I was so looking forward to #3 when they abruptly shifted gears and decided to bump the scheduled issue and feature something I have no interest in. Maybe their advertisers feel the same way. Now I'm hoping the Python issue does not get pushed back any further.

Just noticed this post. To answer the questions by the OP: I'm fine and Pinball Magazine is not a subsidiary of any pinball manufacturer. As editor of Pinball Magazine I've been very busy with the "new" Issue 3. Originally Python's career in pinball was supposed to be issue 3, but after transcribing 180 pages and revising half of them I was so fed up with Python's constant bitching about almost everybody in the industry who didn't do things the way he felt they should be done, I just needed a break. I decided to move Python to Issue 4. The idea was to focus in Pinball Magazine No. 3 on KISS pinball machines. If that doesn't interest you, keep reading as you may change your mind.

Talking to people at Stern about their new game was one thing. I also contacted several people that were involved with Bally's KISS from 1979. That resulted in a Bally's heyday Special, which features the KISS game as a common denominator, but there is much more:
- Pinball designer Jim Patla discusses his years at Bally and later Williams (1965-2000). He designed over 40 games, which are too many to discuss all in the magazine, but Jim talks about quite a few of them and shared some very interesting details about Bally transforming from EM games to SS.
- Former Bally Marketing and Licensing director Tom Nieman, the man who invented licensing for pinball, talks about his years at Bally and the impact licensed games had at the time.
- Pinball artist Kevin O'Connor discusses his years at Bally as well, which should feature sketches and original artwork for the games that he did at that time.

As I mentioned above what the side effect was of interviewing Python, I have to mention the delight it was to talk to Jim, Tom and Kevin. Interviews like these are what I was hoping to publish and I'm glad they reminded me how publishing a magazine can be fun

Originally the plan was to do a printed issue of 60 pages or so, for which it seemed reasonable to assume this would be ready by mid July. As KISS have a well-documented reputation of being on top of everything that's involving their b(r)and I contacted their management and got some guidelines that should prevent me from getting into (legal) trouble. I added the usual side articles and a few more as certain articles had a connection with other articles and so on. I also tried to get an interview with the band discussing their involvement in the new game, the old game and other pinball things, but that didn't happen (so far). So my current page count is at 160, which is quite near the volume of Pinball Magazine No. 2.

As a teaser, below find the current concept cover (subject to change).
PM03 concept cover3.jpg
I actually had made flyers of the above concept cover as well, which were available at the UK Pinball Party this weekend.
While I'm still waiting for a few articles to be revised by the people involved, I hope to go to print soon and have the printed magazine available in September. As soon as Issue 3 is available the focus will be updating and reprinting Pinball Magazine No. 1.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to drop me an email or PM.

Cheers,

Jonathan
Pinball Magazine
www.pinball-magazine.com

That is great news Jonathan!

Just ordered the last issue and will be ordering the new issue when it's available. Glad about the topic change since I'm more interested in Bally history and the new Kiss game than an article about Python.

Now if that's not an answer to the op's original post I don't know what is! Can't wait to buy issue 3

I have offered to pay a full page ad as a tribute to Python, as a teaser for the next issue. Nothing to do with me or my company. But as a dedication to the great man! I hope Jonathan takes me up on the offer. I never really got a chance to talk with him. But he was definitely a interesting person, & entertaining to watch. Very interesting on his pinball views of the industry.
John Greatwich, www.greatpinball.com

I find Kiss so unappealing that I'd normally just pass on anything with them on the cover, but I'll make an exception for Pinball Magazine, because I'm sure the end product will still be great, even if anything involving the band doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Pity it pushed back Python, I'd rather listen to him complain than Jody gushing about Kiss. (Just giving you a hard time Jody!)

Hopefully there's more about early Bally stuff than about Kiss.

Looking forward to issue #4.

Great news..... I was wondering about #3 since I've already read 1 & 2 many times.

I'm actually looking forward to reading Python "bitching" about a few things. Might make a more entertaining read than "so and so was great to work with and the best!"

Bring on 3 and 4!

I was wondering when this would happen!!

Quick update: Working on the layout of Pinball Magazine No. 3. Just finished the Kevin O'Connor article on his years at Bally and the new KISS game: 34 pages... Need to go to print this week in order to have printed magazines for a show the first weekend of October.

Will you be coming to Expo with some copies of #3?

Yes, that's the plan

GREAT to see this Jonathan, enjoyed the first two and will be in for #3!

20150914_175505.jpg
single side printed testprint of Pinball Magazine No. 3 to check the resolution of images when printed, see how pages look when printed, maybe move ads around a bit to see what works best and things like that. 200+ pages! Time for finishing touches and hopefully off to the printer in a few days

Ace will be at the Chiller show next month. If he's available I'll try to talk to him about the pinball machines. I know it's too late for the Kiss issue...but maybe a digital insert...

