it' since July, with me phoning weekly to check whether they'd made a decision. Apparently the reason is because they don't do magazines. I wonder why it took them four months to realise they don't stock magazines? >:-)

Magnation, who have stores in Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney, contacted us asking if they could stock Filament. Well of course! They seem pretty cool - the buyer's job title is 'chief magazineologist'. I especially love the Magdenitifier applet on their site... much fun.

• We're now on shelves in two New Zealand shops, both in my home town of New Plymouth: Tower Books (where I used to work after school!) and Mainly Magazines. The local newspaper did a story on it, and Mainly Magazines sold their 12 copies in under 48 hours.
  
• We're also *this close* to closing a deal with two retailers in Wellington - finally!
  
• We're now on shelves in Halifax and Ottawa, Canada, thanks to the very enthusiastic and lovely¹ Venus Envy. Thanks to audrawilliams for the idea!
  
• Still working on potential US retailers: Seattle, New York and Portland, to start with.
  
• Haven't had the contract through from the UK distributor, but soon I hope.
  
• Issue 3 is coming along well - pretty much everything is with the graphic designers now, and they are busy working their magic...
  
• Issue 2 is still available through our website, as well as in the above places.

¹ Venus Envy gave the response to Filament that I'd foolishly expected from most of the women's orientated sex shops: "This Is Right Up Our Street". You have to wonder what is going on with women-orientated sex shops on the whole if they don't see intelligent magazines for women with hot naked dudes in as being relevant to their audience. I guess it's the same thing that Erotica Cover Watch are talking about: perception that all women only ever want to look at other women as erotic subjects. But who knows.

It looks like we've reached an agreement with a UK distributor, finally! UK only at this point, but it might go international for Issue 3 if Issue 2 sells well in the UK shops.

Contract still to be seen and signed (it's going to be with me on Monday apparently) but holy crap, am I ever excited?!

Another distributor has said, although they are not keen to distribute Filament right now, they'll do a 'test run' by sending copies to 10 UK outlets and seeing what they think. Personally I don't think 'what retailers think' is a good way to judge whether consumers want the product, but it's better than an outright 'no'.

Of course we all want to see hawt men and smart reading for women on shelves around the UK, but whatever happens Filament will continue to be available in the UK and worldwide through our website at roughly the same price as in shops. Yay!

- Suraya

I can finally announce that Filament Issue 3's 'advice' columns will be written by some exciting special guests:

Ask a feminist - Zoe Margolis, writer of Girl with a One Track Mind

Etiquette - Warren Ellis, our favourite smart-mouthed comic writer, creator of Transmetropolitan

Coping saw - Gala Darling, fabulous New York lifestyle blogger


Please, post your questions about feminism, etiquette or general life issues here! Anonymous commenting is enabled for anyone who has anything sensitive to contribute.

Poll #1457348
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 65

What do you think of someone saying your name during sex?

Erotic fiction Author Janine Ashbless, who wasn't a huge fan of our first issue, found our second issue hit the spot.

Loads of positive feedback for writers and photographers!

And a great article on Stuff.co.nz (the main New Zealand news website), with lots of positive comments.

- Suraya

• Sh! Women's Store in Hoxton has expressed an interest in stocking Filament Issue 2. They didn't want to stock our first issue, but they are interested to see the second. Yay!

• Adultworld have sold half their copies of Filament Issue 1 and decided they want to take Issue 2 as well in their Oxford and Islington shops! I'm taking their copies down to the Islington shop now.

• Our first international shop, in Vancouver, Canada (thanks zauberin for muling!) will have copies of Filament Issue 1 from this afternoon. Details coming soon...

Preview the content and lads

...or get yer sticky mits on one :D

We will be the first UK women's magazine to publish an pictorial of an especially pleased man.

Message of thanks and explanation of where to next here.

Well, we're fewer than 32 copies away from our goal, it's the middle of print weekend and we're going ahead as if we're going to make it.

I also wanted to explain to you how the distribution issues and the print issues overlap, so you know what to expect. Bear with me because it's a little complicated.

I'm hopefully going to meet with a distributor on Tuesday. He's a specialist top shelf distributor, and although I have emailed him Filament 1 as a PDF, my main worry is that he may find the wholesome/saucy mix that is Filament too challenging as he'll be used to "the dirtier the better" approach that most top shelf mags take. If he is keen on trying Filament out, it won't be a deal at that point, but it will give me a flavour for whether he'll try and distribute us in newsagents in the UK, or sex shops, with wider distribution internationally.

If I get the feeling he's wavering, we might try and make a last minute change to our print job, called a plate change, so 2,000 copies (for online sales) will be printed with erections, and 3,000 copies (for distribution, via the mid-shelf distributor who was interested) printed without. It's a compromise, at least Filament would get mainstream distribution, and those who want them can still have the explicit material.

So yeah. That's where we're at.

- Suraya

PS. Incidently, if all goes swimmingly, there should be a really nice surprise for Filament readers associated with Issue 2, in addition to the obvious. More details as/if they come to hand.

What double standard?

Guardian

The Independent

Please pop over and join the comments!

Filament is going to be stocked by Adultworld in Oxford and Islington - yay!

Get in there and grab your copy if you haven't already and want to save on postage costs. Store locations.



Filament thanks arachne for the hook-up.

• Great review on Pamflet, the feminist fashion blog.

• Email from our most promising distributor:
Thanks for your email. I am certainly interested in distribution.

If you are going to include more explicit material you will have a problem getting newsstand distribution and if you include the spread with a gent in a state of obvious arousal, you will not get distribution full stop! That is why it has never been done by a female/male magazine in the UK.

The big chains such as WH Smith, Borders etc do not even carry soft pronographic titles where arousal and touching are not allowed, the only arousal pictures you have are in hardcore magazines that have to be sold in licenced premises. If you go this route with the content unfortunately I won't be able to help you as you won't get mainstream distribution.

Erotica Cover Watch have written about our print and distribution woes (NSFW) and urged folk to buy a copy of Filament in support, which is really really cool!

For those of you who aren't minded to follow that link:
( Read it here )
---

And then the famous Zoe Margolis, depicted below, author of Girl with a One Track mind tweeted this to her 4,785 followers! What awesomeness!

Oh and Zoe bought one to show her support for Filament.

Can these gals possibly get any more awesome.



Incidently, if anyone's wondering, for us to afford to change printers to one who'll publish erections, we'd have to sell 328 more copies of Filament than we have at this time.

We're always looking for new contributors.

You can find guidelines on contributing to Filament on the FAQs page of our website. Scroll down. They're near the bottom.

Filament interviews Ms Naughty, women's erotica blogger and proprietor of the women's porn website For the Girls.

( Interview )

See also Ms Naughty's interview with Filament's editor here.

This is their reason:

"Further to [...] the submission of some advance images, I can now herein formally confirm that we would NOT want to print material of this nature, which although likely to perhaps only cause offence to a small number of actual staff, may unfortunately create much bigger and more serious far reaching problems for us with other clients - particularly those in the womens/religious sectors, who could potentially withdraw their own work in protest as a result."

It tickled me merrily that they are concerned about offending the women's sector!

Is this a problem? Can't we just get another printer?

Well, possibly not. This printer is about 30% cheaper than any other quote I've had, and print is our major cost, so using someone else would be seriously difficult.

Something to contemplate, anyway.

- Suraya

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