Daniel Pinchbeck wants you to want your MTV — one that offers a 21st century hipster point-of-view and global consciousness transformation to the masses. Pinchbeck, a well-established New York City-based writer and editor, has launched several media initiatives to reach the people with this new outlook, including the Webzine RealitySandwich.com and social network Evolver.net. RealitySandwich.com attracts approximately 75,000 unique visitors a month, while Evolver.net, which is still in the alpha stage and hasn’t officially been released yet, brings in around 15,000 unique visitors a month. This is without any traditional marketing or promotion, says Pinchbeck, other than the word-of-mouth sparked by his talks and media appearances. In the fall, RealitySandwich.com will offer a premium subscription tier that will give users access to extra video and Podcast content and more. This winter, Evolver.net will begin charging for subscriptions, but both sites will continue to offer some level of free content.
Pinchbeck, who was born in 1966 and grew up in New York City, is the son of Peter Pinchbeck, an abstract painter, and Joyce Johnson, a member of the Beat Generation. In his 20s, Pinchbeck worked as an editor and reporter for magazines such as Connoisseur, Art & Antiques, and The Art Newspaper of London. He has also written for the likes of The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Wired. Today, along with RealitySandwich.com and Evolver.net, Pinchbeck is the executive producer of the Web video series Post Modern Times. The first episode in the series has garnered more than 400,000 hits on YouTube.com.
Both Web sites evolved from themes discussed in Pinchbeck’s first book, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (2002), and are further inspired by his latest publishing efforts, the bestseller 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (2007) and Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age (2008), an anthology of essays that originally appeared on RealitySandwich.com. mediabistro.com recently talked with the media entrepreneur and author about how it all started, and where his online efforts are going in the future.
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How did RealitySandwich.com and Evolver.net start?
Basically, as these books [Breaking Open the Head and 2012] came out, I began to receive huge volumes of email from people who had similar experiences — psychic experiences, shamanic experiences, synchronicities, telepathic experiences — and it seemed like there was a cultural necessity to have a place for people to share essays and information around the type of material I discuss in my book, and that other writers discuss outside the mainstream. So RealitySandwich.com was kind of a natural development to create a real media platform for this new paradigm.
| “Like a lot of Web media companies, we have been struggling with the question of how to create effective revenue streams that would allow us to stay in business, so we are now developing a subscription model.” |
How have the books and online media helped each other?
[The Web sites] exceeded our expectations in terms of the amount of interest generated and the volume of content that was sent to us. We don’t pay for content at this point, so it’s been a great community of a lot of unknown writers, but also known and famous writers who have stepped forward.
So as that developed, we began to see there was this huge community that really needed a way to reach each other, so that then led us to formulate Evolver.net. [The books] and my work really look at this idea that we are in a global crisis, and that there is a necessity for a rapid evolution of human consciousness as well as new social structures that would allow for transformation to happen towards an ecologically sane and sustainable society.
When we launched Evolver.net, we immediately realized the best thing we could do would be to create a kind of scaffolding for social change. And so rather than just being an online platform, we are interested in Evolver.net as a way to build real communities and to help them find themselves. So we created a thing called “Evolver Spores.” We now have about 20 local hubs around the country and internationally who are meeting up every month and exploring the same ideas, and then hopefully also doing activism together, whether that is exploring complementary currencies, or permaculture, or doing shamanic work.
RealitySandwich.com is in beta now. What’s in the works for the full launch?
Like a lot of Web media companies, we have been struggling with the question of how to create effective revenue streams that would allow us to stay in business, so we are now developing a subscription model. With the content that’s now on the site, we will continue to have daily free articles and essays. We are also going to develop a subscription model so that people who want to go deeper or want to support the site can pay something per month and get extra content in the form of video and audio and maybe direct exchange with some of the visionaries who are developing content for the site. That will debut in the fall.
| “We believe we’ve done something powerful in finding a juncture between the mass chaos of the blogosphere, and then the almost too over-edited and over-conceived content you get from traditional media.” |
RealitySandwich.com is billed as “much more than a traditional online magazine.” In what way is that the case? What about RealitySandwich.com brings something new to the table?
What we have really been interested in is developing a juncture between traditional magazine media and the blogosphere and user-generated content. While we are utilizing the creative energy of our whole community who are sending us content, we are also professionally editing, copy editing, and curating that content. So we believe we’ve done something powerful in finding a juncture between the mass chaos of the blogosphere, and then the almost too over-edited and over-conceived content you get from traditional media.
