Welcome to THE INFO STORY by Benn Dunnington, Publisher Here, for the first time in print is the complete history of INFO Magazine. It is a story about what any slightly fanatic consumer can do with a cheap, powerful, personal computer, a patient and understanding family, and enough naiveté to not know any better! It all started back in the Spring of 1983. 1 had been working for nearly 7 years as an R&D technician at the Weyerhaeuser Co. Technology Center in Federal Way, Washington. This was the longest job I had ever held and easily the most enjoyable and rewarding job I had had, or could even imagine. My position was essentially that of an in-house inventor: working with scientists, other engineers, and wood-products plant personnel, I was called in with my supervisor/partner to design, build, and install a wide range of’ incredible gadgets, devices, and machines ranging from room-sized paper-handling structures to intricate laser-lenses which we had to machine under a microscope! Every day was challenging and full of excitement. I thought I was content. Then I read a magazine article about a soon-to-be-introduced personal computer called the Commodore 64. By the time I was done reading, I knew I had to have one. Like many of you who went thru this process, I didn’t know exactly why I had to have one, but I was in love, and there was no talking me out of it. I faced two immediate obstacles: 1) it would be months before the first 64s would show up in stores, and 2) where was I going to get $595 to pay for one? By August the Seattle area had received its first shipments of 64s, and I had a plan. I convinced a Seattle computer dealer to sell me 5 C64s for the price of 4; if I sold all 4 (you see, one was for me), I could come back for 5 more, and we would have an ongoing arrangement. As I drove home with my trunk full of 64’s, I could hardly keep my mind on the road—I remember even appealing to the heavens to protect me and my cargo at least long enough to get home and try out my new and long-awaited technological marvel. All I really wanted was one C64 and some time to play with the darn thing—this was not to be: the other four computers sold so fast, then the next five, then 10... Well, before long, I was taking days off work, on the phone to TOTL and Cardco and HES, buying 5 GRIDRUNNER here, and a case of TOTL.TEXT there, staging lengthy demonstrations for my co-workers in company conference rooms after hours, and setting up package systems for friends and neighbors. I was hooked bad—scouring scores of magazines for the slightest mention of the 64 and its products. Using the buy 5, sell 4 technique, I was rapidly acquiring one of everything made for the 64. 1 was becoming an expert consumer. I had no store, but my friends had my phone number, and my fellow Weyerhaeuser employees knew where my lab was: everybody had questions, and I had pledged to answer them all as part of the incentive to buy their gear from me. The questions were multiplying, and 1 wasn’t getting much work done for the company. I started to Xerox a few pages of the most common questions and answers, along with a few news items and a list of currently known products, prices, and my recommendations. I titled this corner-stapled, hand-written brief the Cyborg Gazzette, an irregular newsletter of obvious bias, primarily hut not exclusively devoted to the amazing Commodore 64”, and passed it out to my former and prospective customers. I thought this would ease the problem of keeping my clients informed without losing my day job in the process (my nights were already full with typing-in and converting BASIC programs listed in magazines for other computers). The first Cyborg Gazzette only held back the information-hungry 64 addicts for a few days, and before I new it, I was working on Gazzette #2. There were already more questions, more clients, more products to check out, and an increasing number of articles to condense from a growing variety of magazines (many of which are no longer around). By this time I had figured how to get a company-loaned Texas Instruments Silent 700 portable terminal with thermal hardcopy to act as a printer for my 64!—using the TI and TOTL.TEXT (a now-extinct wordprocessor), I put together a whopping 12 pages of expanded reviews, news, and even my first “Turkey Alert” (Microspec’s bug-ridden Data Manager System). These scant 12 pages took me a month of evenings and weekends to finish, and the circulation was up to about 50! About this time, another area dealer encouraged me to clean up the pages a little and put a $1 price on the cover, saying that he would take 100 copies of the next issue on consignment at 50 cents each to sell at a local Commodore “fair” he was exhibiting at. I took his suggestion and prepared my best issue yet- still 12 pages, but printed in small type on my brand-new Gemini printer (bought 5, sold 4). Weyerhaeuser drew the line when I asked permission to print 500 copies on their Xerox machine- they [politely] suggested an offset printer. I thus discovered offset printing which was even cheaper than Xeroxing, much cleaner, and even