This is a follow on from the solo episode where I discussed my new role on setting up and running a magazine. Today I talk to Lorie Lewis Ham who has been running an online magazine for 12 years, to get an industry perspective.
This is a follow on from the solo episode where I discussed my new role on setting up and running a magazine. Today I talk to Lorie Lewis Ham who has been running an online magazine for 12 years, to get an industry perspective.
Hi, and welcome to the writing and marketing show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. it's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast, so it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to episode 161 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H. Jones. As always, it's an absolute pleasure to have you join me here on the show. I can't believe how fast the weeks are whizzing on as always, it happens. This week, I'm going to be talking about running a magazine. I know we did that recently. But we're having a fresh perspective on it. From a magazine editor, an online magazine editor, whose name is Laurie Lewis hum, and she runs the Kings river Life magazine. But more from her in a moment. Before the interview. What have I been up to? Well, I've been doing a lot of editing. I've been getting mom's favourite read magazine ready to go. I've been writing and I've been getting ready to go to Israel next week, I went and got my new Israeli shekels today. So I'm off on my writing retreat in Israel next week. I leave on Wednesday, and I'm so excited to be going there. And we're doing some writing. And to meeting with Israeli writers. I think it does us good to meet up with new people to see what other people other writers are doing elsewhere in the world. And I'm very much looking forward to it. Before we get on with the interview, I would like to say it's an absolute pleasure to bring you this every week. I do so willingly. And I enjoy doing it however it does take time out of my writing. If you'd like to support that time, you can do so by going to patreon.com forward slash Wendy H Jones and just as supporting me for as little as$3 a month. And it would mean that you enjoy the show and that you want me to continue and I would be very grateful. Lorie Lewis Ham lives in Reedley California and has been writing ever since she was a child. Her first song and poem are published when she was 13. And she has gone on to publish many articles short stories and poems throughout the years, as well as I write for the local newspaper and publish six mystery novels. For the past 13 years. Lorie has been the editor in chief and publisher of King's river Life Magazine, and she produces mystery rats maze podcast, where you can get an expert of her book, one of us. You can learn more about Lorie and her writing on our website mystery route.com and find it on Twitter at mystery rod. What a fabulous name. You can also find it on Facebook and Instagram RT k r l magazine. Another way to keep up with Lori's writing is to subscribe to our newsletter which you can do on our website. Lori has been married to Laurie for 30 years and they have two grown children JC and Joseph. She currently has five cards Madeline Sam, Dean Sydney and Willow. Five dogs. Oh my goodness. Let's start who is Xander? Tanner and Phoebe and a pet dwarf rabbits Sherlock way I love the name and a pet rat named Dookie. For many years she worked in pet rat rescue and has many pet rats of her own over the years. So without further ado, let's get on with the show and hear from Lauren. And we have Lorie with us. Welcome Lorie. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here.
Lorie Lewis Ham:It's great to be here.
Wendy Jones:Oh, you're welcome. Welcome to Scotland because with an accent right now, you're definitely not in Scotland. Are you? Oh no, I'm in California. I have been to Scotland now. Have you? Oh, wow. I hope I hope we treated you well. Oh, yes. My brother actually went to school in Glasgow. Beauty. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was so without University. Yeah. Um, it was a seminary. Wow. How cool is that? I love it. So was, as I say it's a real pleasure to have you here. And I'm sure it's a bit warmer in California than it is in Dundee. That's for sure.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Probably Yeah, we've had colder winter than usual. But now it's mostly in the 50s and 60s. Fahrenheit.
Wendy Jones:That's warm for us. It's about eight degrees, while at the moment it's dark. So it's about two degrees. But hey, we're not here to discuss the weather are we I would like to talk about warm weather all the time. But that's not what people are here to hear about. So let's get started with the interrogation. I mean, the interview the interview.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Hey, we are both mystery writers. So you know, interrogation.
Wendy Jones:Absolutely. And just to say that Laurie and I met through Sisters in Crime If you haven't heard of Sisters in Crime, it's a fabulous organisation, you need to look it up. And you meet the nicest people through it. So, just to get us started, please, can you tell us about your magazine and how you came to be running it?
Lorie Lewis Ham:Well, it's called kings River Life. Yeah. And it's kind of a heck of a funny story in a way. I've been writing forever and had written for a local newspaper off and on through the years. And I was writing for them as a staff writer. And one Christmas, just before Christmas, I suddenly get this call from our editor. And she's decided to let me go. And it was she really wanted me to basically write her part of the paper, instead of doing what I was actually brought on to do. And she said, I did too much research.
