TGL: Celebrations for the 5th anniversary of Beatdom Magazine are coming up. Can you tell us how Beatdom came about, how it's developed and where you see it going?
"Beatdom was founded in May 2007, although I don't recall the exact circumstances. I think it was a drunken decision in a bar near the Tay Bridge, where a lot of great ideas came about. In the beginning there were a lot of us and it was going to be a political rag - very anti-establishment - and we were so sure that it would tear down the system...
Flash forward about a month and it was just me left, and the project had turned into something very similar to what it is today - a literary journal with essays, poems, short stories, artwork... Instead of the people who'd originally come up with the idea, the dozens that put together Issue One were people I met on MySpace. We'd have gotten no where without the internet. Even today it's Facebook and Twitter that keep us in touch with our fans.
Beatdom was an instant hit (again, thanks to MySpace). It sort of opened doors left, right, and centre for myself and the people involved. Still, life got in the way, and profits were never forthcoming, and so issues followed pretty sporadically after that. Even now we have a fairly random production schedule.
Over the years we've grown and changed in small ways. We're now a black and white publication, which helped bring the cost down for the buyer. We've got a good group of regular contributors, and a lively community of readers. We're sold on every continent except Antarctica, taught in universities, featured in libraries, etc etc. We field calls from Discovery Channel and news outlets whenever they want to know something about the Beats.
Last year my business partner, Michael Hendrick, and I founded Beatdom Books - a publishing company. We decided that Beatdom had grown to a level suitable to launch what we'd talked about for a while. We put out a couple of books last year, and more are coming in 2012 and 2013. It's going to be a busy period for us."
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