Anyone can have an excellent idea for a magazine, but what goes into creating one, and how does a magazine become a successful product?

For anyone who has had great ideas, the immediate realisation is that you can’t do it all yourself. Just because you have an inkjet printer, it can’t replicate high-quality publications. And even if you purchased the equipment and software production artists use every day, there is no way of instantly gaining the skills and experience necessary to turn the idea into suitable materials and output to commercial print standards to replicate high-quality images on paper — unless that is, you’ve just escaped the Matrix.

It’s obvious: you will need some help.

What you will need is experience and guidance with more than a little bit of talent, as well as an assured approach to planning out each step of what can be perceived to be a complicated process.

To help, we will need clarity of vision where your idea is concerned with a rational approach to both the cost of production and the relative value of the commercial return.

While classic mistakes are numerous, pitfalls need to be negotiated. So here is a brief realisation attached to great magazine ideas.

Some great ideas aren’t great commercial prospects. The harsh reality is not all great ideas can cover its costs nor be profitable

Some great ideas have a limited audience. If you have a limited audience, you have limited circulation and therefore limited opportunity to cover its costs — but that’s not such a bad thing if you’ve tapped into a highly qualified market and possess every contact in that industry

Some great ideas are still conceptual. Some magazines will struggle to fill pages with quality content written in a meaningful way

Some great ideas lean too much on advertising. If pages become overwhelmed with adverts, it will lessen the impact when communicating quality editorial and its purpose.

The first question we hear is how much does production cost? It’s probably helpful to understand how a magazine is costed. We usually offer a price ‘per issue’ based on the number of pages and design complexity. The topic and content aren’t relevant at this conceptual stage, but rather content quantity and format. It will enable us to hone in on a realistic price for production and how it will affect printing costs.

The second question is: how quickly can you publish it? If we have fully formed designs in our inbox — we can produce a magazine surprisingly quickly — it would be more days than months. However, we rarely get something so fully formed. Even from our more experienced clients, we still need to fill many gaps. 

It could take several weeks if we started with nothing more than an idea and scant content. Of course, you can’t do it all — and we don’t expect you to — but do talk to us early on because we can give you great advice to avoid the typical pitfalls that first-time publishers often face.

So if you are one of the lucky few who have a great idea for a magazine and would like to see if it is viable to pursue tentatively stepping into magazine publishing for the first time, we would love to hear from you. So call us on 01273 911730 or enquire via the contact page.