Wendy Jones:Wait, what?
Lorie Lewis Ham:But the paper honestly is known for getting things wrong all the time. So you know, you know what their priorities are. So I didn't know what I was going to do next. And I got this idea talking to a friend, I said, why don't I start an online magazine with all the things that the newspaper told me nobody wanted to read. And so that's, that's what I did. And she, she is a web designer. And she did the designing part. And I did the writing part and editing and started putting it all together. And it grew from there to much more than I ever expected.
Wendy Jones:Oh, I have to say, it's a fantastic magazine, because I was looking at it. And it's great. And that brings us into the next question, really, because as I say, how to look at it. And there's so much content there. That really is cool. So can you talk us through how you choose the content for the magazine?
Lorie Lewis Ham:Well, that has developed over the years to begin with, it started out just being local. And the book, part of it was just local authors. And I had been tied into the mystery community for quite some time through Sisters in Crime and my own writing. And I started getting requests to do book reviews of other authors and stuff. And it developed into half of our issue every week is mystery related at least half. And then the rest is local theatre and animal rescue, some food columns, and unique businesses and charities and stuff like that. So, every month, about the middle of the month, I sit down and I start, you know, looking at what reviews we have coming in, what short stories have been submitted, and article ideas that I've kind of made notes about, you know, throughout constantly, and just start putting each one of the issues together. All of our writers are volunteer. And we do have a staff, which the review side, the mystery side really hasn't changed a whole lot through the years, but the local side is is constantly changing. And so then I asked whoever we have, are you good with this? Is this sound like something you want to write about? Or sometimes if I'm stumped for, you know, a topic, I'll ask them for ideas? And does this deadline work? And then we just start, I just start putting it together?
Wendy Jones:Yeah, it's amazing. It really does have some fabulous content. I suspect. It is a bit rabbit hole light, because I went over there just to take a quick peek in like three hours later, you're like, oh, maybe I should go and do something like Right.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Well, that's nice to hear.
Wendy Jones:No, it's really good is and I have to say it's a as you say, it's a weekly magazine, and I take my hat's off to you for that I run a magazine. So i've run one one issue so far. I'm on to my second. And that's monthly, and it's a lot of hard work. So I really do take my hat off to you. So what does a week look like for you in terms of bringing out the magazine because I'm sure that my listeners would like to know what's involved in it.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Okay, well, once you get past the planning, and everybody has their deadlines. Each week, everybody's supposed to have their articles or reviews or whatever into me by the weekend before it comes out. And then we have a copy editor and we send all we I send that off to her and she starts working on that and get that going. And then like Mondays I do a lot of promotion and catch up and things like that.We also post some articles midweek. We've all done that. It used to always be theatre reviews. But you know, when the pandemic started, you know, there wasn't really any theatre to review. So I started opening that up for look for author posts just kind to help, you know, authors who had books coming out and nowhere to, you know, couldn't go out and do book signings or anything. And that's kind of stuck with us, even though theatre is back, every week, Wednesday evening, we have usually at least one guest author post, and hopefully some theatre. Let's see, I do my Twitter, promoting on to Monday, Tuesday, a lot of times is just kind of, hopefully some writing time. Because I usually have some articles as well, or book reviews. Wednesday, I start working on the next issue and start putting it up, I start putting it we have a blog, also where we usually have some book reviews each week. And I and those go up on Friday morning, and I start on Wednesday, and make sure those get put together and ready to go. And then Thursday, if I can I spend the whole day putting the issue up on the website for Saturday morning. Fridays, kind of a catch all, you know what I didn't get done, goes up on Saturday morning, and I promote the new issue and start the whole cycle again. And I also do promotion on Sunday mornings. So
Wendy Jones:it's seven days a week for you, gosh,
Lorie Lewis Ham:holidays, what's that?
Wendy Jones:I admire you? Because I don't think I could, you know, I work hard, but I don't think I could keep that pace up from magazine is brilliant. So well done. I think you know, I'm quite curious. Because obviously, you will get a lot of submissions, how do you go about choosing exactly which articles and features go in the magazine?
