How to Start a Magazine

In addition to the obvious production and printing costs of operating a magazine, you'll have legal costs, staffing and distribution costs as well. You can see more information on costs to expect for you launch your magazine business here.

There are many reasons why a magazine would fail besides not having enough money. You need to have a business plan (see a sample magazine publishing business plan), quality content, an audience who will pay to read your content, advertisers who want to advertise in your magazine and distribution channels. Do your research before you get started. Talking to a experienced professional in the field can give you great insight.

Publishing Expert James Kobak covers the easy-to-follow steps to starting a new magazine, answers questions about daily operations, discusses influential industry trends and includes revealing real-life case studies. Find out more >> How to Become a Successful Magazine Publisher

Many entrepreneurs never get their business off the ground due to lack of financing. If your start-up needs funding, finding lenders can be a challenge, especially in a strapped economy. Don't let that stop you from looking. America One has some good financing options.

The Magazine Publishers of America provides some resources for getting obtaining certain numbers and bar codes required for magazines:

ISSN Numbers
You get an International Standard Serial Number from the Library of Congress. Your ISSN number distinguishes your publication from others. There is no fee. Get an ISSN Number

BIPAD Numbers
The BIPAD number is the middle 5 digits of the magazine barcode. It is the permanent identification of the the magazine throughout its retail life.
How to Get a BIPAD Number

You'll need a bar code as well. A list of bar code suppliers can be found at the U.S. ISBN Agency

MagazineLaunch.com is a website designed specifically for new magazine start-ups, offering a wide variety of helpful resources. If you need help or have questions about financing, planning, syndicated content, editorial content, publishing or printing - you'll find answers and guidance here.

The Publishing Business Group is a consulting company that assists newsletter, magazine and also e-zine publishers. Their website features articles, books on magazine publishing and an online forum where you can post questions and find answers.

The Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association has several services and information on publishing through membership. Publishinghelp.com is a publishing consultant's site that includes special reports on magazine publishing issues.

These days, you can publish a magazine in print or online. You can charge customers a monthly or annual subscription or give your publication away for free, producing income from advertisers alone. Where you publish and how much you charge will depend on your market - and what they want. You also want to consider competing magazines. Ideally, you want to give your prospective customers what they want, but cannot find elsewhere.

Quark Press and Adobe Creative Suite are popular design and layout software to use if you want to do the layout in-house. If you want to get ideas or inspiration, check out 20 magazine design layouts at this website.

You can take an online hands on workshop through Lynda.com, which shows you how to set up a document, work with images and text and many other page design elements. The course takes about 3 hours, and you need to sign up to be a site member, which costs about $25/month.

Here's a description of the course from their website:
"Building a great magazine layout can be a time-consuming and difficult process, and can involve working with a number of applications and perhaps a group of designers to achieve a satisfactory result. In Designing a Magazine Layout Hands-On Workshop, graphic designer and Adobe Certified Instructor Nigel French teaches effective design and production techniques using InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Bridge to create dynamic magazine layouts. He establishes an efficient workflow using multiple programs, examines the aesthetics of integrating text with images, and teaches best practices for outputting the final document."

You can also hire out and work with a freelance designer who specializes in magazine design. See a list of designers

You want to create a media kit to attract advertisers to place ads in your magazine. A good media kit is even more important to start-up magazines because you don't have past issues or previous clients to use as examples.

First, you want to collect media kits from other magazines with similar audiences to get some ideas. The materials (i.e. paper) that you use in your media kit reflect your business, content and market, so make sure you choose a good match.

Your magazine's media kit should include your mission or positioning statement, audience analysis, including reader demographics, circulation breakdown and ad rates. You can see a sample magazine media kit here.

You want to use a printing company that specializes in printing magazines. You can usually request a estimate online for your printing job, which allows you to easily get bids from several printers to compare prices, delivery times and service.

Pelican Printing

Action Printing

World Color

Heidel Print