Advertise with Dulcimer Players News

Volume 51 (2025)
Schedule & Deadlines

Click here to view and download the 2025 DPN Rate Card PDF!

Contact staff@dpnews.com for more information and to send your ad.

Why advertise with us?

Dulcimer Players News (DPN) is a high quality, professionally designed, full color print magazine published four times per year, in February, May, August, and November, and mailed to more than 1000 subscribers (and counting!). 

Started by Phil Mason in 1975, DPN has been connecting the dulcimer community for nearly 50 years. It is an irreplaceable resource for dulcimer enthusiasts. 

Our readership is filled with good people who love good music - from those looking for their first instrument to seasoned professional musicians. As the only magazine dedicated to mountain and hammered dulcimers, we offer a unique opportunity for targeted advertising.

We frequently hear from readers who tell us they eagerly read every page of every issue, including the ads!

Readers think of DPN as the "who's who" of the dulcimer community. Builders, shops, and performers gain name recognition with regularly appearing ads. 

For festivals, it may be more practical to place smaller ads throughout the year and a larger ad in the issue before the registration deadline.

Digital Advertising Opportunities

A digital edition of Dulcimer Players News will be launching in 2025.

In addition to hosting the digital editions of the print magazine behind a membership-based paywall, the new digital home will be a repository for many free resources, including:

• articles from out-of-print back issues, reformatted for publication online; 

• PDFs of out of print back issues organized by volume; 

• the Festival & Workshop Guide, an up-to-date list of dulcimer-related festivals (including select folk and old-time festivals, both online and virtual);

• the Club Directory;

• the Virtual Jam List;

• the Tab and Music Library;

and more!

Email Fiona Potts at editor@dpnews.com for details about the digital edition and how to preview the new site before launch!

Advertisers in each print issue of DPN will have the opportunity to have their logo placed in the “Our Supporters” section of the corresponding digital issue. The logo will be hyperlinked to a webpage of the advertiser’s choice. Send logos to editor@dpnews.com. PNG format with transparent background preferred. 

Additional opportunities for online advertising are in development and will be announced when finalized. Advertiser benefits are subject to change as the website develops.

This page was last updated on Sept. 14, 2024.

Graphic Design Help & FAQ

More About Ad Design

We recommend working with a professional graphic designer, but we are including the following information to assist advertisers who want to go a DIY route. See file specifications in the 2025 Rate Card above. If you still have questions, please reach out staff@dpnews.com.

RGB refers to color created by light and stands for Red, Green, Blue. It is used to create and describe colors on screens. The three lights create white light when combined. 

CMYK refers to color created by pigment and stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (or blacK), the four colors of ink used in printing, which add up to black.

RGB can create over 16 million colors on screens, and not all of them can be replicated exactly on paper using the four CMYK inks. RGB images may appear different when printed, particularly when using vibrant colors.

Not all design programs allow users to specify which colors are being used. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign do, but Adobe Express does not. 

Canva offers CMYK brand colors and a CMYK export option only to premium members.

PPI and DPI are two measures of image resolution, but like the difference between RGB and CMYK, the difference between PPI and DPI is between digital images and printed images. 

PPI is used for digital images and stands for pixels per inch. The higher the PPI, the higher the resolution. Lower resolution images contain large pixels in fewer numbers. Higher resolution images contain smaller pixels in greater numbers. 

DPI stands for dots per inch and refers to the number of actual physical dots of CMYK ink on a printed page. The higher the DPI, the higher quality and more detailed the image. 

For screens, a resolution of 72 PPI is standard, balancing detail with image loading time. For print, however, a resolution of at least 300 DPI is required to look crisp and detailed.

So, how to go from PPI to DPI? The conversion is usually 1:1, so multiply the printed dimensions by the desired resolution. For example, to calculate the dimensions of the Third Page ad: 4.9 x 4.9 inches x 300 DPI = 1470 x 1470 pixels. 

For more details about PPI visit adobe.ly/3QWfUMH.

For more details about DPI visit adobe.ly/49zByh2.

Trim, Bleed,
and Live Area

These terms are only relevant to ads and images that run to the edge of the page, e.g. full page ads and the back page ad. 

No printer is capable of printing all the way to the edge of a sheet of paper. Instead, everything is printed onto a page larger than the final result, and the excess is trimmed off.

Even professional printers cannot guarantee 100% perfect alignment for every trimmed page. To prevent unprinted areas of paper from showing up after the trim, printed matter must run farther than the final intended trim size. This extra margin for error is known as the bleed.

The trim size for DPN is 8.5 x 11 inches. The bleed for DPN is 0.125 inches (⅛”). 

Full Page ads must be submitted as 8.75" x 11.25" (bleed on all sides). Ads less than a full page do not need bleed, and must be submitted at the exact specifications listed in the Rate Card (above). Ads that are submitted outside of specifications will be returned to the submitter or cropped to fit.

The live area is the “extra safe” area on a printed page. The live area for DPN is a quarter inch in from the trim size. It is recommended that all critical information remain within the live area.