What is a Magazine?
A magazine is a booklet that contains both images and written articles. Magazines are typically published on a regular schedule. Common time frames for magazines are weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Magazines are typically focused on a specific topic, for example, fashion, travel, education, or current events. Magazines are different from catalogs and lookbooks because magazines will have text content like articles, stories, interviews, and poems in addition to any advertisements or items for sale. Magazines can be used as entertainment or as marketing material similar to brochures, rack cards, and door hangers. Magazines can be published digitally or physically, but in this article, we will focus on physical magazines.
What Challenges Will You Face When Starting a Magazine?
Competition
Competition in the world of magazines is fierce! Before starting your magazine, you should carefully consider if you will be able to compete with the other magazines in the area you plan to distribute. It will be helpful if your magazine has a unique niche that is not covered by other magazines. If there is another magazine in the area covering the same topic, you may want to consider switching your audience to reduce the competition.
Financial Burdens
Magazines typically make money by selling copies and by selling advertising space within the booklet. Unfortunately, neither source of money will be very helpful when creating your first issue. You will likely need to fundraise or pay for the first few editions on your own before sales and advertising costs will be high enough to help. Once your magazine gains traction, you will have an easier time attracting advertisers and you will have a base of loyal buyers who love your magazine.
Distribution Hurdles
When starting out, magazines can be challenging to distribute. Shipping is expensive, especially if your magazines are large. If your magazine is smaller or does not include ads, there may be some discounts you can access by using USPS Media Mail, USPS Marketing Mail, or First Class Mail. Magazines also take up lots of space for storage. You will need to find a safe place to store your magazines. Consider looking into a 3rd party distributor who can help you send your magazines out to your customers. Keep in mind that this will add to your production costs.
Steps to Starting a Magazine
Now that we have reviewed some potential problems with starting a magazine, let’s take a look at how you can actually start one.
Find Your Target Audience
One of the most important things you need to do when creating a magazine is establish a target audience. Everything in your magazine should be targeted towards these people. They are the ones who will make your magazine successful, but you have to convince them to buy by creating content that interests them.
Create Your Team
Creating a magazine is a lot of work. You can try to do it by yourself, but eventually, you will need to hire staff to help out. Editors, artists, designers, photographers, ad sales managers, and production managers are all important roles in magazine creation. Hiring others to fill these roles will make your production process smoother and more efficient. It can also increase the quality of your work.
Source Your Content
Your magazine can include articles, interviews, photography, illustrations, quizzes, infographics, and so much more. You should focus your content on what you think your target audience would be most interested in. In the beginning, you may be writing and gathering all of the content yourself, but as your magazine grows you can outsource content creation by hiring writers and photographers to create articles and images. If you would like to focus on content that is more personal to you and your interests, consider making a zine.
Want to learn more about zines? What is a Zine? A Beginner’s Guide to Zine Making
Add In The Ads
This might be tricky for your first couple of issues, but selling ad space in your magazines can become quite lucrative. The larger your magazine’s audience is, the more money you can make from selling ads. It is important to know the demographics of your buyers. Advertisers will want this information before they commit to paying for advertising space. Before you can begin selling ad space, you must decide on rates. Pages that are seen more often, like the inner or back cover, first few pages, or last few pages, should cost more to place an ad on.
Figure Out Distribution
As we learned earlier, magazine distribution can be tricky and expensive. One distribution option is selling at local stores or newsstands. You can also use a 3rd party distributor who can help you get your magazine into bigger stores. You can also distribute magazines through mail. Greenerprinter offers direct mail printing. We can send your magazines straight to your customers thanks to our variable data printing and mailing services.
Find A Printer
Once you have all of the above details sorted out, you can begin the process of printing your magazine. We recommend choosing a trusted commercial printer, like Greenerprinter, to take care of your printing needs. You will get to choose your magazine’s final size, page count, and additional finishing. We offer multiple binding styles for you to choose from. The most popular options are perfect binding, saddle stitching, and wire coil binding. Your budget and magazine aesthetic will impact your choice. When you print your magazines with Greenerprinter, we guarantee high-quality printing and sustainable materials. We have years of experience printing books and booklets and can’t wait to work with you. You will have full control over how your finished magazines turn out. Let’s get printing!
Lead photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
Ready to get started with sustainable print & packaging? Check out Greenerprinter’s Packaging Sleeves & Hang Tags
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