By Tabitha Onyinge

I find road trips refreshing and exhilarating at the same time. I love the rapid change of scenery (at just about a second per scene if it’s me controlling the machine, or say, five seconds per scene if it’s my husband on the wheel. The crazy shuttle drivers have since been banished. They not only make me carry my heart in my hands, but they also cause me to constantly focus my gaze to try and capture the blurriness outside my window). But that’s beside the point. Road trips are my best moments. I get inspired with new ideas for the company… I focus on that client who is constantly evading our business strategies… I revise the plan to see what’s working and what’s not working, often leaning more in favour of the latter… I think of clever ways to recover pending fees from that client who just won’t pay, no matter what… I pray… I dream big dreams… I admire those beautiful big machines that almost always zoom past! Yes, the occasional lapse in focus is part of the fun.

My most recent road trip happened in the midst of turmoil. I was desperately trying to push a near tragic incident that my partner had been through, while terribly missing our son whom we were dropping back in school, and financial figures were just not adding up! Tell me if any inspiration can come out of such a desperate situation. Well, some did. Not only was I inspired to teach my three-year-old good grammar, after he announced triumphantly from the back seat that his sister had “sleepted!”, but I also got really good professional inspiration.

You see, I’ve edited a few publications for people and institutions, but not until that trip, did I know anything about getting them out in the market. So I took the opportunity to (you guessed it right) google! I searched “How to sell a magazine.” The search results were quite relevant in an awkward way, and for like 20 minutes my mind screamed, “Isn’t there any result for a non-online magazine!” Then bingo! I remembered to google it. I know, right?

“How to sell a printed commercial magazine” I typed, hit search and started humming as the circle did its rounds on my phone screen. Still not good enough results; I didn’t want to know how to sell photos, or hook up with printers offering affordable services… “Who is Floyd Mayweather?” I searched as out went my focus.

After reading about the picky, unbeaten, rogueish looking and sounding, obscene earning boxer, I took a short nap, followed by a longer one. Still no knowledge on how to distribute a printed publication…Good news is, in the end, I managed to hit the right searches and collected enough correct information to know that to sell a new publication in the market, I needed a reputable distribution company. I also learnt that local distribution companies are currently overwhelmed with publications that “are not headed anywhere” because they can’t survive the first oncoming storm in the market. I learnt a lot more stuff on distribution or circulation of publications.

The good thing about receiving all this information on a road trip is that I knew I was not giving up. Never! I carefully nursed that attitude till I was back on my desk, and we started to nag the distributors with letters and phone calls.

“You’re not going to want to pass this publication. It’s hot, it’s fresh, it’s different, blah, blah, blah” I’ve written letters, and I think we’re headed somewhere with this. One distributor has ‘not yet’ answered our request email. Two have been suspiciously cordial is their rejection. We’ve in turn graciously responded to their rejection with a PDF copy of the first issue of the publication that is just about to hit the market! Don’t look at me like that.

You see, at Deer Leaps we don’t just fold our arms and say it is impossible. Do these distributors know what it means to start up a publication? Leave that aside; do they know what it takes to dream up a unique publication in a market that’s already saturated with printed monthlies? That’s harder than distributing a great publication! So, with or without a distributor, we’re going to hit the market big. Thanks to the road trip!