The Future of The Motherhood Muse

A big thank you to everyone who has participated in our first ever blog tour! Thank you to the column writers for contributing with their interviews. Thank you to each blog hostess for supporting The Motherhood Muse by hosting us on your blog. And thank you to all the readers of the blog tour. Blog hostesses and winners will receive their free 2010 digital issues at the conclusion of the blog tour.

And now... We are excited for our first writing contest (the deadline is tomorrow at midnight EST)! Our third issue is in the works and will be published digitally in July! And our first children's poetry contest (deadline June 1st) is approaching. So many fun firsts!

On a personal note, I am having a blast publishing and editing The Motherhood Muse Literary Magazine. I have so many submissions to read through, each one touches my heart and makes me eager to share it with the world, well all of the subscribers of the magazine thus far.

But this brings me to another note, subscriptions. Thank you to every one who has subscribed to the magazine! Your efforts to support The Motherhood Muse community means a lot to me. In order to keep the magazine going in 2011, however, I still need to get at least 190 more subscribers! While that number may seem small, in the newness of the digital world of literature, it is a lot. So please tell your friends, families, coworkers, writers groups, strangers :) all about The Motherhood Muse! Gift subscriptions are easy to do as you just enter in the gift recipient's email address during the checkout process.

I am anticipating each future issue theme as each one is unique and will hopefully inspire writers to push their writing outside of the box. Please consider submitting your writing to our magazine for publication!

Thank you again everyone for a fun and successful blog tour!
Kim Zook

Going Green: A Digital World of Literature

The Motherhood Muse literary magazine is celebrating the publication of its second issue by going on a blog tour during the month of April. Bloggers who host The Motherhood Muse will receive a free subscription to the 2010 issues as well as one free subscription to give away to one random winner who comments on their blog the day of The Motherhood Muse post. We hope everyone will enjoy both the post and magazine! The Motherhood Muse blog tour schedule can be found at www.themotherhoodmuse.com and themotherhoodmuse.blogspot.com .

Going Green: A Digital World of Literature

Our children are growing up reading more online than we ever did at their age. From instant messaging to Facebook updates to blogging to texting, generations younger than us are comfortable with reading digital material in a way that we may never feel. Email didn’t come to my generation until we were of college age. Just as my eyes started to grow accustomed to reading text on my computer it seemed like the world jump started into a digital format. Now as magazines and newspapers are closing their doors, many publications are turning towards becoming digital.

Being digital isn’t just about surviving in today’s market. It is about launching into a future that is making tomorrow a greener world for our children. It is about enhancing the way information is presented and received. It is about connecting a community of people on an international scale.

The digital world of literature includes websites, blogs, Zines sent electronically, Kindle, Nook & Zinio subscriptions and in digital magazines such as The Motherhood Muse. Given these various formats for sharing literature in today’s world, The Motherhood Muse has chosen the digital magazine format with ePaperflip to publish literature on motherhood, nature and child. Due to the newness of digital literature, the following questions often arise:

“Why create a digital magazine instead of simply putting the literature on a website and updating it frequently?”

We believe the integration of literature with artwork helps to create an overall design to tell a story. Nature is best experienced with all of our senses. We are able to engage a reader’s senses in our magazine with the use of artwork complimenting the literature in the design of the magazine. A second advantage to creating a digital magazine is the load time is minimal compared to waiting for a PDF file to upload onto the computer screen!

“Are paper copies still an option?”

The fantastic option with digital magazines is the reader can pick and choose which pages to print. In so doing, the reader may create customized magazine that matches personal interests. By being a digital-only magazine we can create text and images that aren’t hindered by the print production process.

“What exactly can a digital magazine do?”
A digital magazine is interactive. In each issue of The Motherhood Muse we provide numerous links to author’s websites and blogs, writing opportunities, nature activities in your local area, books on motherhood, nature, writing and more. By being online we’re able to reach international audiences and connect everyone on an immediate, global scale.

We are thrilled to be able to publish an eco-friendly magazine that helps link readers to resources as well as join readers on a global scale. Of course it would be great to flip through a glossy paper version of The Motherhood Muse in a wood paneled library or in a chair of a local coffee shop. But being digital means making tomorrow a greener world for our children and that’s the mission of The Motherhood Muse!

Thank you for reading this post today. Please leave a comment here and the blog hostess will choose one person to receive a free subscription to the 2010 issues! We hope you’ll also sign up for our free e-newsletter, so you can receive the first issue of the magazine free! Stop by www.themotherhoodmuse.com for more information!

Blog Tour Schedule

Several outstanding, original blogs have offered to host us during the month of April, so The Motherhood Muse is going on tour!

