Starting a Magazine?

SummerSurf57

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I have completed a few writing courses and would like to start a magazine, similar to Seventeen. I was wondering if anyone has ideas for what sort of additional courses I would require, what programs could be used for layouts, and how interviews would be organised?
 

MysteryRiter

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I think it depends whether or not you want this to be an ezine, print mag or both.
Good luck. :)
 

BenPanced

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I think the primary question you need to ask is what sort of experience you have that would help you benefit from starting a magazine. Do you have any editing experience? Writing credits? Any intern experience at a magazine, print or e-pub? Working knowledge of distribution? Have you any experience with contract and intellectual property laws? Many of these questions can't be answered in a class and the knowledge pretty much must be obtained by working in the business for a few years.
 
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Friendly Frog

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Personally I very much doubt whether anyone can start a viable magazine based on what one can learn from courses.

But I'll say budgetting is a very handy skill to have. Starting a magazine is going to cost money. Webspace has to be bought, software too as not everything exists as freeware. Will there be advertising in the magazine? That's going to take administration too. You probably have to consider what and how to pay staff and contributors. And you'd be surprised what other costs are going to come into play once you get started.
 

LindaJeanne

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Years and years ago in another life, I ran a webzine for a year. (You've never heard of it. It got little traffic, and there were about a bazillion other tiny webzines that popped up and vanished over the same period).

I did a lot of research before i started, and learned a lot as I did it -- and STILL don't feel qualified to try to give advice here. I know less than I did before I began -- or at least it feels that way, since I'm more aware of how much I don't know.

Advice I do feel qualified to give:

  • However much work (time and effort) you expect it to be, figure it it will be about twice that.
  • Actually, make it three times as much.
  • Maybe four?
  • If you are going to accept submissions from other writers:
    • think how you're going to feel about having to send out multiple rejection notices every day. Acceptances are fun, because you know you're making someone's day. But you send out more rejections than acceptances, so you get to be the bearer of bad news on a daily basis. (This is something that didn't even OCCUR to me before I began, but was the most unpleasant part of the job.)
    • How are you going to feel about reading slush? (I didn't mind, other than the constantly sending out rejection notices bit.)
    • make sure you understand how rights work. This is something I mostly got right, (though I goofed in not having a written contract; I thought it was enough just to include in the submissions guidelines part of my site that I was buying "non-exclusive electronic rights", and that I accepted reprints. My lack of an actual contract is a real face-palm now, of course. Fortunately, no harm came of it for anyone, but it was asking for trouble.)
    • Do you have money budgeted to pay writers? When I was researching starting the zine I saw so much advice to authors that there was no point in submitting to a non-paying market that I realized I had to offer some payment, even though all I could afford was a small token payment. (For a print magazine, folks will probably expect more.)
  • You're going to need to know a lot more about marketing than I did (or do) to make it work. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of my traffic came from the Writer's Digest listing.
  • If you don't have any relevant professional experience working on a magazine, don't expect to make any money. Think of it as a hobby and a learning experience, until you learn enough to be better able to assess what you need to know.
  • On the plus side, you have the potential to meet some great people and read some great work.

And that's assuming a webzine. For a print mag, you'll have even greater expenses, and need to worry about details like printing, print distribution, and the like.

This should by no means be considered an exhaustive list -- just the limited "experience" of someone who never made it beyond the n00b stage.

(My biggest regret: Even though I accepted reprints, I received a lot of previously-unpublished material. I feel bad that "first rights" on those stories/poems got burned on a site with so little traffic. The overall quality of work I received was much higher than my little backwater zine deserved, and I wish I could have given those writers more exposure. Lack of traffic was due to my cluelessness about marketing; the quality of work I was receiving deserved much better. So when experienced people here say "start at the top, not at the bottom" when submitting work, I know why they are right.)
 
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Unimportant

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I have completed a few writing courses and would like to start a magazine, similar to Seventeen. I was wondering if anyone has ideas for what sort of additional courses I would require....
Seventeen Magazine sells 20,000,000 copies annually, according to their website, which works out to roughly 1.7 million copies of each issue. Readers pay anywhere from $1 to $4 per issue, depending on whether they have a subscription or buy it off the newsstand. However, that (roughly) $40M in income from sales won't cover all the costs of running the mag; the majority of the magazine's costs are covered by selling ads in the mag.

So you'll need to be able to edit, copyedit, and lay out a magazine; you'll need a printer lined up a year or two in advance of the first printed issue; you'll need distribution to get on magazine racks in stores; you'll need to get signed up with subscription services; you'll definitely need contacts who can use the first dummy issue to entice hundreds of companies who will pay big bucks to advertise in your magazine; and, to start off, you'll need several million dollars to invest in the magazine to get it off the ground.
 

