Magazine Publishing

[fvillasana]

Hello to everyone,
My name is Frank and im doing a research on magazine publishing. I have this great idea of a great magazine that is now circulating in my area. So im technically looking for any good advice from anyone that has been in this industry and also im looking for a source to print my mag, ive look around and mostly everywhere in California is extremely expensive. Im not looking into starting with a great fancy magazine, i want to start from the bottom and work myself up while learning and studing this industry. Any good advice or tip will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time

Frank

[soccerprodigy777]

in my honest opinion, unless you have at least $10-50k to throw around (that may even be too little), a solid niche, and amazing content (a good, reliable designer would be good too), youd be wasting your time. You might want to start online first, get your feet wet, develop a following, and solidify the nature of your content. This would also give you a little wiggle room to make mistakes that wont cost you a fortune since you're still learning (which is a whole other issue all together). Youll be able to see what works and what doesnt. Once your online publication has matured, then you can consider going print. At that point youd already have an audience to distribute to. my two cents

[jrod31]

I agree, its a lot of footwork.. you definitely need a team. I think the first thing you need to do is find the value of the magazine, whos your market, whats going to make people want to read your magazine.. that will be the value. Will you be publishing it out every month or quarterly? how many page? etc..
You wil make your money on advertisers. I really recommend doing a business plan.

I did a advertising magazine that focus and spoke about local entrepreneurs and businesses. i publish a 16page full color magazine...15,000 every month through USPS. it took alot of work!! The least cost of operations was average $8-12k a month. it was stressful cause time was crucial to get every issue out on time. sales of advertisement needed to meet the monthly quota to cover the cost. dont get me wrong.. there is money in it.. but if you start from the bottom without a capital.. it will be really risky.

but remember the design and content of the magazine will be the value of it.

if you have any questions just shoot me a message..

Good Luck.

[AndyMc]

Agreed, and great advice from both posts...

[altwebdesign]

do a forum search i am sure one of the admins made a great post, about this, as its the industry they work in

[generationy]

One of the things I would suggest is that you begin to get online. Several successful companues, even NYTimes and WSJ, are building beautiful websites and applications to get their content where users are going: the internet. So, why not offer the abillity for your customers to view your print mag as well online? Good luck!

[guidemesingapore]

Magazine publishing can be quite expensive initially. I personally wanted to run a magazine long back but gave up the idea due to the initial costs. Have you looked into having an online magazine first to establish a brand and also get some revenue going.