Advertising in Green Living

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Why Advertise in Green Living?

We're tempted to say "because you share our values" but the true answer is "because we are the best buy for advertisers looking to reach environmentally conscious people."

The demographic data is clear -- see Who Reads Green Living. People who think of themselves as "friends of the environment" are educated (95% have attended college and 65% graduate school) and affluent. Sierra magazine, the largest and most representative environmental publication in the U.S., reports a median household income of $100,700.

Approximate area of distribution

But local advertisers can't afford a national magazine like Sierra and local radio and newspapers make you pay for too much waste circulation.

Here are three reasons why Green Living is the best buy for businesses that cater to environmentally conscious clientele:

1. Green Living is free. Our editorial content is for hardcore friends of the environment, so our audience self-selects itself. Plus, since we're a quarterly with lots of meaty content, our publication is not discarded with the daily trash.
2. Green Living is widely available at more than 300 locations throughout the territory. Our distribution points are those places that share our values. These are businesses that are friends of the environment.
3. Our ad rates are unbeatable. We've worked hard to keep Green Living affordable for even the most grassroots organization. Compare our rates to national magazines and daily, even weekly, newspapers.

• Great rates
• Focused editorial content for "friends of the environment"
• Distribution where "friends of the environment" frequent
• Long shelf life

For more information, call at or e-mail ; Please include a daytime phone number and mailing address.

Technical Specifications

AD SIZES:

Submitting your own Ad

Green Living is deliberately close to the ground, because most of our readers and advertisers are intensely local and "do-it-yourself." With all the good software, easy-to-use electronic cameras, and plentiful free fonts and clip-art, it's easy for amateurs to make professional-grade ads. All you need to know is a little bit about formatting a successful ad. Here's a summary of what we've learned over the years:

Keep it simple. Don't try to tell your whole story in a little ad. You've seen ads in newspapers and in magazines like Green Living, so you know what looks good. Tiny text and fancy, spidery fonts don't work well, and photos need to be very contrasty or they end up looking muddy. Light colored or white type against a dark background works only if the type is LARGE. Color is slippery, and because you can make something look good on the computer screen doesn't mean it will look good when printed with four different ink colors in a high speed press on newsprint paper. We're always happy to take a look at an early draft of your ad and give you the benefit of our experience. We want your ad to look great.

NAMING FILES: Please name the ad file you send us with YOUR BUSINESS NAME or a sensible abbreviation thereof. We get a hundred files for each edition, and if every one is named "Green Living Ad," we get confused.

SIZE: Size your ad to fit the dimensions reserved (see the size list below). Otherwise, the ad will not fit, resulting in the advertiser not taking full advantage of the purchased space, or an extra charge for retrofitting. we always reserve the right to re-size your ad up to 5% of its size to get it to fit within our layout specifications, but if you're careful, your ad will fit perfectly without any resizing.

COLOR: DO NOT send a color file for a black-and-white ad! The algorithms used by printers to print B&W pages handle color files poorly, and your ad won't look good. Build your B&W ad, and save it, as a greyscale image! If you are preparing a COLOR ad, work in the CYMK color model that printers use. For clearest printing results, small-size text or fine lines should use black ink only (i.e. it uses BLACK, but NOT cyan, NOT yellow, and NOT magenta). Otherwise it may appear fuzzy and difficult to read. In both B&W and color, be especially careful with reversals -- light text or graphics on a dark background. Newsprint and high speed printing are not gentle with fine lines and small type in reversal.

IMAGES: please adjust images for newsprint printing, where dark areas tend to print darker and light areas print lighter than they appear onscreen. Our printer recommends: 10-15% highlight dot; 80-85% shadow dot. For example, in Photoshop, adjusting the output settings for a 30% average press gain will improve the readability of most images of acceptable contrast. Dark and low-contrast images will seldom print well no matter what you do.

FORMAT: We can ONLY accept press quality PDF and TIF files. (See details below for each file type.) Files smaller than 10 MB may be e-mailed to us at ; files larger than 10 MB should be burned onto a CD and sent via regular mail.

FILE TYPES: Send High Resolution files ("Print Optimized" or "Press Optimized") of the following types ONLY. ALWAYS embed all FONTS, because there are so many and we may not have the one you've chosen.

EXTRA COSTS: If you your ad needs some work, final touches or adjusting, there will be extra charges. To avoid uncertainty, we will happily create your ad for you.

If you have any technical questions, e-mail or call and ask for .

Please e-mail ads to . Again, digital files should be named using YOUR business name (please don't name it "Green Living ad" as we need to identify the file as yours.)

Thank you! We're looking forward to receiving your ad.

If You Want Us to Create the Ad for You

Since many variables go into creating an ad (the concept, the actual words, the design), we can't give hard and fast rules about how long it will take. We can say this though: we have lots of experience producing effective ads and can make the process as easy, inexpensive, and painless as possible. We don't expect you to know any technical terms and our rates for doing the work are quite reasonable. (Contact your Local Ad Manager (email )for specific rate quotes.)