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Basically you are speaking about a venture that require at least twenty people to function. So, you're qualifications should not be in writing, but in business. Twenty people, and that's conservative.

You need writers and editors. You also need typographers. It's very different specialisations. A magazine needs to look good to draw readers. Particularly if you're targeting the same segment as Seventeen magazine. You also need accountants and marketing people, and you need an administration to handle such an organisation. You need people that know how to develop work-flows and to keep the organisation functioning under stress. So, about twenty people, minimum.

Starting a magazine, therefore, is not a writing project. It's a business project. And it's cost intensive, for the reasons others have already stated here. This is if you're talking about print.
 

Buffysquirrel

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Forget courses. Get a job at the kind of magazine you want to set up and learn the business from the inside.
 

FOTSGreg

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My (semi)-experienced opinion is DON'T.

I've tried before with a couple of niche publications that no one ever heard of.

As a sage once said "The fastest way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large fortune."

Seriously, it's a fast way to lose money. It's a huge time-suck. It will point out to you immediately your own deficiencies in editing, writing, and being able to pay your debts.

Do NOT do it unless you can afford professional word rates (at least $0.06/word). Do NOT do it unless you have professional staff artists on your payroll. Do NOT do it unless you have professional editors, marketers, publicists, and more on your payroll. Do NOT do it unless you have a very large amount of money to sink into a very deep hole. Do NOT do it unless you have professional writers lined up knocking at your door to let them write for you. Do NOT do it unless you have at least one professional photographer and one professional web designer on your staff. Do NOT do it unless you have advertisers lining up outside your door with check book's and pens out waiting to spend money with you.

Sorry.
 

mscelina

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As the owner and EIC of a small speculative fiction magazine, one that pays professional rates and has most of that ^^ (except the open check books listed above), let me give you some advice.

You are nowhere close to having the viable professional experience necessary to open your own magazine. Not. Even. Close. And the worst thing you can do for your future prospects in publishing? is to turn out a technical dud as a product. It takes a long time to build up a readership; even longer to build up an advertising base. And the skills you need to accomplish those things? You cannot learn them out of courses. Just a reasonable typesetting program alone will cost you well over a thousand dollars--and doesn't include the permissions. Reasonable set up costs would include setting aside the money for at least six months fiction, articles, art, editing, illustrations, interior design, and extensive marketing. And that's just the beginning.
 

Diana_Rajchel

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As someone who has dealt with amateur/micro markets, it's worth mentioning that distribution is also a huge challenge. If you can't afford a distributor to pick you up, you need to work something out, especially if you want to get subscribers by appearing first in newsstands.
 

BunnyMaz

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It's been said above, but I think it bears repeating, that if you're going to be starting your own magazine, you're not going to be writing for it. There are simply too many other responsibilities involved that the person in charge of a magazine needs to be taking care of.

But if you do want courses that you could take to help you on the way, look at business courses, marketing courses, journalism and the like. Not writing.

Would it be inappropriate to ask your age? I ask because if you're school age, or are going to be in college or university, you could perhaps try working in or starting a school paper or ezine up. Much less immediate responsibility, and nowhere near a true taste of what you'll be facing, but it will perhaps be a start?
 

areteus

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Bunny got there first with this and I agree with her - start small. Don't aim to be professional with massive distribution straight off the bat. University or school papers are great experience and if your college has not got one already that you can work at, start one and see how well you do. Colleges often give help with this sort of thing - not least in terms of printing and distribution, free webspace, advertising revenue (because the university itself often wants to buy advertising space - or may expect it for free if they are giving you resources) etc. Generally, you can also get together a group of students with the right specialisms - graphic design, photography, journalism, business management - who are willing to work for free because this sort of thing looks good on a CV or resume.
 

BunnyMaz

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And if you're past school age and in work, you can still start small. The last office I worked in, there was an official company-wide newsletter that staff could get involved in. Loads of call-centre and other staff applied for - and moved into - work in the newsletter. Mostly they were either doing it on top of their normal work although they did also get paid for it, Some of the guys that wrote articles would submit them and get paid per article, but a few got positions in the newsletter that let them take it on as their only job in the company. It was primarily to share company news with everyone, but included some fun sections like competitions, photoshoots from fun staff events, employee-of-the-week and some joke corners, crosswords and stories.

