Reading matter

After opening the Magic Underground last year, the 200-seat magic-show theater under the Pioneer Center for Performing Arts,Mark and Jinger Kalin faced a rather disenchanting dilemma: With a limited advertising budget, and a business sequestered underground, how could they draw people in? The couple,who for two years made jumbo jets disappear on stage nightly at the Reno Hilton, needed to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat.

And they did, in the form of the Downtown Discoverguide.

Rather than placing ads, they started a new publication, not just to promote their business, but the whole downtown arts district.

The Downtown Discoverguide is one of several new publications that have been launched in the region in the last 18 months.

Other newcomers include:

* Nevada Home, a glossy, four-color homeand- garden magazine targeting middle- and upper-middle-income homeowners in Reno and Sparks.

Great Basin Communications, the same team that launched Northern Nevada Business Weekly, is behind the new monthly.

The first issue will come out in January.

* Curry's Chronicle, a quarterly journal for the nonprofit Carson City Coin Collectors of America, an international group.

Rusty Goe, owner of Southgate Coins, started the club this year and published the first issue for members in July.

The journal features information about the Carson City Mint and the coins produced there.

* Game Night, a weekly newspaper covering local high school sports.

Owner Ken Moen's company, KMPM Publishing Inc., had included high school sports coverage as a section in its other publication, The Wolf Pack Edge,which covers University of Nevada sports.Moen packaged Game Night as a separate weekly publication in August.

Issues are distributed free every Friday.

* Northern Nevada Family Life, a free monthly newspaper covering family issues.

Moen bought the former bimonthly Northern Nevada Family in the spring last year from founder Darcy O'Toranto, renamed and redesigned it, and took it monthly.

* Washoe County School Family, a monthly four-color, glossy magazine that serves as the official magazine of the Washoe Unified School District.

Publisher Bert Ramos, co-publisher Dave Mulligan and a silent partner launched the publication with the district's blessing this year, producing the first issue in May.

The district does not fund the publication but approves the content and allows it to be mailed directly to families with children in Washoe County schools.

Why the sudden proliferation of new publications? Northern Nevada's housing boom creates fertile ground.

Nevada Home, for instance,will tap into the fastgrowing numbers of middle- and upper-middleincome homeowners.

" All the content will be local," says Publisher Pete Copeland."Right now there's nothing out there servicing that market.

Planting in Nevada is not like planting in Georgia or Minnesota."

The issues will be geared toward the seasons, and feature lots of graphics and how-to articles.

The publication will be mailed direct to 40,000 homes in Reno and Sparks in the $300,000 to $700,000 price range.

Copeland is encouraged by early reactions from advertisers.

" The reception has been fantastic.We're hearing comments that it's about time and that this is long overdue."

The Downtown Discoverguide would not be possible without the recent flourishing of Reno's arts district.

The guide features articles and ads promoting downtown businesses and includes a map of the district listing all the merchants.

The bimonthly is distributed through downtown businesses, hotels and through Realtors and is geared to both tourists and locals.With seed money from the city of Reno, the first issue came out in July with about 20,000 copies printed.

Kalin got the idea for the guide when he and his wife visited the Le Grand David in Beverly,Mass., the longest-running magic show in the country.

The show, which performs in restored theaters in a shopping and arts district, produces its own newspaper rather than advertising.

The tiny Discoverguide staff donates time, and the publication is covering its costs.

Kalin says he plans to hire someone to sell advertising." This was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants.

We were amazed how quickly this exploded and blossomed." Launching a publication is no easy task.

Ramos ofWashoe County Schools Family says the toughest challenge was convincing advertisers that his publication was here to stay.

"People are understanding now this was not meant as a lark but as a philosophical approach."

The magazine features human-interest and how-to articles geared to p

parents, and Ramos says he aims for a decent ratio of content to advertising.

"I'm not trying to do a Yellow Pages.

I want this to be the community's publication, as trite as that may sound.You have to treat it like a business because you have to make sure it will continue, but you don't have to treat it as a personal gold mine."

Moen says the toughest part of starting a publication is chipping away at a market that's been dominated by a daily paper.

The Wolf Pack Edge is in its ninth year, and Game Night, which debuted with 12 pages, is up to 16."The feedback has been awesome," he says.

Moen joined Parenting Publications of America after taking over Northern Nevada Family Life, which lets him tap into a network of publishers of free parenting magazines across the country.

The paper is inserted into the Sparks Tribune and distributed at Scolari's, to Washoe County elementary schools and more than 100 daycare centers.

For Goe, publisher of Curry's Chronicle, the publication is more a labor of love rather than a business venture.

The mission is to increase the knowledge of the Carson City Mint and the coins produced there and to promote the camaraderie among collectors.

Annual $20 dues from the 200 members of the Carson City Coin Collectors of America supports the magazine.

The first issue was 25 pages, and the second issue in November was triple the size.

"The members are as enthusiastic as they could possibly be," Goe says.