When Peter mentioned that he was starting a little project ahead of Magfest to collect into a book the honest 100-word reactions of a hundred people working at the coalface of magazine publishing, I expressed some concerns. Oh, I had no doubt he could do it, or that the result would be interesting, but I worried that unless he allowed anonymous submissions, it would end up being hagiographic and present an imbalanced view of the industry.

I needn’t have worried.

It’s not, to be sure, filled with invective and doom, and there are some submissions that seem to describe a thriving, bullish, even arrogant industry that I just can’t recognise, but through some strange alchemy he’s managed to create a fascinating little vignette whose very variety gives it a clear voice with which to describe the magazine business in 2014.

If you’re interested in magazines – either from the inside or the outside – I think you’d find The Magazine Diaries intriguing. It’s a fiver, and the proceeds support MagAid.