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Starting a magazine August 11, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Magazine , trackback

I’m diving in.  I bought How to Start a Magazine and have been reading it every chance I get.  It’s a great resource and lays out the process step by step.  The most encouraging fact so far is that while 90% of magazines fail, the author claims a 70% success rate for those magazines that take their time, plan in advance, do focus groups, direct mail marketing tests, and so forth.

It looks like my original plan of whipping up a magazine before the spring semester is not going to work out.  But I’m hopeful that we can get a pilot issue out by then.

Craig and I talked for a while today to come up with a 10-word catchphrase that describes what our magazine is all about.  We didn’t have any trouble, and got quite a few clever ones, which I find encouraging.  Next step is planning out two years worth of editorial content.  This will be tougher.  We’re giving it 24 hours.

Comments»

1. Trev - August 11, 2006

I got a contact in SF for a guy who started a magazine that had nearly 200k subscribers. I’ve connected the dots between him and Craig via email and he’s already responded with his cell phone number.