Like Dylan's "Johnny," I'm "in the backroom mixing up the medicine." I'm doing what an editor does, getting everything to press. Like Johnny, I need someone "on the pavement worrying" about sales. Like Saul, I need my Mort, someone in the front of the store.
Since Atención died, almost a year ago, the sun has been shining brightly on Lokkal. After years of cultivating these fields, getting ready for this moment, I'm making hay, working long into the night, like I'm afraid it might rain tomorrow.
If I do say so myself, I deserve a lot of credit for seeing the writing on the wall regarding our beloved periodical. For a long while there, Atención was only a shade of its former self. It was running on empty, especially towards the end. Now, after filling a gap for years, Lokkal has the field to itself. In terms of community publications we are the heir-apparent.
I also deserve credit for seeing what is yet to come. I'm looking for individuals who respect my gift of prophesy regarding publishing in San Miguel, in particular, someone to go out there and pick up the money.
If you build it, they will come. And they have. I'm doing my considerable best, and people are noticing. I say, "Since the demise of Atención, I've become a big man." Then, rising up on my tiptoes by way of illustration, I add, "I've grown six inches."
The main growth has been a quadrupling, quintupling or sextupling of the number of our articles in Lokkal's San Miguel Sunday Magazine. Since the start of the magazine in 2015, it was a struggle to publish three articles each week. For almost a year now, that numer has been over ten, and for the last half year it's been 15, give or take.
One very recent Sunday, I published 19 articles (11 in English and 8 in Spanish), which is really too many. But some had time-value and others were "columns" by authors who were going to submit another article the next week. I've got a small backlog of articles, and am even rejecting submissions, sending some back to the author with guidance for revisions.
A chief factor in all this growth is my assistant Luisa. A Virgo herself, she can withstand my attention to detail and muster her own. She's taken over a lot of the nuts and bolts work involved in getting articles and event information onto the website and newsletters. She's translating the articles into Spanish.
Her assistance has allowed me to take better care of business (the function of an publisher), and to better work with writers, and find more of them (the function of an editor). With her, at an opening, in front of a group I joked that Luisa was my clone. Laughing, along with everyone else, she quickly retorted, "Well, except for the beard."
With that beard I might pass as the creative genius in the background, but I need someone "prettier" to beat the bushes, to keep Lokkal in front of business owners, to make them aware that Lokkal is many times a better value (in terms of the number of impressions and the ease of conversion - all they have to do is click) than Atención ever was, at least over the 12 years that I've been in town.
I need someone who is already very socially involved, out and about, at all the right places, a social butterfly; someone who wants to monetize that sociability working the front end of Lokkal's shop. I need someone to inform business owners, "We can do this and that for your business; regular articles, product spotlights on our This Week newsletter, a banner ad..." and then, to pass the job back to me and let me fulfill the order, get it done.
If you build it they will come. Yes, but you'd better be ready when they do. Lately, practically and personally, I feel that I am. And while I do not have time to go out and pick up the money, a few clients, new advertisers, are sending it in on their own, which, of course, makes things easier.
It also feels like the right time for someone with business accumen to come along and lend a hand, with or without investing money. Local internet is a comer... not just here in San Miguel. (Your Morelia?)
Anyway, with Luisa now steady in the saddle, with low season upon us, with yesterday's Friday newsletter behind me, with tomorrow's San Miguel Sunday already in the can, after my traditional multi-hour recuperative Saturday siesta (it is a little odd waking up as the sun is setting), I've sat down and written you the email that I've been intending for weeks (is it a month?) now.
Santa María de Guido, Morelia
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Thanks for sending the copy of the final issue of your magazine. Coming from you, unsuprisingly it is terrifically impressive. Thanks also, so much for refering me to your "My Colonia and Welcome to It." The piece is perfect. I look forward to publishing it, but not too far forward.
Did you already make a visit to San Miguel? Did I, with all my frantic hay-making, miss you? Please let me know when you are coming, or coming again.
In my person I've suffered an arrogance along with a certain morbid humility; strange twins with whom I am coming to peace. It is great rubbing shoulders with you, a greatness which is pivotal to my success.
Please stay in touch,
David
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