Milwaukee,  Sept. 1 2004—- Mike Johnston’s The 37th Frame newsletter, formerly published on white paper with no illustrations, is in the process of switching over to .PDF format and e-mail delivery.

Adobe .PDF (Portable Document Format), an international, cross-platform standard for document transmission,  offers many advantages for newsletter publishing. With no printing costs, there are no longer any restrictions on length: the longest print version of the newsletter was 16 pages long, whereas the first electronic issue is 33 pages long. Printing costs make illustrations prohibitively expensive for a small-circulation newsletter, but can easily be added to a .PDF. 

Delivery by e-mail means that mailing costs (and SNAFUs) are eliminated and delivery is immediate. Overseas delivery is greatly expedited. Readers are offered generous “fair use”: they may use the .PDF on as many of their personal computers as they like, and print as many copies as they like for their personal convenience.

Response to the new format and delivery format has been overwhelmingly positive. Readers like the flexibility and convenience, the delivery method, and also the larger type!

The 37th Frame has a circulation of just over 1,000 readers in 33 countries, mainly England, Canada,  Australia, and the U.S., but also including Hong Kong, Switzerland, South Africa, Japan, Scotland, Poland, France, Taiwan, Thailand, Wales, India,  Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, and Russia, among others. Subscribers include well-known photographers, artists, and journalists,  studio professionals, museum curators and museum libraries, photography professors and teachers, photo magazine editors and publishers, photography textbook authors, and many passionate amateurs.

The 37th Frame is written by photography critic and teacher Mike Johnston, columnist for Black & White Photography magazine in England, former East Coast Editor of Camera & Darkroom magazine and former Editor-in-Chief of Photo Techniques magazine. Its mission is to provide entertaining and informative reading for experienced photographers and photo professionals who find newsstand magazines too basic.

Subscriptions can be purchased at www.37thframe.com.  Issue #6 has been published as a .PDF file and Issue #7 comes out next week.