Lorie Lewis Ham:Well, most of them are planned ahead of time. And then we have authors reaching out to us, you know, could you review my book, we also worked through with a lot of the big publishers and they send us lists to choose from. And a lot of what we review comes down to what our reviewers are interested in reading. Does that make sense? Since they're doing it for free, you know, I like to cater to them to a certain degree. There are a few authors, we all you know, fight over. But other than that, we really like to support indie authors as much as possible. Be one myself, I know how hard it can be to get reviews. So we can't try to make a priority out of that. And then authors that we've had a long standing relationship, we've been going for almost 13 years. So there's a lot of authors we've worked with, for a long time. Um, and then with if we can't review their book now anyway, I will ask, Well, would you like to do a midweek guest post and then I start filling those up kind of first come first serve kind of situation. Most of our regular articles are from staff. Once in a while we'll have somebody you know, reach out. We really try hard with those to focus on local entertainment. Quite a bit of local theatre especially, we also have some animal rescues that write monthly columns for us. So those are already, you know, planned out as well. submissions, not staff, like I said author's reaching out to us wanting, you know, hoping to promote their book in some way. And if it if it seems like a good fit for any of our viewers, or if it, you know, seems like something our readers would enjoy hearing about. And then sometimes, we get other people reaching out to us. And if it's a fit, if it works, if it's something maybe that we're passionate about. We also accept mystery short stories, but not nearly as many as we used to. We used to have one a week. Now it's more like maybe one or two among those I actually send off to some of our other staff members to look at first. Yeah, because I just don't have time. And if they say, you know, they say it's good, then I'll take a look and give a yes or no. I don't know if that answered all your questions there.
Wendy Jones:It did it was very good. Yeah. And you've said that it's a local magazine. So how does this help in terms of producing a magazine because it's local?
Lorie Lewis Ham:Well, it's half local and then half you know, the mystery half is everywhere. I mean, the local part is mostly like I said, you know, the arts and things like that and animal rescue. And I feel like a lot of our readers who aren't local are interested in some of the theatre articles in the animal rescue articles and stuff to our readers, though, honestly, are everywhere. And so our writers, we have one who's in Australia, a couple in Missouri. One in Hawaii. So it's not as local as it used to be pretty.
Wendy Jones:They're all in hot places, I might add, not freezing cold Scotland.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Yeah, I think no. Although we try to make things local, we're living in a global environment. So it shifts the face of what we do whatever we're doing, really.
Wendy Jones:Just keeping it local is it's a nice idea. But in practice, you've only got so many locals to read it. So the more international appeal it's got, the better. That's my thoughts. I might be completely wrong with my, under my belt.
Lorie Lewis Ham:No, I agree. And like I said, it started out with the local idea. And that quickly, very quickly changed. And honestly, we probably have just as many or more readers who aren't local as we do local now.
Wendy Jones:Well, you've got one in Dundee in Scotland, that's for sure. I'm quite curious, because often, we only hear about the positive side of publishing such a magazine. But nobody ever mentioned the pitfalls. What are the pitfalls of any? And I have to say, I want to ask as well, was there ever a time where you didn't think everything would come together?
Lorie Lewis Ham:Oh, yes, absolutely. The hardest thing really is more of the technical side of it. When I started out, like I said, my friend designed it. But she has always been chronically ill. She has chronic fatigue and a number of things. And very early on. She was the one putting everything on the website, I was taking care of the business and the writing and that side of it. And one day, suddenly nothing was happening. And she wasn't answering and I found out that she was in the hospital. Yeah, and I'm like, oh, no, what do I do? And I actually I worked with some local teens at the library and got together with one of them who knew more than I did, at least, you know, he had my space in those days. And, and we got together and we figured out how to make it work and get the issue up. And then I gradually had to learn most of it myself, a lot of it is you know, Googling well, how do I make it do this. And, and really, that side of it has been the biggest challenge. It's hard to find people who want to help with that for free, to be honest. And you know, we don't really make that much. Mostly, you know, cover the expenses and things like that. And so that's been the biggest challenge. And honestly, that's kind of where the, the blog, the other website came into play the habit as a backup, if because it's through blogger, and it's pretty easy. Almost anybody could do it. And so if we have issues with the main website, then we've at least got something going up there. And so that's, that's really been the hardest thing. And we honestly almost shut down the main website, a little over a year ago, because Google was making so many changes and requirements and stuff that I didn't that was our current design didn't meet me and I didn't fix it. And we were very blessed. Someone was talking about it was someone that I knew that didn't do. Didn't know she did websites, I knew she was part of the mystery community. And I thought, You know what, I'm going to ask her last ditch to try and save it. What she would charge, you know, could we do like add trade or you know, something? Yeah. And she completely redesigned it for us early last year. And it's been a lifesaver, honestly, because now it's you know, it meets all those Google requirements for now anyway. And that's really been the the most challenging part. I mean, yeah, it's challenging sometimes. When you with our local writers, we've had a pretty high turnover. And then sometimes you've even had like high school students do some local articles and stuff for you know, the experience and we only have our food writer who also does book reviews has been with us since pretty early on. Let's see. And then there's another local entertainment writer that's been with us for a while, but a lot of the local ones have have changed often. And so that that gets to be a challenge. He's like, and sometimes they'll say, Oh, I'm sorry. Um, you know, I didn't have time to do this. And then I've got a fair, okay, well, what am I going to put in its place? So, that's really been the biggest challenges and sometimes, yeah, time. I mean, depending on what day job I might have at the time. It can be a challenge sometimes, and maybe I'll back off and do smaller issues, or, you know, something like that.
