County Tourism Magazine Goes Into Second Printing

Steve Fox considers the response to his debut edition of Ventura Visitor magazine to be a good news/bad news story.

“The good news is everybody loved the magazine so much we can’t keep it in stock,” said Fox, who with partner Don Wilkinson owns CPS Communications, a Ventura-based publishing and communications firm. “The bad news is we have to go print a bunch more.”

In June, Fox and Wilkinson distributed 100,000 copies of the 40-page Ventura County tourism guide at 1,000 locations throughout Ventura County and into the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Bakersfield. They recently began circulating an additional 35,000 copies in an attempt to keep the racks full.

The supplemental run will cost Fox and Wilkinson about $15,000 out of their own pockets, but Fox said the money spent is an investment in the magazine’s future.

“To be really honest, we would have preferred not to print more. We didn’t go back to the advertisers and say, ‘We promised you 100,000 copies and now we have 135,000. How about some more money?’ ” Fox said.

“We feel the magazine has to have a good presence on the newsstand,” he said. “We felt that if we wanted to really serve our advertisers, there should be enough magazines out there until the second edition comes out.”

The semiannual publication promotes cities and tourist attractions throughout Ventura County, and into Santa Barbara County. It has event calendars, city maps, photos and descriptions of the cities themselves. Advertising businesses cater to tourists and locals.

Ventura Visitor is one of a network of Visitor magazines owned by Regional Visitor Publications of Eureka. About 1.3 million copies are printed, covering Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Marin, Monterey, Sonoma and San Diego counties and part of Oregon.

Fox and Wilkinson, who also publish the Homes & Land real estate magazine, purchased the Ventura County publishing license from Regional Visitor. In addition to the extra copies of the magazine being distributed, CPS put the magazine on the Internet last month.

“We’re finding people wanting the magazines that we never figured on,” Fox said. “We had a lot of companies call us to use them in their relocation packages, for people they had hired or if they were interviewing people. We had always anticipated if you were traveling to Ventura it would be useful to you. But we found people who live here wanted multiple copies.”

Fox and Wilkinson plan to publish the second edition of Ventura Visitor in early December, with a circulation of 125,000. The format will be essentially the same, Fox said, with a section added for outdoor recreation, such as hiking, mountain biking and camping.

Larry Jensen, owner of the Fillmore & Western Railway Co. dinner and theater train, said he had a good response from advertisements he ran in the inaugural Ventura Visitor and plans to promote his business in the second edition.

“We have heard from people who tell us that is where they heard about us, and we have quite frequently seen people traipse through the door with a worn copy under their arms,” Jensen said. “Instead of each independent city promoting itself, we have one voice speaking for everybody and that voice is getting stronger based on the magazine.”

RoseAnn Hill, office manager for the Fred Evans Re/Max real estate office in Ventura, said the business has benefited from the back cover ad it ran in the first edition and plans to have a similar half-page color ad in the December publication.

“We got some calls from people who were visiting in the area and then wanted information for potential relocation or for a vacation home,” she said. “The magazine is really filling a unique niche.”

And Ventura Visitor is just the beginning for CPS Communications.

Fox and Wilkinson plan to publish a Santa Barbara Visitor in the fall of next year and a San Luis Obispo Visitor the year after.