I'm a bit late getting into this thread but I've got some ideas for this I'd like to run by the group. Down river from me in the University district there is a guy
who puts out these simple 4 page trivia papers called "Tidbits". He makes his money selling advertising in them as he distributes them around all the restaurants, fast food places, grocery stores etc. He purchased into a franchise where he has a certain number of counties with prime towns and cities to work around. It's a one man operation where he uses Microsoft Publisher to set the things up. All his content comes on a disc he receives each month which has four topics. (one for each week)
Now, a guy I know works at a small printing company who told me they print the things for him. He mentioned they have this cheap white paper they use and they save all their remnants of printing ink each week to where they can mix as much together to come up with some "gawd awfull" color to print these with in that one color. When you mix colors together willie nillie they turn to mud brown, so the printers try to come up with something that's plesant and dark enough to look good on the white paper. They do this for him for cheap
in order to keep another business going so their company appears to have plenty of customers. The cost of the paper and equipment/labor is about what they charge him for. (I guess they figure someday he may hook up with something better and bring more business to them)
But the point I'm getting at is that if we did set up content about these bikes
that could be mined from post here and set up to print out then these could be distributed to small bicycle shops, barber shops, hobby shops, tobacco stores, and news stands. I've seen plenty of news paper type bicycling papers around bike shops where each one covers a state. Where I live Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia all come together and the bike shops have three stacks of these delivered at the beginning of each month.
The "Tid Bits" is two 17" x 11 sheets of paper folded in the centers and inserted together. (not even stapled) They are usually some shade of Green, Purple, Blue, Brown, or Violet. Usually there's a stack of these left around the cash registers of businesses each thursday evening and friday morning. Each week some trivia topic is what it's about. Topics like: The Lowdown on Lodging, Is This The End, Penguins, Will They Remember, Pop Culture Dads, and things like that.
The guy who runs this business charges some steep prices to advertise in these things but there is a cult following for them. The trivia stories in them are addictive and habit forming. LOL
The printer always places his 3"x3" free ad on the bottom of the inside back cover. The guy who owns the Tid Bits biz always prints his name on the front as the Publisher. When I spoke with him awhile back he told me he the little stories are on his disc and all he has to do is lay it out in publisher. Almost all
photo & illustration is in the advertisements. The text just leads the eye thru the ad's.
As a last note on printers and software, Page Maker has been a favorite of
many layout desingers but Adobe's InDesign has edged it out. Most printers
of the small mom and pop shops have used Quark for setting up for their printing equipment. In past years they made lots of money telling people they had to take the writers Page Maker files and re do them Quark. The writer didn't realize there was a software they used made by Markzware called
PM2Q which would automatically convert PageMaker files to Quark files. Yet
$200 fees weren't uncommon for the conversion which took just a few minutes. I don't know how the printer delt with printing the Tid Bits which the
owner told me he set up in MS Publisher. (if that really was what he used)
As for Motorbicycling's publication.......it could start out as a 4 page 17" x 11
folded in half. If it caught on it could have a second section inserted into it.