allowed high- quality photo reproduction and different colors of ink (I printed a couple hundred extra Gazzette #3s in Sepia)! I sold all but a handful of #3, and immediately had inquiries and orders for more! A little light bulb lit up in my head and I saw it all: wouldn’t every new Commodore owner in the country like a compilation of every product known and anticipated for their machine, with short descriptions and even a star-rating to help them avoid the duds and not overlook the gems? Wouldn’t they rather hear it from a fellow fanatic instead of some professional publishing mogul just cashing in on the “Computer Craze”? Shouldn’t it be possible to use these new word processors, spreadsheets, database managers, and drawing programs to create an entire magazine- art, text, and all— right there in my bedroom? (the term “desktop publishing” was still 2 1/2 years in the future) And if hundreds of dealers could each sell 100 copies 4 times a year and I could clear .25 on each copy, wouldn’t that make a nice supplement to my regular income? So what if I didn’t know the first thing about publishing a magazine— I’d keep it informal, I'd learn, and I’d make sure folks got their money’s worth. My two bewildered daughters agreed to share a bedroom so that I could use their other bedroom as an office. I mocked-up a 3-color cover and a few inside pages of my proposed magazine (to be called INFO-64) and mailed it to all the Commodore dealers conveniently listed in each issue of Commander Magazine (now defunct). I sent for every other magazine’s media kit- and copied them. I sent for their advertiser contracts- and copied them. I called advertisers and asked them how this advertising deal usually worked, and they explained everything patiently to me. My printer unselfishly informed me that a “web” press could print my “book” (as printers like to call them) even cheaper and better than he could. Orders started trickling in, I had a second phone put in. I lined up a few brave advertisers, and I realized that this wasn’t going to get done on weekends and evenings. I quit my day job, my wife and children wept, I tried to cheer them up with pep talks about pioneer spirit, adventure, and untold riches; they wept some more. I tested software, I wrote, and experimented with my printer, I learned how to shoot screen shots with my cheap Pentax K1000, I designed border boards, and I contacted hundreds of vendors and tried to convince them to send me their products for review. I didn’t know a “Ruby” from a waxer (a handy gadget for easily affixing art and text material to layout boards), in fact, because I didn’t learn about hand-waxers until after issue #2, my arms and hands were constantly covered in a fine sticky mist of various types of spray adhesive- I looked like a bumblebee after a long day of pollen collecting! Three months later I was nearly ready to go to press with my first issue of 1NFO-64. It had a full-color cover and back-cover ad, was 48 pages long, had 17 paying advertisers, 12 game reviews, 3 in-depth reviews, a news and views section, a hardware project, and a reference guide to over 700 products for the C64. I was also out of money. In the last issue we told the story of INFO Magazine’s conception and early origins. When we left off, our undaunted publisher was finally ready to print issue #1, but had run out of money. Hurray for Credit Cards! I had optimistically ordered 20,000 copies for the first run of INFO=64 (I only had orders for 7,000 but I was hoping for a big response with lots of reorders and sales of back-issues. As of this writing, we still have a couple hundred copies left!) My printer wanted $3500 in advance to print Issue #11 and with less than 1/10 that in my bank account, I experienced my first wave of terror- maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea after all. Then I remembered that I had recently received, unsolicited, 2 pre-approved VISA cards thru two banks in distant cities (I guess 7 years at one job is good for something!) This was obviously a sign, and after rechecking my CaIc-Result spreadsheet on my C64 one more time (yep, it ought to work), I took a deep breath, walked into a local bank, and maxed-out two virgin VISA cards for $2000 each. The presses rolled, I reacquainted myself with my wife and kids, had a couple of very delicious beers, and tried to figure out what I had gotten us into, and where it was going to go. Altered States A couple of weeks later, the finished magazines were done, and a truck pulled up to my garage with 2 1/2 tons of INFO=64s: crammed into my one-car garage, they made an impressive stack! Now for a solid week, I became the shipping dept.