Wendy Jones:Yeah, I know where you're coming from, because ours comes out once a month, you know, and, I mean, we've done, we've done one that's out, and then another is about to come out. And you get to the date of the last submission date, and you're sweating and going, there's not going to be enough stuff. And you go from that to, Oh, my goodness, we've got far too much here.What are we going to do? You know? So, it all seems to work out. But it can be a bit hairy. Yeah, but I think it is good to talk about the pitfalls, because, as writers we only ever hear about the good things, we don't find out about the the other side of it really. Now, the question on everybody's lips is do you take submission? If so, how do people submit to you? And do you pay? Although I think you've already answered the do you pay part,
Lorie Lewis Ham:Everybody's volunteer, I mean, they do get a byline and a mini bio, which I feel like is a positive with their writer, because then they can promote, they can promote their book, their website, their blog, whatever they want, in that bio. So I think that's been a big encouragement for people. But yes, we do take submissions, there is a submission link on the website. If somebody wants to go check it out. Mostly, mostly from authors wanting to do you know, doing special doing guest posts for us about their books. Um, some times someone will pitch an idea. And we'll go for it. Not too often. Do people submit things for the local side. The biggest thing, probably submission wise, is short stories. And we do want to keep those definitely under 5000 words, preferably no more than, like 3000 ish in that area. So that's probably one of the biggest ones. And we do take reprints we have no problem with that. As long as you know, you have the rights to it. We try to stay pretty much PG, PG 13 As far as like language, and sex and graphic, you know, things like that. But they can be dark, edgy stories. That's fine. That's probably the main the main thing that we take submissions on.
Wendy Jones:Sounds good. Hey, you might be getting loads of submissions now. You'll be saying, oh, my goodness. Where did all the Scottish submissions come from? People listen to this all over the world. So I can't be blamed for all of it.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Andsomething Animal Rescue related to? So if there's any, there, something like that, or we try during round earth day to do some environmental type ones as well. So
Wendy Jones:So, what would be your advice to anybody who's submitting to a magazine? And I'm going to take the next question as part of it. And anyone writing for a magazine? So writing for and submitting to a magazine?
Lorie Lewis Ham:Well, I think it's really important that you read that magazine and get to know what their contents like I think is probably the most important thing. Don't submit something to someone that you already know, doesn't work. Yeah. I think I really think that's the most important thing get to know. I mean, yeah, you have to check and see what they're willing to look at to and what their guidelines are. But I'd say getting to know the magazine is probably the most important thing.
Wendy Jones:I would agree without really because it's also voice. So for example, you run kings river life, which is a local magazine. I run mom's favourite reads, which is from the title, it's light, it's not a dark magazine. But it does do a lot of different things, you know, so you're not going to submit something to us that's actually suitable for, you know, the Alfred Hitchcock magazine or, you know, really dark stories, or something like that, because you need to know the tone and where you're aiming it. Exactly. I think it's crucial to read. For example, we if i wanted to submit my historical stuff to the Scots magazine, then I'm going to take a completely different approach. than if I was submitting it to history magazine, the BBC history, because one's more academic, the other is more aimed at your general reader. You know, and one of them, you may be focusing on international history, whereas you're focusing on Scottish history in the other. So, I would agree totally without, you have to read it, so you know, where you're aiming at. And that really does shape how you write it, which is why I took those together.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Definitely. I don't submit so much of anything anymore, because I don't have time. But when I was like writing for a local paper or something, you know, I would look and get an idea of, of how they formatted things, or, you know, and what their content was like, and, and stuff. Definitely before I would sit down and write anything.
