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893 Magazine is just one example of a book or magazine self-published through Blurb. Image: Blurb

As publishing transitions into the digital space, that doesn’t mean we’ll have to abandon print entirely. In fact, Blurb has built a successful business by offering “accidental authors” an easy way to write and self-publish custom print books on demand, all through a digital platform. In May, the company added e-books, giving people a tool to publish their work as iPad and iPhone versions.

And now they can do the same for magazines and brochures – in both print and e-book formats.

Beginning Tuesday, Blurb will support magazine and brochure publishing using a plugin for Adobe InDesign. The company plans to have its own publishing tools eventually, but for now it wants to target businesses, creative professionals and photographers who are familiar with InDesign and want a streamlined and cheap way to publish their own content. It’s very similar to what HP has been offering with MagCloud, a print-on-demand service that independent magazines like Longshot Magazine have used.

“It’s an expansion play,” Blurb CEO Eileen Gittins told Wired. “Unlike a book, where for the most part it’s a solo effort, a magazine, because you can get contributions from others, is collaborative. That material can be more consumable. They will be much faster to produce, but more community-driven and with more issues. You might do four issues a year. We’ll see more volume and community-driven projects.”

Gittins says that if an individual or small business wants to publish a magazine, they face expensive minimum order requirements from printers. At Blurb, anybody can print a single issue of a magazine from 20 to 240 pages, starting at around $ 11 per copy. A brochure will cost you around $ 7. Of course, bulk orders bring the per-copy price down.

The cost, however, is still somewhat pricey for individuals who might want to make a profit off of their work.

“I grew up hanging out in 24-hour copy shops, making zines with staplers and scissors. As my projects got bigger, I started dreaming of how I’d someday get a computer and all my zines and comics would magically print themselves. Fast-forward 10 years later and the technology to print my own comics literally fits into my pockets,” Doctor Popular, the community manager for Postagram and a San Francisco-based comics self-publisher told Wired. “The problem is, these are only tools for hobbyists…. It feels nice to actually hold a physical copy of your work, like a fresh-pressed 12″ record, but there’s just no way to make a profit off of direct sales at those prices.”

Even so, Popular sees the appeal of having platforms like Blurb available.

“Nothing beats real objects, so the trick for most artists is learning how to leverage these new printing tools into marketing opportunities, rather than straight up revenue services,” he says.

To that end, Blurb shipped more than 1.4 million print books in the last year, so it’s clear that there is demand on the self-publishing front. Blurb even has its own bookstore, where people who have used the platform to publish their books can put their work up for sale.

“On the book side, there’s an explosion in self-publishing now,” Gittins said. “The reason for that is that traditional publishers sadly don’t make markets for the vast majority of titles produced. They’re tending to be a big-hit business, with a lot of people and talent behind products that will sell in the tens or hundreds of thousands.”

Magazine publishing is arguably even harder. The glossies that are put out on a monthly or weekly basis are most often owned by major media publications with hundreds of employees. Independent magazines still require several full-time staff and negotiations with printers can be a lengthy process. Blurb wants to give people a one-stop, easy way to get their magazines published, and just like with books, users will be able to convert their magazines and brochures into e-books and PDFs.

Gittins says that Blurb, in particular, is focused on enabling people who aren’t necessarily traditional content creators.

“We’re a 21st century publishing platform,” she said. “We built it knowing that there would be digital books and magazines and we built it for color… We built for color because the tablet world is a color world, the mobile world is a color world. If you really are serious about enabling the accidental author, you’ve got to manage designed content and color.”

Currently, Blurb is especially popular with photographers and other visually focused books like cookbooks, how-to lifestyle books and art books. Gittins imagines that the magazine and brochure arm will appeal to the same type of people, but also expand more to small and medium businesses who want to print modest quantities of brochures.

“Historically our customers are individuals who use our website, but we are seeing more businesses come in,” Gittins said. “We want to let the business world know that this is now possible to do. They can do brochures or a magazine now, that’s been pricey in the past — you had to buy a bajillion of them. It’s really changed the whole notion of print from being unattainable, big run, costly. You can now do it in house, do a short run, without a big budget.”

Gadget Lab