How to create and publish an elementary school literary magazine?

October 19, 2017 4:54 PM

Hi, I am helping to start a literary magazine at my children's elementary school. The kids will (ideally) be very involved in designing and editing it. What software/sites/apps/etc. should we consider using to create and publish it? More inside...

Hi, I am helping to start a literary magazine at my children's elementary school. The kids will (ideally) be very involved in designing and editing it. What software/sites/apps/etc. should we consider using to create and publish it?

A few relevant details... We'd like to put out 2-3 digital editions and one print edition per year. Digital distribution should be easy -- via email and/or having a home on the web. Our design standards are high and we want it to look beautiful, but also we want the kids to be able to help with layout and design elements. So basically we're looking for something that is super user friendly and easy to learn, yet offers decent customization. Definitely want a rich, artsy experience and not an MS Word/Clip Art situation.

Cost is an issue but it doesn't have to be free. We could make a one-time purchase but would look to avoid anything with ongoing costs. Also, anything that includes any kind of advertising would be a no go.

The kid editorial team will be largely "high ability" 9-11 year olds. They don't need to carry out every step of the process but should feel a high degree of ownership.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

posted by mandlebrotz to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Best answer: Publisher is an MS product and not entirely terrible. It has the benefit of already being free with most Office packages. It also has a drag and drop interface that may already be familiar to your students. The trickiest aspect is that the layers can be a bit of a pain to work with, but it does for as a WYSIWYG print layout tool.
posted by codacorolla at 5:11 PM on October 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You want to look for "alternatives to InDesign," which is the top-of-the-line publishing industry layout software. (I love ID - but it's not cheap, has a steep learning curve, and annoyingly not backwards compatible; files made in one edition can't be opened by older versions. Would not recommend ID for students even if you had the budget.)

Five free alternatives:
Scribus, which has a steep learning curve,
Lucidpress, free version limited to 3-page documents; subscription based ($6/month single user if you buy a whole year at once)
Vivadesigner, freemium, has browser and desktop options; has personal-commercial-educational pricing; students version is $70
Canva, online only; good for fliers and posters, possibly troublesome for multi-page documents
InDesign Trial (blech, no, "30 days if you've never used it before" is not a reasonable suggestion.)

Older article (may not all be available anymore) with 10 alternatives, incl MS Publisher and Quark XPress.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:50 AM on October 20, 2017

Response by poster: Thank you so much! This is really helpful.
posted by mandlebrotz at 4:40 AM on October 23, 2017

I would add to this, after thinking a bit, that MS Publisher doesn't do Text Wrapping very well (that I remember, anyway). So let's say you have a style in mind for a 3 page story, and you want it consistent across all three pages, you're going to have to do a lot of tweaking with that to get it to fit. I feel like a pricier piece of software might do that for your automatically with less headache. Something to keep in mind.

At the very least, you probably already have Publisher for free, so it's easy to do some test cases with the material you have from your students and figure out if that's a problem or not.
posted by codacorolla at 1:55 PM on October 23, 2017