Our 29th annual “Summer Guide — The Best of Upstate New York” is just out. We’re absolutely thrilled with the new edition. It’s our largest ever.
We’ve spent countless hours selling advertising space, writing feature stories, doing research for the event’s calendar and designing the 108-page publication.
It’s nice to finally see the project come to fruition and in the hands of readers.
We’re now in the process of distributing more than 40,000 copies all over Central New York and beyond.
The publication is available through all Wegmans, many Tops Friendly Markets and Price Chopper stores.
In addition, we place the guide in local hotels, motels, campgrounds, RV sites, restaurants, diners and many other high-traffic locations.
All advertisers — from Buffalo to the Adirondacks to Cortland — get boxes of the guide and make it available to their patrons. We’re also at three major visitor’s centers along I-81: Two in the Thousand Islands area and one in Preble, just south of Syracuse. Those places get a tremendous volume of visitors — people who stop at those locations looking for information about the area.
All paid subscribers to Oswego County Business Magazine have received a copy in the mail.
Distribution of the guide is a job in itself. It’s a lot of work.
In total, we have about 20 people working on the publication — from writers, ad salespeople, designers, drivers, editors. It’s our biggest project of the year.
I’m a bit biased but the publication looks pretty good: it’s visually attractive, has great content, a great calendar of events and many offers from unique advertisers. It is fun and easy to read. As they say in the industry, it’s very reader-friendly.
Turn the pages and you’ll find all sorts of stories and advertisements highlighting fun stuff to do and see. Our calendar of events spotlights the best of Upstate New York — we list hundreds of events from June through October.
We thank more than 200 advertisers who chose to advertise with us. They provide us the funds to produce and distribute the publication. In exchange, they get unparalleled exposure. We estimate the glossy publication reaches over 250,000 readers in the region — visitors and residents alike. Our website — www.cnysummer.com — gets about 10,000-15,000 hits a month.
Our hope is that many of those readers will patronize those who advertise.
PS: Get a free copy of the 2023 Summer Guide in the mail by subscribing to Oswego County Business. It’s only $21.50 a year and in addition to the guide, we will send every issue of the magazine (six issues a year), plus the 2024 Business Guide and, later on, the CNY Winter Guide. See our coupon on page 39.
Wagner Dotto is the editor and publisher of Oswego County Business Magazine.