Good luck with that. Ace was in Amsterdam a few months ago (as was Kiss) and I tried to get an interview. No chance. Eventually the german record company put me on the guestlist for a second show two days later. Again, no interview. Not even if I would pay for a meet and greet. So I was seriously wondering "why am i here?" I wanted an interview, not hear his music. I do have to say that Ritchie, his guitar player, was really great. had fun chatting with him and on stage he was much more entertaining than Ace.

Oh, ok. I'll see how it goes. Peter was fine to chat with....

criss_ted_adj.jpg

Nice

Ottawa Pinball Show is this weekend. I should have some books & Magazine #2 for sale.

Pinball magazine No. 3 is off to the printer. I started a new topic (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-magazine-no-3-contest) to guess the total number of pages. The same contest runs also on Facebook and a few other sides. 3 lucky winners who will guess the correct number of pages will win a free copy of issue 3.

Just got the first feedback on Pinball Magazine No. 3 from the (new) printer who is a pinhead himself. To quote his words, "It's fabulous! The gloss laminated cover is a killer."
Pinball Magazine No. 3 next to Pinball Magazine No. 2, photo taken at the office of the printer
The magazine will debute this Sunday at an event in Germany, where I will get to see it for the first time in print myself. I'll be working on a flyer and a digital teaser magazine today. The teaser magazine will become available as soon as the magazine is available in the Pinball Magazine webshop

I'm in for #3. Can't wait.

It took a while but the free online preview of Pinball Magazine No. 3 is now available on Issuu: http://issuu.com/pinballmagazine/docs/pm03_preview34_pages

I see everyone is talking about No. 3,,,, I haven't even received No. 2. Am I missing something, or there is no 2?

I really, really want Pinball Magazine to be offered in hardcover. Given the bulk of the publication, quality of the contents and the assertion that "it's more like a book than a magazine", it would be awesome to get them printed in hardcover. Can we make this happen?

Rob
Creditdotpinball.com

+1
I have been thinking the same thing.

Thanks, I appreciate the compliments about the quality of the magazine. About doing a hardcover edition: as much as I would like to, the chances are very slim at the moment. There's a few reasons which I will briefly get into:

After publishing Pinball Magazine No. 1 I did a poll to see how big the demand was for a hardcover edition of the second issue. According to that poll most who responded were fine with a softcover. In the mean time I did publish a hardcover book, which learned me a thing or two as well:

- Hardcover = more expensive production = more expensive product = less sales
I guess this is self explaining: the production process of a hardcover book is more expensive and will result in the end product being more expensive. That is likely to prevent some people from ordering the magazine, resulting in a more expensive product and less sales.

- Hardcover gets easily damaged
As some employees of postal companies make it a sport to test the packaging of the packages being handled, I've seen some disturbing photos of the shape of some of the books I shipped when they arrived at their destinations. Some packages looked like they were partly run over by a forklift truck. Where a softcover magazine can bend along and the damage be not that bad, with a hardcover the damage is much more visible. There are a few solutions for that and they all will result in a more expensive product. Then we get back to the same cycle as above: more expensive product = less sales. As I would like the magazine to be available for as many as possible, obviously making it more expensive is not helping with that. So the upside of doing a softcover is a more economical price (and slightly lower shipping costs as well).

There is one idea that may be worth exploring: doing custom hardcovers that can hold the softcover magzine. If anyone has other ideas that can result in an affordable small run of hardcover issues, i'd love to hear them.

Cheers,

Jonathan
Pinball Magazine

I'm just glad this magazine exists! Thanks for putting it together!

Do you have an estimate on when you expect to release the Python issue? I know you said you were tired of editing it, and the entire process really wore you down, but I'd really like to read what he had to say - for better or worse.

Last night I sent out a newsletter in which I announced this week's shipment, which is the one you want your order to be in if you need it prior to the december holidays. www.pinball-magazine.com

A little bit off topic: I also announced the shape and form of the long awaited reprint of Pinball Magazine No.1:
- the original issue will see correction of the typos and punctuation. there will be additional ads included as well. originally i had plans to update all articles in the magazine as well with new info, but as that would not be fair to those who already bought the magazine when it came out I figured the following makes more sense:
- there will also be an additional printed update, which will include updates on all main articles in the magazine. This addendum will be available separately. It will contain the same ads as in the reprint of issue 1, so maximum exposure for these advertisers. The addendum will likely just be a few bucks and a lot less expensive to ship, so affordable for everyone.
While I would have loved to have the reprint available this month (november), it's more realistic to aim for early 2016 as other activities are demanding a lot of my attendion at the moment.

Keep up the great work Jonathan!