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This basic guide will show you how to launch a printed magazine with a minimum budget.
Why a printed magazine and not a digital magazine?
Printed magazines exactly as the printed books are much better than their digital versions. People love the feel of the magazines, to go to the next page, to feel its covers, and read them.
People grew up with printed stuff, not digital, and they are used to that.
Probably you also like better printed stuff than digital, right?
Find out below everything you need to launch a printed magazine; it is much simpler than you think.
What will you need to launch a printed magazine with a minimum budget?
Please don’t think that you have to be an expert or an editor to launch your very own printed magazine.
Firstly you need the right mindset.
With the right mindset, you can do anything you want.
So here is what you need to launch a printed magazine:
Topic
What should your magazine be about?
Best is to choose a topic that you love – motorcycles, bonsai, kids, furniture, design, cars, bicycles, you name it.
If you choose a topic that you don’t know and which you are not passionate about, it will be almost impossible to succeed.
Magazine name
Check with much care if your potential magazine name exists. You don’t want people to confuse your brand, or to find it difficult to spell.
Try and find simple, unique, and easy to remember magazines names.
Number of pages
Take a look at other printed magazines and find out how many pages they have.
You don’t have to pick the very same number of pages, but it is fine to have a similar number of pages.
Who will write it
A magazine is made out of pages.
Pages are full of content.
Who will write the content?
Your best bet will be freelancers.
It is affordable to pay freelancers to write for your magazines and depending on your magazine topic, you can find highly passionate people.
Covers
The magazine covers will be made by a designer, again a freelancer.
Magazine design
Hire a top freelancer for this part, you want your magazine to look great.
Part of the magazine design is also the logo and the font.
If you don’t know what font to use for your magazine, best is to take a look at other printed magazines and see what fonts they use. You can easily use WhatFontIs to identify all the fonts you like for free.
The other way is to work with the designer that you hired.
Here are some great examples of fonts that work exceptionally for printed magazines.
Serif Fonts
- Garamond. This graceful font was developed in France in the 16th century and has a classical feel.
- Georgia. This elegant yet sturdy font was designed in 1993 and is also the best font for small print.
- Caslon. This font was designed by William Caslon in the 18th century and has a somewhat textured appearance.
- Minion Pro. Considered some of the most readable fonts for print, the Renaissance-inspired font series from the Adobe family was designed in 1989.
- Merriweather. This font has a strong, dependable feel and is easy to read.
Sans-Serif Fonts
- Helvetica Neue. This bold font is an excellent choice for chapter titles.
- Myriad. This versatile, humanist, and general-purpose font was developed in the 1990s for Adobe.
- Open Sans. Although a sans-serif font, Open Sans pays homage to certain elements of serif styles.
- Roboto. This clear and concise font is quite versatile.
Publishing date
You will publish your magazine once per month, or once every 2 months?
I recommend you doing it once per month.
Distribution
Where will people find your printed magazine to buy?
Write down all the shops, hotels, gas stations, and other places that you consider to work with.
Advertising
Your printed magazine will sell ads, right?
Who are your potential advertisers?
Make your research and note them all in a detailed Excel file.
You want to write down the brand name, their office address, contact person, phone number, email, and any other information that you find interesting.
To find your potential advertisers, you have several methods:
– Buy similar magazines with yours and check who pays for ads.
– Think about who is a good fit for your magazine.
To find out the rates that advertisers pay, make all the research you can on the internet, including local forums.
Alternatively, you might want to find a close friend that is maybe working in advertising and he can for sure help you.
In fact, this is one of the hardest parts of your mission.
Price
Find out how much are people paying for printed magazines that are similar with yours.
Printing cost
Printing cost depends on the number of pages, on the quality of the paper, and on how many magazines you will print each month.
For that reason, it is very hard to find out how many units to print per month, the single solution I can think of is to ask editors from others magazines, to ask on local forums, and so on.
Content
You should make the content for at least 3 numbers if you ask me.
In this way, you will find it much easier to sell ads and have predictable revenue.
Conclusions
At a first glance, it might look difficult.
Not the mention that this guide is very basic, you should use it just to get started.
Additionally, you might find the process difficult if you don’t have experience in launching businesses.
With this in mind, try to think all the aspects well before going deep in the action.
Above all, train your mindset and start the project.