If your company doesn't have a newsletter, you could offer to start a small one. You'd probably be working for free, in your own time outside of work, and it'd be mostly boring articles about what's been happening in work, but it could grow. Get some colleagues with languishing art or writing skills involved and distribute it free on the staff email, provided you get permission. I know we always quite enjoyed getting ours every month, and departments were always thinking up fun activities and events they could do for an excuse to up productivity and get their face in the newsletter!
 

LindaJeanne

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Seriously, it's a fast way to lose money. It's a huge time-suck. It will point out to you immediately your own deficiencies...

Yeah, this was my experience :).

Being online-only limited the amount of $ lost, but not the time-sink* . Or the discovery of how much less I knew about a lot of things than I thought I did (which was valuable in itself. But still...).

My recommendation to the OP: start a blog instead. It's still a lot of time and work, but it requires less knowledge that you (and I) don't have. And, since it sounds like you're largely interested in a venue for your own writing, a blog will provide that much more effectively than starting another publication would.

(I had no illusions about using my webzine to hilight my own writing. I wasn't confident enough in my own writing to show it to anyone, so starting my own webzine was a way to get involved in the writing community without having to. Despite all my good intentions, on one level it was really just a way to avoid B.I.C.! It was very effective at that :tongue)

* And that was before there were blogs or social media. Since I would have felt the need to have a blog, Facebook page, and Twitter account had they existed at the time -- that raises the time-sink part considerably.

And if you're past school age and in work, you can still start small... If your company doesn't have a newsletter, you could offer to start a small one. You'd probably be working for free, in your own time outside of work, and it'd be mostly boring articles about what's been happening in work, but it could grow. Get some colleagues with languishing art or writing skills involved and distribute it free on the staff email, provided you get permission. I know we always quite enjoyed getting ours every month, and departments were always thinking up fun activities and events they could do for an excuse to up productivity and get their face in the newsletter!

This is excellent advice as well.
 
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squibnocket

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....what programs could be used for layouts, and how interviews would be organised?

Adobe InDesign is the industry standard layout program. Photoshop is used for photography. Many magazines going digitial and are using Adobe's publishing suites to include multimedia, format for mobile devices, and create apps. All of it is expensive.

What do you mean by "how interviews would be organized"? Are you asking how to keep track of the interviews/materials submitted or are you asking how to conduct an interview?

Seventeen is a well-known, long-standing magazine that is doing fairly well a time when print magazines, generally speaking, are not. You'll need to bring content to potential readers that Seventeen, its competitors - including a multitude of blogs and sites - does not already give them.

What classes would be beneficial? Business management. Law (contract and copyright/intellectual property). Marketing. Public relations.
 

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I run a small niche publication. It drains a lot of time and money; but I don't necessarily agree with all of the advice given.

You don't need a ton of staff on your payroll. There are ways around that depending on what you are doing.

Every magazine is not trying to be the next Seventeen or Fortune. There are lots of small publications with niche audiences that are doing ok. All magazines are not meant to appeal to the general public. All magazines are not meant for the newsstand. And there are so many other ways to get distribution.

Your best bet is to do as much research as you can on starting a magazine (in general) and then talk to other small niche magazine owners.

You need to have a business plan and the mind of a business person- not a writer. Also, you need to have a passion for the topic because it's tough and if you don't love it, I don't see how you'd stick to it.

As for finances, the money is not in the magazine- it's in ancillary products. And don't expect to make anything starting out.
 

Bicyclefish

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Adobe InDesign is the industry standard layout program. Photoshop is used for photography. Many magazines going digitial and are using Adobe's publishing suites to include multimedia, format for mobile devices, and create apps. All of it is expensive.
Ow. Sounds like she'd need the entire creative suite. Illustrator is useful as well for vector images.

There are discounts for students but I think you need a valid edu email or student ID to activate the academic versions. Old legit versions of CS aren't that much cheaper.

I really like their software, but I hate Adobe's prices. T_T
 

SummerSurf57

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Ow. Sounds like she'd need the entire creative suite. Illustrator is useful as well for vector images.

There are discounts for students but I think you need a valid edu email or student ID to activate the academic versions. Old legit versions of CS aren't that much cheaper.

I really like their software, but I hate Adobe's prices. T_T

Agreed. I can see the expense.
 

Polly

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Personally I'm falling in love with Scribus for layouts - it's similar to Quark (which I've used when on the staff of several magazines) and although it's a little clunky it does a fabulous job for freeware.

It's not intuitive in the least, however, so unless you already have layout experience there'd be a very sharp learning curve.

Edited to Add: Sorry Mods if I resurrected a dead thread there - that's my tired English brain reading the dates completely backwards. *is embarrassed*