-counting, wrapping, and weighing each bundle of 5 or ten, and hand-entering each package in the UPS book (I didn’t learn about manifest shipments until several issues later,) I would occasionally stop and flip open a copy from a freshly opened carton: It was weird- now that the thing was done, it was almost like someone else had written those pages- I could even read the reviews and find myself wondering what the conclusions would be (after 16 issues, I still sometimes get that sensation) Games People Play I originally wrote #1 in the first person but then decided to try to disguise the fact that INFO was the work of only one author, fearing that it wouldn’t be taken seriously. To accomplish the illusion, I used my (then) current wordprocessor, WORDPRO, to search and replace ‘I’ with the more convincing corporate ‘we’ (this resulted in my first lesson in the perils of wordprocessing as I later read (with horror) phrases in my otherwise literate text like, “We am very excited about...”, etc.) I also used phony names for some of my reviews (who was that Arby Fuller guy?), and left others with no byline at all. As soon as the issue was shipped, I went to one of the computer stores in the area which had ordered issue #1 and stared at it on the shelf next to Commander, Run, Ahoy, and Gazette. I tried to imagine how it must look to customers and fellow computists seeing it for the first time. I decided that it probably looked pretty crude and that the corporate “we” was fooling nobody. On the other hand, I saw that there was just the kind and quantity of solid information, casual conversational style, affection for the technology, and irreverence for the stuffed-shirt side of the industry that I had been looking for myself in a computer magazine- I just had to hope that others would feel the same. I also realized with growing elation that I had actually “done it”! I had shown (at least to myself) that these marvelous new machines could really work magic, and enable one fumbling humanoid to entirely produce and manage a saleable national publication out of a spare bedroom. A warm sense of pride and accomplishment began to spread over me, and then I realized- it was time to get started on Issue #2! Reality School One of my big problems as a would-be publisher was (and to some extent, continues to be) an unrealistic optimism and naiveté. I had originally thought that I could produce INFO on weekends and evenings (ha ha). Then, when I was working sixteen hours, seven days a week on it, I thought I could get an issue out every 3 months (try 4). I remember being so far behind with Issue #3 that to finish it by the 5th or 6th deadline extension, I ended up working the last 4 days and 3 nights (88 hours) without sleep (something I didn’t know was possible, and which I plan never to do again- talk about altered states!) I was also unprepared for the number of computer dealers and software companies which went out of business every month, many of them owing INFO money which was badly needed to stay afloat. Even more surprising was the occasional advertiser or magazine dealer who would just decide not to pay for a carton of magazines or a page of advertising. I learned about Chapter 11 bankruptcy and how a retailer could owe hundreds of dollars and be legally excused from paying his bills while still selling his inventory of products and keeping the proceeds for himself. I learned that the more indignant an advertiser is about not being extended credit, the more likely he is to stiff you if you do extend credit. I learned that no software company is so big or so successful that it can’t go down the tubes in the blink of an eye. Changes in Latitude,.. After Issue #3, INFO had gotten into the B. Dalton chain, 1 had discovered the hand-waxer (don’t even think of starting a magazine without one), and it looked like the magazine was going to work. My wife and I realized that we could publish INFO anyplace in the country that had electricity, telephone service, Federal Express delivery (and wax), so we moved to Iowa City. We bought an old farm house, converted the chicken coop out back into the new secret international headquarters for INFO (see photos), and I had the welcome luxury of two people helping put out the magazine- my brother, Scott, and Deb, a good friend from Seattle. I also had some great outside writers starting to contribute their talents, including Mark Brown, who just happened to live ‘down the road’ in Burlington. Mark later came on permanently around Issue #8 as Senior Editor, and his fine writing, technical smarts, organizational skills, and background as a heavy equipment mechanic, have contributed enormously to making INFO what it is today. And Just What is That? Today INFO is read by over 100,000 Commodore and Amiga enthusiasts worldwide. INFO is still ‘hand-made (now in TWO spare bedrooms) by a full-time staff of 4 dedicated computists using only consumer-grade Commodore, Amiga, and compatible 3rd-party hardware and software. We are still the only Commodore or Amiga magazine which is entirely produced and managed with this equipment (Amazing Computing is computer produced- but on a Macintosh!). INFO is currently regarded (even by many of our competitors) as the hardest-hitting, most irreverent, pathologically honest, entertaining, and information -packed Corn/Am publication available without a prescription. INFO thanks you one and all for the faith you’ve shown and the support you give which makes a magazine with these ideals possible today, and likely to be here in the years to come.