Chic Mom magazine
Founder and editor-in-chief: Darcy Plunkett
Website: www.chicmommagazine.com
Ertel Publishing
Based: 506 S. High St., Yellow Springs
The first time Darcy Plunkett started Chic Mom magazine, she was looking for a little joy.
The second time, the Oakwood wife and mother was looking for a business partner and an opportunity.
She found both in Yellow Springs custom magazine publisher Ertel Publishing.
Chic Mom, the magazine Plunkett started five years ago, is returning to publication, this time with Ertel working for it. Plunkett and Ertel principals Benjamin Smith and Vicki McClellan hope to find some 1,500 subscribers for the first quarterly issue, set to go to a printer next month.
Plunkett previously published four issues of the magazine, two each in 2005 and 2006. At the time, she found herself dealing with something of a “piecemeal” team to design and publish the issues, a team consisting of local people as well as others from New York City to California. With two preschool-age children, she was soon extended more than she liked.
Now, the kids are older, 6 and 9. She learned of Ertel Publishing in a September 2009 Dayton Daily News story and contacted the company. Plunkett, Smith and McClellan went to lunch to talk about reviving Chic Mom.
“We were really intrigued,” Smith said. “First of all, the (magazine’s) name.”
Chic Mom is aimed squarely at ordinary mothers with ordinary lives and concerns. With articles and features on home, family and moms themselves, the idea is to help women rediscover a certain vitality they may have put aside. There will be no set departments other than letters to the editor, Smith said.
Smith and McClellan are impressed with not just the magazine’s idea, but Plunkett herself. Putting out a magazine, after all, is hard work, McClellan said.
Ertel — which already publishes six historical and niche magazines — will assist with design and the business end of the endeavor. The company is spreading word of the magazine through a direct mail campaign. Plunkett likes that the company is centralized and local.
“Working with Ertel has made all the difference in the world,” Plunkett said.
It helps that publishing might be in her blood. Plunkett is the daughter of Robert Danzig, who headed Hearst Newspapers for two decades and remains a consultant to the company. Plunkett said the initial idea for the magazine was endorsed by John Mack Carter, former editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping magazine, who nevertheless warned her early on, “The parenting market was saturated, and I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”
Asked about her monetary investment into the magazine, Plunkett didn’t offer a figure, but said, “It’s a risk worth taking.”
Ertel and Plunkett share a conviction that subscription-based print isn't dead. Moms may enjoy "venting" on blogs, but they will also want something "to hold" while waiting at school events or pediatricians offices. Plunkett has nearly 6,000 followers on Twitter through ChicMomMagazine, as well as a website, www.chicmommagazine.com.
Said Plunkett: “I just feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
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