Each weekday of April we will be blogging on a different topic on various blogs. Please see our blog tour schedule below to follow us! Simply click on the day and topic to visit the blog who hosts us!

Each blog hostess will choose one person at random who comments on the blog post to receive a free subscription to the 2010 issues of our magazine, so comment away! And we still have days available if you would like to host us on your blog! Please email editor{at}themotherhoodmuse{dot}com if interested!

April 1st - On Starting a Digital Magazine
April 2nd - Writing About Motherhood and Nature at EarthMama
April 5th - 101 Essentials for Mother Nature Muses at Writing the Waves of Motherhood
April 6th - A Natural Woman at The Divine Gift of Motherhood
April 7th - A Day in the Life of a Writer/Editor/SAHM
April 8th - The Ick and Awe of a Nature Journal at Writers Inspired
April 9th - Tapping into Motherhood and Nature via Poetry at The Mother Daughter Book Club

April 12th - Nature & Child Reunion: Part 1 at The Beautification Project

April 13th - Nature & Child Reunion: Part 2 at Dirt Don't Hurt

April 14th - Nature & Child Reunion: Part 3 at The Writing Mother
April 15th - Going Green: A Digital World of Literature at Reality Mom
April 16th - Mother Nature's Library at Remains of the Day
April 19th - An Interview with Andrea Lani at Blogging Mama
April 20th - An Interview with Loren Christie at Chocolate Reality
April 21st - An Interview with Catherine Lang at Zook Book Nook
April 22nd - Earth Day: What's Your Footprint? at The International Mom's Blog
April 23rd - An Interview with Jodi Hiland at Dude, Where Am I?
April 26th - An Interview with Andrea Halpin-White at Write the Journey
April 27th - An Interview with Mary Jo Campbell at Life On Its Own Terms
April 28th - Tweets and Stumbles in Mother Nature at Motherlogue
April 29th - A Challenge to Change the World at Scribbly Katia
April 30th - The Future of The Motherhood Muse

The Motherhood Muse Blog Tour

The Motherhood Muse literary magazine is celebrating the publication of its second issue by going on a blog tour during the month of April. Bloggers who host The Motherhood Muse will receive a free subscription to the 2010 issues as well as one free subscription to give away to one random winner who comments on their blog the day of The Motherhood Muse post. We hope everyone will enjoy both the post and magazine! The Motherhood Muse blog tour schedule can be found at www.themotherhoodmuse.com and themotherhoodmuse.blogspot.com . Please visit Earth Mama for tomorrow's post on Writing about Motherhood and Nature!

On Starting a Digital Magazine

Blogging is fantastic way to share stories online. After blogging for over a year at Zook Book Nook, I realized my biggest thrill as a blogger was reading blogs written by others who truly moved me with their voice, ideas, interpretations of the world around them and more. When my second daughter was only six weeks old, I found myself wanting to read what other mothers had to say about nature, because I spent most of my days indoors with a 22 month old and a newborn despite it being the month of June. Thus, I decided to create an online compilation of writings by women (and men) in the form of a digital magazine, called The Motherhood Muse!

Starting a magazine has been easier than I thought it would be. So easy, that I write this post for those interested in creating a digital magazine of their own! Here are the steps I have taken to get my magazine off the ground and running:

1. Find a niche. This is the most important step, because your magazine needs to do two things: fit your passion, knowledge, and experience as well as fill a hole in the literary world. I asked myself: What do I have the most expertise in and what is missing in today’s market of magazine? The answer to my question was creative writing on motherhood and nature.

2. Know the competition. Before I created The Motherhood Muse I already read and subscribed to a few magazines that publish creative writing on motherhood or nature. I studied these magazines for their layout designs, content, marketing tactics, readership, and more. So when I began to create the first issue of my magazine I wasn’t reinventing the wheel, yet I also strived to create something original.

3. Decide on a name. Before developing a website, blog, and magazine, it is crucial to choose the right name for it all. A name that summarizes exactly what your “stuff” is all about. For me, motherhood relates to Mother Nature and mothers and muse is all about writing and inspiration. But before you take the name you come up with and run with it, make sure it isn’t already in use!

4. Create a website. Before the magazine and blog, I first created the website using the host Fat Cow and a background design by The Cutest Blog on the Block. The design runs on Joomla, which I had to teach myself how to use. I am a novice in web design, but the Joomla tutorials have made it easy to learn the basics of setting up a website that includes a shop and more.

5. Next came the blog. Even if the blog is basic, it is best to get it established in the beginning, so readers can begin to follow it. I am still in the early stages of developing The Motherhood Muse blog as I don’t put much time into it yet, but it is there to give the community of reader s and writers a source of more information.

