PUBLISHING BOOT CAMP ON SECOND AVENUE

 

Learning to publish a magazine on the fly with no budget and minimal staff…

During the summer of 1977, I was working construction in the Nashville area and hating it when I ran into my high school compadre Thom King one afternoon at Shakey’s Pizza in Green Hills. Thom had just launched Take One magazine, Nashville’s first true alternative publication, and I wanted in on the fun. Over a pitcher of beer, I convinced him to bring me on as a music critic, something I had a few years of experience with, previously writing for the local music rag Hank as well as the Illinois-based publication Sunrise while we were in school together.

Little did I know, at the time, what I was getting myself into…somewhere around the magazine’s second year, the already-miniscule staff attempted an editorial coup and ended up leaving en masse, with only myself, Thom and his brother John, and a couple other writers (Scott Perry and Sam Borgerson) remaining. From the original office space on the third floor in the Goodie’s warehouse, we moved down the street a block to a pre-Civil War warehouse at 176 Second Ave North with lots of space, no heat or air conditioning, more than a few mice, and a flock of pigeons living on the top floor. Stairs between floors were non-existent, and the freight elevator broke down frequently, but the rent was cheap as hell, a necessity for a publication with a shoestring budget.

In the wake of the staff exodus, Thom, John, and I (and sometimes Sam) had to wear many hats, and our office became a literal ‘boot camp’ in periodical publishing. With their vast experience, Thom and John taught me the ins-and-outs of photography; I learned to typeset the magazine’s articles on a Compugraphic CompuWriter II phototypesetter, a $6,000 behemoth that weighed close to 600 pounds and which would become obsolete in a few years when the PC pioneered the technology era. We pasted the resulting galleys (strips of photographic paper with text) to gridded boards with hot wax to create “camera ready” copy for the printer, leaving holes (with appropriately-sized Rubylith inserts where photos would go). From writing to typesetting to lay-out, I learned just about everything from A-Z in publishing a magazine.

I even got involved in advertising – not from a sales perspective (which was handled largely by Thom and, later, Bob Millard and others) – but in collections. It was amazing how many local businesses were willing to stiff a small, struggling publication, and Thom would send me out in full biker regalia to collect what was owed. Since a percentage of these collections were all the money I made from the magazine, I encouraged, coaxed, and chastised accounts into paying. A local hairdresser, who always paid on time, came up with a scheme where he’d slip me an extra $50 to come stomping into his salon and threaten him in front of his assembled friends and customers, so that he could tell me that he’d pay when he was damn well ready.

He came off as a tough guy (he wasn’t) but I went along with his charade ‘cause I was basically living at the magazine office for much of 1978 and making $40 a week…just enough for gas for my ’73 Satellite Sebring and beer and pizza on Friday nights. Thom’s parents made sure that we had enough food to eat during the week (although to this day I can’t stand pimento cheese on white bread) and Sunday dinners at their house was a treat (Mr. and Mrs. King were genuinely nice people who treated me like a third son). Thom wasn’t getting rich off of Take One, either, and even when he temporarily sold a controlling interest in the magazine he used the cash to pay off the bills we’d already racked up publishing Take One.

Take One's makeshift office cubicles

For a few months, Take One relocated from Second Avenue to an office above the concession stand at Fair Park on Nolensville Road when the scion of a wealthy Nashville family invested in the magazine. The naïve young man was in love with one of our lovely young female photographers and, after a lengthy courtship (Thom milked him for every free dinner and handball game he could), a corporation was formed, money was spent, and we had to move the monster typesetter to the second-floor office at Fair Park. Thom’s new partner invited me to his Belle Meade mansion (with a Ferrari in the garage) for dinner to offer an insulting $50 a week to keep doing the job that I was essentially doing for free. He ended up writing me a check for $300 to leave without harming him (something I really had no thoughts of doing) which I subsequently used to pay off my tab at Shakey’s Pizza.

If the rich kid ever saw the hundreds of dollars of handball equipment that I bought on his credit card during one of his numerous games with Thom (and later sold out of the back of my car at the club), he never mentioned it (he gave me the card to drink at the club bar while he and Thom were “talking” bizniz). Still, his investment allowed us to feature color covers and interior photos, pump up the page count, and publish a fairly impressive-looking zine. Sadly, his ardor cooled a bit after a few months, after he’d married the photographer he lusted after, and he sold the magazine back to Thom for a pittance. We dragged the 600-pound typesetter down the stairs and back to Second Avenue where, since there was still money left in the corporate account, we published a couple more issues before looking for another investor.

After an educational year living in abject poverty in a too-hot or too-cold warehouse with a century of dirt and dust floating around, I moved from Nashville to Detroit to start writing the second chapter of adulthood. I continued writing for Take One and, when a negligent investor basically bankrupted the magazine, I wrote for its successor, The Nashville Gazette, even covering the 1980 Republican Convention in Detroit where Ronnie Raygun was coronated and the conservative era of American politics was born. I consider my time with Take One as well-spent, a crash course in publishing that no school could offer, and I’ve carried those lessons forward as I attempt to establish my own book publishing company.

I’m not sure how we did it, but Take One magazine published 28 issues over roughly 2½ years, on a more or less monthly basis (as Thom always said, “some months are longer than others”) with little or no budget but lots of passion and enthusiasm. I remained friends with Thom until his premature death in 2020 and subsequently worked with him at both his plastics company (Kingpins) and on various book publishing project. This archival site has been created to honor Thom’s memory and that of his first great idea, Take One magazine!

Thanx and a tip o’ the hat to former Take One staffer Larry Glick, who donated a bundle of the magazines and thus inspired this project…