Lewis Mitchell got back from the Paris Motor Show on a Tuesday morning with a stack of new photographs and a magazine template waiting for them. Six days later the pages were with us. The result is AutoScoop, the first issue of what Lewis calls his motor show review “bookazine”: an A4 car magazine of 80 pages, glued into a gloss laminated cover of 200gsm silk. A yellow concept car glows under the show lights beneath a gold serif masthead, and inside, Alpine’s hydrogen fuelled Alpenglow concept, an orange Vinfast SUV and the 9X8 Hybrid built for Le Mans fill the pages. Lewis runs Motor Show Publishing, so we will let him tell it.
“More magazine like”
The first question Lewis asked was about weight. Our opening quote wrapped it in 300gsm silk, a board we tend to reserve for photo books built to survive years on a shelf. Lewis wanted something looser: “is it possible to have a lower GSM covers so that it’s more ‘magazine’ like?” Mike requoted with 200gsm silk on the outside, gloss laminated, and 115gsm silk for every inside page.
That pairing is why AutoScoop handles like a newsstand title instead of a hardback’s little brother. A lighter board flexes as it opens, so the cover never fights the reader, and the laminate gives the gold masthead a wet shine that matches the paintwork beneath it. Silk inside keeps chrome and stand lighting crisp, without the hard reflections a full gloss sheet throws back under bright lamps. At 80 pages staples were off the table, since wire stitching only runs to 72, so the pages are glued into a square back that names the title and the issue.
“Drop photos and text in”
Months before the show, Lewis was already building the magazine. “Just trying to do as much of it as I can at this stage so that I can just drop photos and text in to a more or less completed magazine,” he wrote, as pre orders came in. Mike saw where it could lead: “These can become a collectible set over time.” With the format fixed, every new issue becomes a case of changing the cover colour, dropping in fresh pictures and rewriting the text.
The contents spread sets red page numbers in a tidy grid on pale blue, features start with a large serif title and a one line standfirst, and running feet repeat the magazine’s name and the show across every spread. Down the spine, in small type, sits Number 1.
“A few more pages than I’d originally planned”
Back home, Lewis asked how wide the spine should be for 72 pages including covers. Mike replied with a ready made InDesign cover file and export settings that would show the fold lines on the PDF. The files that arrived the following Monday had grown: “Obviously there’s a few more pages than I’d originally planned.” Seventy six inside pages in the end, and a revised quote the next morning.
Our preflight caught one detail worth stealing for any perfect bound magazine. Lewis had run his name vertically inside the front cover, tight to the spine, and Mike asked him to shift it 2mm left, away from the 8mm hinge. On a glued binding the cover is stuck to page one and the final page along a narrow strip beside the spine, so anything printed in that strip on the inside covers can vanish into the crease. Our cover file guide shows where the spine and hinge fall.
“No I know that ships sailed”
Lewis had hoped for the magazines by the Friday after the show, and on the Thursday Mike set out what that would take: files by Friday lunchtime, an hour or two of preflight, a proof approved by 4pm and printing over the weekend, with a day in hand for the courier run north. Then came the advice that mattered more: “far better to not rush it and aim for perfection rather than regret not making adjustments after they have arrived.” Lewis took it, sent his files to a proofreader first, and by the time the hinge fix came up he could joke about the deadline: “No I know that ships sailed.”
Lewis paid that evening, sent the amended cover the next morning and approved the proof within twenty minutes: “All approved, really looking forward to seeing this book. The photos look great!” The magazines left us the following Wednesday and arrived on the Thursday afternoon inside a one hour DPD window. His verdict came the next day, along with the hope that AutoScoop could “become a regular publication”. He has since returned to price another motor show book.
Lewis’s first book with us, A Walk Around the Halls, gathers his motor show photographs from the 1960s to the 1980s, and our magazine printing page covers the formats for a regular title. Planning issue one of something? Build the template early, give us the page count as soon as you know it, and a cover file with the spine marked will come straight back to you.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100