RealitySandwich.com and Evolver.net are separate Web sites, but it seems they are interconnected. In what ways are they connected?
The two projects are published by my independent company, Evolver LLC. Evolver features RealitySandwich.com content, and we will soon relaunch RealitySandwich.com to include selections from popular Evolver.net blogs. We realized that RealitySandwich.com would only grow to a certain level, that perhaps there are 500,000 people in the U.S. deeply interested in the areas we cover. We publish short news pieces but also long essays on shamanism, consciousness research, aspects of visionary culture, and so on. The magazine was really meant to attract the attention of a specific community, and provide a focal point. We designed Evolver.net to reach a much larger potential audience. So in the branding of our social network, we sought a less specific and more open look and an ambience that could appeal to a broader section of the population.
How has your past personal and professional experience shaped your media business and online initiatives?
It’s a continuum for me. I’ve worked in magazines for my entire professional life, as an editor, contributing editor, and columnist. I edited literary magazines when I was young. I worked at Connoiseur, Art & Antiques, and The Art Newspaper of London when I was in my 20s, and wrote features for The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, etc. I also published Open City, a literary magazine that still appears regularly, though I am not involved in it. I love the editing and publishing process. Ken Jordan, my business partner, has a similar background in publishing and internet media. His father ran Grove Press and the Evergreen Review in the 1960’s, and he helped launch SonicNet, later bought by MTV. Our company is an organic development from our shared personal and professional interests.
The last few years have been a very exciting time for me. My last book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, was a bestseller in some markets, and has more than 150,000 copies currently in print. This is remarkable because it is a difficult book with lots of philosophical discussions and studies of abstruse areas of Mayan calendrics and crop circles. I have been able to use the increasing public interest in my ideas and my minor celebrity status to bring attention to the much wider group of thinkers and range of ideas that we showcase on RealitySandwich.com and Evolver.net.
What kind of promotion have you done to generate readership of RealitySandwich.com and Evolver.net? Why did you choose to go that route and why do you think it’s been successful for the site so far?
Our biggest problem up to this point has been operating without significant investment backing. So actually we haven’t really done much in the way of traditional marketing or promotion. Probably the main form of marketing promotion we’ve done has just been piggybacking on my appearances and media attention that comes to me. I speak at a lot of festivals; we try to spread the word that way.
| “[Books] can be extremely catalyzing and galvanizing for people. I really haven’t seen any other media forum that has exactly that same effect.” |
We really still have not had a budget to try out traditional marketing techniques and see how they boost our audience. We are hoping that is something that will be available to us in the fall. So word-of-mouth [and] we use Facebook and MySpace… We have a RealitySandwich.com Twitter [profile @realitysandwich] and so on, but it’s all been done whenever we can do it without having more capital at our disposal.
You are also the author of several books. Are books even necessary these days with so much information available online? Why did you feel like publishing books was important?
Last Christmas, we came out with an anthology of works from RealitySandwich.com that Penguin published, so that was another marketing tool for the Web site, and a really important one. I definitely think books are important. As I have experienced with my books, they can be extremely catalyzing and galvanizing for people. I really haven’t seen any other media forum that has exactly that same effect. So I think certain books — the right books — are still extremely valuable for people.
How do you see your vision for each online initiative playing out in the next five years, and what is your plan for getting there?
We have very big dreams and hopes and it’s definitely been a step-by-step process — and a learning process. I would love it if Evolver.net became a kind of hip, lifestyle brand that was associated with social evolution and consciousness change that comprised everything from music to sustainable development and ecological design and activation and participation; getting people aware that if we are to make the changes that are necessary in the face of this economic crisis and also the ecological catastrophe that we have created on the planet, we can’t look to governments or authority structures to make those changes. It’s up to individuals and local communities to transform their habits and practices.
Five tips for building a social network that supports social and ecological change
1. Put the global situation ahead of your personal desires for wealth and gratification.
2. Nurture talented people in local communities; inspire them to take on leadership roles.
3. Jump from online to off-line: Make it tangible. (We launched the “Evolver Spores,” more than 20 groups meeting monthly in the U.S. and abroad.)
4. Make partnerships and affiliations with likeminded organizations. Share resources.
5. Use graphic design to entice people, no matter what their backgrounds.
Jennifer Pullinger is a Richmond, Va.-based writer and communications professional with more than 10 years of experience in marketing, media relations, and journalism.
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