Wendy Jones:That is really good advice, to be honest. Because you have to know what you're aiming at, at what level you're aiming for that as well. I mean, if you're writing for a really academic magazine, which I did in a past life, because I've worked for universities, then you're taking one approach to it. Whereas if you're writing for People's Friend, which is a local women's magazine here, you're not going to take an academic approach in my way in the slightest, you know, and that's not getting at the People's Friend - it's mainly short stories for women. You know, yeah. So, if you were to give three top takeaways from this session, from my listeners, what would they be?
Lorie Lewis Ham:That that was probably your hardest question on the list you sent me? Um, yeah. Again, back to No, you know, no, who know who you're trying to submit to, you know, get to know them. That's very, very important. And check out the guidelines and just really get to know them. And what would be the others? Running a magazine is not easy. Yeah. Think think before you leave. Yeah. Say yes. If somebody asked you, you know, to step in. And be prepared. If you're going to do something like that, be prepared. I felt like I was prepared. But I didn't never expected to do have to do the website side. So I wish I had known more about that. Being forced the writing side and all that I already knew well, but yeah, be prepared. Whatever, whatever you go into, get to know the medium get to know what you're trying to do. Agreeing to otherwise it's a culture shock.
Wendy Jones:Definitely, it really can be a culture shock. Anyway, moving on from that. So, this is this has been great. A lot of that has been gold dust, and I'm sure my listeners have got a lot. But my final question is always where can my readers find out more about you and your work on the magazine? Of course.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Well, for the magazine, it's just kingsriverlife.com. We are on Facebook for our mystery group. It's a mystery rats' maze Facebook group. For, for me, my own website for my mystery writing. It's mystery rat.com. And then we also have a mystery podcast, which is called mystery rats maze.So that's, that's a lot of the places where you can find out what I'm doing. I'm on Twitter, both for the magazine. And, and for myself, for my writing. I'm on Instagram, KRL magazine. So kind of all over the place.
Wendy Jones:So we type your name in and we find you everywhere. But mystery rot seems to be a good one. I love the title.
Lorie Lewis Ham:It's my thing.
Wendy Jones:And everybody should listen to the mystery rats' podcast as well. Sorry, that was my watch for anybody that had it on. My watch likes to join in the conversation. And the mystery rats is a great podcast, so everybody should listen to it as well as mine. Hey, thank you.
Lorie Lewis Ham:They can submit the podcast as well. So commit to the podcast tell us a first chapter or a short story. Now with those they need to be really short, preferably 2500 words or less. Yeah. And they can you know, go to Kings river life and just submit through that same you know, same email, same format if they want to. The big thing to keep in mind is that we are now planning for 2024 goals so it will be a while. But yeah, we do a lot of is. Usually first chapters and mystery short stories and again, keep them PG 13. Ish. It is okay, if they're dark. That's not a problem at all and some mild language. And there have been some times when we've like, gone ahead and used one, and the author as changed up some, you know, major swear words in it. And then we just if it's a book, we'll do a notification in the in the intro, you know, just so you know, the book does have stronger language. But those are the biggest things.
Wendy Jones:Wow, I have to say I'm impressed with your organisation. How often does this podcast come out? Is it once a week? No, it's twice a month, twice a month? Because I'm, this one is going to come out tomorrow.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Wow. Yeah.
Wendy Jones:I usually do. Push ahead. I've got a lot ahead. But just for various circumstances, I've been firefighting issues and stuff. So I haven't been able to. So I'm really in awe of, you know, obviously, all of you to start with, but no, I'm really in awe of you.
Lorie Lewis Ham:Thank you. It's amazing how long it takes to put together. We have to audition the actors and go through a lot of rehearsals and get it recorded. And then I have the blessing of being married to an audio editor. So he takes care of that side of it. Yeah.
Wendy Jones:this one goes out raw, so to speak. Anyway, it's been an absolute pleasure to spend time with you, Laurie, thank you very much. You too. Thank you for asking me. And I'll be seeing you later tonight. One time. Well, you will another hour, hour and a half at the Sisters in Crime writings.. So thank you very much once again, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Lorie Lewis Ham:You too. Thank you.
Wendy Jones:That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy H Jones. And you can find me at wendyhjones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash Wendy H Jones. I'm alsoWendy H Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing keep reading and keep learning