Another MagCloud Calendar

Inexpensive publishing on demand works for calendars, too.

Monument Valley

Lake Powell

Cactus Hill

Antelope Canyon

Oregon Coast

Crescent Bar

Helicopter Cherries

Quincy Lakes

Lake Pleasant

Sedona

Grand Canyon

N630ML

I spent much of Thanksgiving Day and this morning assembling my 2011 Flying M Air Wall Calendar. I had to hurry to meet the noon PST deadline for 1/2 price printing on MagCloud.

Calendar SampleThis is the second year in a row that I’ve created a calendar for my clients and other folks. It’s a typical 8.25 x 10.5 inch (folded) wall calendar. Open it and a full-page photo appears at the top with a calendar grid beneath it. The calendar includes U.S. Holidays (sorry, Canada), moon phases, and mini-calendars.

The thumbnails on this page represent the main images in the calendar, in the order in which they appear. The calendar also features about 20 smaller images, including panoramic images, related to each main image. I made all the photos for this year’s calendar with the exception of two cherry drying photos made by one of my clients.

I created the calendar with an InDesign template I first used last year. I had to update all the dates and replace all the images. I put about 10 solid hours of work into it this year.

Once the calendar was finished, I saved it as a MagCloud-compatible PDF and uploaded the 29MB file to MagCloud. Their system processed it immediately, creating a page with previews. I set options and entered a description for the calendar and clicked Publish. The calendar is now available to the public for $9.95 plus shipping.

I wrote about MagCloud last year after a blog reader told me about it. I now use it for all my printed marketing materials and am in the process of writing a full-color book I plan to publish with MagCloud. Last year around this time, I wrote about using MagCloud to create my 2010 Flying M Air Wall Calendar.

Calendar SampleThe reason I had to finish today by noon is that MagCloud was running a 50% off sale. (Follow @MagCloud on Twitter to learn about special deals like that; they ran a 25% off sale for Halloween.) I needed to buy 75 calendars and I wanted to buy them at half off. I finished with 20 minutes to spare, placed my order on time, and saved over $200.

I spread the word on Twitter and a handful of my Twitter friends also bought at a discount. Apparently, some kind of sale is still running, because as I type this, the MagCloud price is $8.55.

The calendar makes a nice little gift for anyone interested in travel or helicopters. I don’t have nearly as many photos of my helicopter in this year’s calendar as last year’s. Instead, I concentrated on travel photos.

One thing I do want to point out: if you order on MagCloud, you’ll have to punch your own hole to hang it. MagCloud publishes magazines, not calendars, so there’s no option to have them punch the hole.

Check it out on MagCloud and let me know what you think.

Gift Giving

Buying the right gift.

I stumbled upon an article in Slate Magazine titled “The Sovereign vs. the Idiot: What kind of gift-giver are you?” by Joel Waldfogel. Its lead paragraph includes the following factoid:

Most of the time, people choose purchases for themselves and only buy things that they expect to value at or above the price they pay. With gifts, by contrast, recipients end up with items that givers guess that the recipients might appreciate.

The result of all this, according to the article, is that we often pay more than we should for items that may or may not be appreciated by the recipients. In other words, we don’t get as much satisfaction for our money. The article, which is about the economics of gift giving goes into more details.

The article brings me back to the days when Christmas shopping was a chore that required multiple trips to department stores and malls for gifts that would allow me to check off names on a list. In those days, the main concern was the people on the list, my budget, and what each recipient might like. Not would like, mind you. Might like. In those days, it seemed more important to check off the names than to get a truly appropriate and appreciated gift. I bought a lot of crap from those department store displays — you know, the rotating tie racks, the scarf and glove sets, the gift-packaged cologne. Easy gifts chosen by the store’s marketing department rather than the giver, generic gifts of the one-size-fits-all variety.

I was younger then. Not busier, but younger and less wise. Since then, I’ve realized that gift giving is more than just checking off names on a list. It’s finding the right gift for each person.

In my family, we cheat. In late November, we e-mail each other a list of items we’d like to get. Sometimes we include links to the items online. This is even easier if we maintain an Amazon.com wish list (as I do) or some other gift registry. Then we discuss it with each other to make sure there are no duplicates and shop online.

For example, suppose my sister in law had a wish list at the Gap that included 5 different items. I’d go check out her wish list and see that my budget allowed me to buy her two of them. (I always pick the ones that I like, too.) I’d then e-mail my sister and mother and tell them which items I was buying so neither of them would buy the same thing. They might each buy something else on the Gap list or perhaps something from another list. As a result, my sister in law would get exactly what she wanted with no duplicates.

It goes the same way with big gifts. Suppose my brother wanted some heavy-duty power tool. The price tag might be beyond what I’d normally spend, but if my sister chipped in, we could get it together. He’d get exactly what he wanted and my sister and I would both be done shopping for him within minutes.

In my case, Christmas shopping has become very easy. Not only do I buy just about all my gifts online these days, but I have them shipped right to the recipient. In the case of family members this year, they’re shipped right to the place the recipients will be — at my mother’s house. (She has already confirmed receipt of two of the three packages that will arrive.) If I was there, I’d take them from their shipping boxes and wrap them. But since I’m not, the shipping boxes become the wrapping. True, it’s not as attractive, but no one seems to mind. The only thing I miss is seeing the recipient’s faces as they pull out the gifts they really wanted.

I actually give gifts year-round. Not every day or week, mind you. Just occasionally. You know how it is. You go on vacation and see a shirt that’s perfect for a friend. There’s no reason for a gift, but the match is so good you can’t resist. So you buy it and bring it to your friend. I did this after my Thanksgiving trip. We’d been to a place called “Stan’s” and they sold t-shirts that said, in big letters, “If found, return to Stan’s” on the back of the shirt. I have a friend named Stan and I thought he’d get a kick out of it. So we bought it and gave it to him. I have another friend that we tease with SpongeBob SquarePants items. Every time I see something cool (but small; he lives in a fifth wheel), we pick it up for him. Gifts like these are seldom expensive, but they’re usually a good (or at least fun) match for the recipient. I get more pleasure out of giving these random gifts than Christmas or birthday gifts. I think it’s because it’s unexpected by the recipient and it makes them feel just a tiny bit special to be thought of for no apparent reason.

And isn’t that what gift giving is about? Making the recipient feel as if you’ve been thinking about him/her and what he/she might like?