…Just did this quickie with an IAM member who's a journalism student at San Francisco State University. One of the good things for me doing interviews is it really really helps me think about what I'm doing — it's why I try and do interviews, even if it's just for a grade 10 english paper. Dunno if it's interesting, but here it is:
What is your background? How did you get into the world of online publications?My more ancient history is mentioned in your final question, so I'll answer this in terms of recent history.
When I left highschool I was publishing several zines and had been running a series of computer BBSes where I not only acted as sysadmin but also wrote tutorials on various subversive subjects. On graduation I rejected my success in technical classes and attended York University on a Fine Arts scholarship. I spent most of that year engaged in escalating criminal behavior and at the end of that story found myself fleeing across the country to evade prosecution.
During this process we started a voice telephony business (and cleaned up our acts). We focused on our flagship idea, the "VoiceBBS", which took everything we'd learned from running BBSes and moved it to a voice model. The Internet was taking off, and the IVR market saw it as the future, so a combination of that and discovering USENET's rec.arts.bodyart is how I got online, and the rest is history I guess...
How did you get the idea for www.bmezine.com?
Simple: it's who I am. That's where it first came from. But "it's who YOU are" is what built it. BME is a giant act of personal expression, created by tens of thousands of people who's convergence creates BME.
What are some innovative features you have brought to bmezine.com?
I don't think BME is particularly innovative. Yes, I think it does things better than most (for example, I think the IAM software is one of the best community engines out there), and as time has shown, people seem to agree, but there's nothing truly innovative about it. BME has been successful because it defined a clear philosophy (rather than a business plan) and stuck to it.
What is your philosophy to running www.bmezine.com?
I tried to sum it up at https://www.bmezine.com/why.html
Do you ever refuse to run content and why?
I refuse to run content that I find severely ethically or morally objectionable such as photos of white power tattoos or articles that promote homophobia. Other than that, as long as the content meets the subject mandate, I try and publish it.
Not that everyone agrees on where the subject line should be drawn — one of the more controversial decisions I've made is blocking piercing gun articles from being published on the site, since I feel that the "piercing gun scene" is neither representative the body modification community, nor is it a positive influence on that community.
Is www.bmezine.com profitable? And if so how?
For its first four years, BME received private sponsorship which entirely covered its operating costs. However, when those companies pulled out after advertising negotiations failed, and it became clear that I couldn't reasonably afford to cover the costs personally, I added to BME's charter the requirement to be a traditionally profitable business.
BME makes money by selling memberships to the erotic and more extreme sections of the site. This also serves the purposes of keeping bandwidth down, generating submissions (since they can be "traded" for access), and of keeping gawkers and children out of sections that are inappropriate for them.
That said, when I added "profitability" to BME's statement of purpose, I also added a community mandate — that is, BME must re-invest those profits in the body modification community, rather than into a company's coffers.
Has has BME branched off into other sources of revenue (store, clothing etc.)?
Yes and no. Yes, we sell clothing, supplies, jewelry, and books, but I wouldn't call them "revenue". I first printed shirts because people (myself included them) wanted to wear them, rather than to make a profit. At present, the modest profits generated by BMEshop, coupled with donations, cover the cost of operating the iam.bmezine.com community site and hosting events (hey, fireworks aren't free!).
BMEbooks, our print publishing division, is currently being run as a break-even project (at best). Its primary goal is to publish body modification books that other publishers shy away from, and to provide the world with documentation of a community that has historically not been recorded.
Do you want to publish a print version of BME?
The advantages to publishing BME online are significant. First and foremost, the upfront costs are low and on the whole, cost scales with interest, so it's a dramatically lower financial burden. In addition, the distribution infrastructure required to publish for a demographic which is large but not geographically dense is prohibitively expensive.
Also, a large part of BME is interative and database driven (things like BME/Risks) and continually updated — this type of reference publishing can't reasonably be done in print.
Finally, the other reason that BME is published online rather than offline is that it seeks to be definitive and exhaustive. The sheer bulk of BME can not be published in print at a reasonable cost. Taking a quick look at the current file-set on BME, if the text only (no pictures) were to be printed as a book, it would be nearly 70,000 pages long. For comparison, the average monthly magazine would take fifty years to publish that much, and that's if you include their advertising spaces as content (BME does not run ads).
Do you have any previous experience in the publishing world?
My father was the editor of "Videotext Journal" in the early 80's, so I grew up not just in the publishing world, but also in the online interactive communications world. As a young child I had the opportunity not only to use advanced communications technologies, but to meet and learn from many of the industry's key players and researchers. In addition, ever since I could write, I've published comics, zines, movies, and other small independent media projects.