6. Scheduling the release of the first issue. I gave myself six months to create the first issue of the magazine. This gave me enough time to find column writers and begin the advertising/marketing side of things.

7. Finding writers. Fortunately I found writers online who I knew from blogging. I was familiar with their style of writing, and asked a variety of writers to write for The Motherhood Muse that matches their blog style. I also began seeking contributors by posting information in various places online: SCBWI, Verla Kay, Editor Unleashed, Writer’s Digest, Poets & Writers, etc.

8. Advertising and Marketing. I designed a logo using Photoshop, created postcards with Overnight Prints and Vista Print, and created an advertising button to post on blogs and websites. The postcards were sent to women, authors, mothers, writing centers, nature centers, etc across the world in the hope that I’d gain subscribers and contributors.

9. Creating the first issue. Finally I was ready to begin designing the first issue of the magazine! The fun began with choosing a theme for the first issue that would resonate with many people (metamorphosis), designing the layout, asking different authors permission to reprint their essays in the first issue, and creating the artwork to accompany the writing. I found many images on iStockphoto and used Adobe Photoshop to alter and/or create images. I created the issue in Word and then converted it into a PDF.

10. Becoming digital. Once I had the final PDF file I submitted it to ePaperflip. This group then converted it into a digital magazine and gave me the URL link to view the digital magazine online. It’s amazing to have a magazine online where the pages actually flip, each page can be magnified to the highest degree, any text or images I choose can be clicked on to link the reader to another website, and it’s all green! No paper is wasted. No ink is utilized. And it never gets lost as it can be bookmarked on your computer.

The Motherhood Muse literary magazine is one of several new digital magazines, but it is the only digital magazine featuring creative essays, short stories, poetry, columns, artwork and more on the theme of motherhood and nature. But there are many more literary niches that need to be filled, especially digitally, so I hope you’ll consider giving it a shot and creating a magazine of your own one day. If you have any personal questions about the details of starting a digital magazine, please feel free to email me at editor(at)themotherhoodmuse(dot)com. Thank you! I look forward to reading your comments!

Thank you for reading this post today. Please leave a comment here and we will choose one person to receive a free subscription to the 2010 issues! Stop by www.themotherhoodmuse.com for more information!

Please visit http://earthmama101.blogspot.com/ tomorrow for the next step in our blog tour!

The Motherhood Muse Blog Tour

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

The Motherhood Muse literary magazine is going on its first ever blog tour to celebrate the brilliant, original writing of its authors on motherhood and nature! And of course we are also celebrating Earth Day as we embark on this tour during April.

If you are interested in hosting us on your blog or website during April please send an email to me, Kim, at editor {at} themotherhoodmuse {dot} com. Each blog who hosts us will receive a free subscription to the four 2010 issues of the magazine as well as one free subscription to the 2010 issues to give away on your own blog to a person who comments on the post. Each blog host will also receive credit in our Summer 2010 issue with a direct URL link to your blog.

Below is our blog tour schedule with already written posts to make it easier for you! But we are also open to being interviewed with your own questions if you prefer to do it that way.

So please check out the schedule and email us if you are interested in a particular day and topic!

April 1st - On Starting a Digital Magazine
April 2nd - Writing About Motherhood and Nature
April 5th - 101 Essentials for Mother Nature Muses
April 6th - A Natural Woman
April 7th - A Day in the Life of a Writer/Editor/SAHM
April 8th - The Ick and Awe of a Nature Journal
April 9th - Tapping into Motherhood and Nature via Poetry
April 12th - Nature & Child Reunion: Part 1
April 13th - Nature & Child Reunion: Part 2
April 14th - Nature & Child Reunion: Part 3
April 15th - Going Green: A Digital World of Literature
April 16th - Mother Nature's Library
April 19th - An Interview with Andrea Lani
April 20th - An Interview with Loren Christie
April 21st - An Interview with Catherine Lang
April 22nd - Earth Day: What's Your Footprint?
April 23rd - An Interview with Jodi Hiland
April 26th - An Interview with Andrea Halpin-White
April 27th - An Interview with Mary Jo Campbell
April 28th - Tweets and Stumbles in Mother Nature
April 29th - A Challenge to Change the World
April 30th - The Future of The Motherhood Muse

Please check back here by the first of April to see an updated list of where we will be stopping on our blog tour!

January Blog Tour

The Motherhood Muse will be going on a blog tour in January! Each day we will be a guest on different blogs. The host bloggers and a random individual who comments each day will receive a free one-year subscription to The Motherhood Muse literary magazine.

If you are interested in hosting The Motherhood Muse on your blog during January, please send an email to editor(at)themotherhoodmuse(dot)com. We are happy to write a guest post for your blog or if you wish to interview us that works too.

Happy Thanksgiving!