“Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it.”
—Habakkuk 2:2b, NKJV
What does it take to print a magazine? There are many steps involved, but the first step is a vision about what content you want to put inside the pages of that magazine, and this is the role of the publisher, Marlin Miller. As publisher, he is constantly thinking and praying about the vision for Plain Values, dwelling on these questions: How do we best align the pages of the magazine with our Christian values? Where is God taking us next? How can we best honor God in the work that we do?
Marlin and his wife Lisa started the magazine back in July of 2012 and today—100 issues later—it is plain to see that our vision is to put out a high-quality magazine every month that is based on Christian values. The magazine started as a way to share high-quality ads with our readers; then, Plain Values added editorial content with a mission of sharing stories that inspire, impact, and call to action; last October, Marlin and Lisa gifted the magazine to Room to Bloom, and now a large part of our focus is to promote the beauty of adoption and ascribe dignity to people with Down syndrome and other special needs.
So, we have a vision: but how do you take this and run with it? Let’s start with our salesmen. Every Monday morning, our general manager Kevin Bille and the salesmen meet digitally on Zoom to discuss their game plan for sales. The magazine is split into two parts: the editorial content, and the “Plain Pages”, where the ads are. Our three salesmen sell ads in these four regions. For the Ohio edition, Matt Yoder drives around the hilly backroads, stopping in at small shops from Berlin to Charm talking to folks; for the Michiana edition, Aaron Stutzman gallops across rural Michigan and Indiana communities, making calls to feed stores in Shipshewana and family-owned stores in Goshen and everywhere in-between; and for the Pennsylvania edition, Josh Saufley reaches out to businesses from Lancaster all the way out to Pittsburgh. All three salesman place ads in the National edition, which is currently our fastest growing edition.
Here’s how the process of selling an ad works: let’s say that Matt sells a full-page ad to a Mr. Coblentz in Walnut Creek. After making a sale, Matt discusses the ad with Mr. Coblentz: Who is your target audience? What do you want in your ad? What do you want the ad to look like? Sometimes, the ad requires us to take photos for the client. In this case, our photographer Landon Troyer will go out and take photos of the product. When all this is done, Matt then sends everything along to our graphic designer Seth Yoder. Seth then builds the ad, combining the text and photos in a pleasing way. When Seth is done, he sends it back to Matt, who reviews the ad with Mr. Coblentz. If Mr. Coblentz likes his ad and has no suggested changes, then it is considered finished. Seth sends it on to the production manager Isaac Herschberger, who then takes the ad and fits it in with all the other ads in the Ohio Plain Pages. Meanwhile, back at the office, Bethany Troyer handles the bookkeeping to make sure the sales transaction are handled smoothly, and Jan Schlabach handles customer service to keep our clients happy.
The other important facet of our magazine are our stories. Every month, our writers e-mail me their columns for publication. As the editorial director, I read through each column and edit it. Some of my edits are simple grammatical ones (“delete comma, add period”) and some are more involved (“consider rewriting this paragraph so it flows better”). Each of the writers provides us with stories from their life’s journey, and our readers have the chance to learn from our writers and apply those lessons to their lives. In particular, our feature stories allow writers to do in-depth storytelling, and Marlin and I work together to pick these stories several months—sometimes more than a year—before they are published. Once the editing process is done for all the stories, I send it on to Isaac.
Back on the ground, Isaac has gathered all the information he needs to put together our 100th issue. He has the approved ads, the accepted columns, and the photos. Isaac then fits the different pieces together in a way that flows well from page to page and is easy for our readers to understand.
Once Isaac has built the magazine and the four Plain Pages, everyone on the team carefully looks over the digital proofs, looking for any mistakes. After this is done, Isaac then e-mails the digital proofs over to our printers located at New Philadelphia, Ohio.
Our team has now written the vision of what we want the magazine to look like, but it is our friends over at Freeport Press who “make it plain on tablets”—or, in this case, paper!
The inside of the magazine—the editorial content and all four regions of the Plain Pages—are printed on a heat-set web press. In this type of printing press, the paper is rolled between eight ink-covered rollers that roll color on the page. There are two rollers per color: black, magenta, cyan, and yellow. After the paper is rolled through the web press, it is heated in an oven that helps to “set”—or dry—the pages. This makes sure that the ink doesn’t smear on your fingers, like old newspapers used to do.
The covers of the magazine are printed on a different press known as a single web press. The covers are then wrapped around the inside pages, trimmed to size, and addresses are printed onto the cover. Freeport then delivers it to their local New Philadelphia post office on skids, where they organize, sort, and deliver all 50,000 copies across the United States.
By the time you are reading the page before you, we are already back at the beginning, working on our 101st issue. And that’s what it takes to print Plain Values every month!
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Printing Fun Facts
· It takes about 6 hours to print all 50,000 copies of the magazine (not including the cover)!
· The pages of the magazine are printed fast—50 feet of paper per second! That’s around 34 miles per hour. As a comparison, the famed horse Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby running at 38 miles per hour!
· The pages of our magazine are not printed on printing paper you’d find at your home—they are from large rolls of paper. Each roll is over 5,000 pounds and over 70 inches wide! That means that, if you flipped the roll on its side, it would be about the same height as the average American man, but the roll would weigh as much as five telephone poles!
· Each month, it takes 30,000 pounds of paper to print all our magazines. That is the same weight as thirty telephone poles—or 151 adult men!