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| SFReader Forums > Writing > Small Press vs. Big House > Small Press Can Survive | Forum Quick Jump
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Laura Stamps
Neophyte
      
Date Joined Jun 2007
Total Posts : 134
| Posted 12/5/2007 3:28 PM (GMT -5) |   | Two small press poets come to mind immediately...Lyn Lifshin and Charles Bukowski...both published by one of the most famous small press publishers, Black Sparrow Press.
There are others, but those two come to mind quickly. I have been on computer for over 5 hours now, so the brain cells aren't as sharp as they were earlier, thus I can think of only two, but there are more (grin).
Magickal Urban Fantasy Novelist
The Witches of Dixie: Book One of the Witchery Series
(ISBN: 978-0-9798413-0-9, 2007, Trytium Publishing, 245 pages)
Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, your local bookstore
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John Thiel
Stablehand
Date Joined Feb 2005
Total Posts : 34
| Posted 12/5/2007 7:02 PM (GMT -5) | | | Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickinson started out in the small press, but as for fantasy and sf, you could find Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard and H.P.Lovecraft in fanzines if you looked back. Harlan Ellison was the editor of a fanzine in the 1950s and doing a Village Voice column in the 1960s.
Twenty and thirty years? Well, the process hasn't really stopped, but I think it's been encumbered somewhat. Still, there are examples like Don D'Ammassa. Jeffery Marzi, who started out in my own fanzine and has appeared in my netzine SURPRISING STORIES, has been on TV twice now since first publishing there, and has taken in $6,000 dollars of a $12,000 payment. I intend to mention this success story in the upcoming issue of SURPRISING.
I have coffee and watch author chats.
Blogsite: http://360.yahoo.com/bonomo15 *Website: http://dcwi.com/~thiel | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 12/21/2007 5:49 PM (GMT -5) | | I posted a bibliography in my "Jung/Writer" thread. There aer excellent, credible sources there. 3k circulation for amagazine would be HUGE in small press terms.
You base economic success in magazines on subscriptions and advertisements. Two key things: 1) you need advertisers lined up at the conceptual stage of a magazine not after the fact 2) and kind of retail distribution is more or less for advertising purposes with very little revenue emerging there.
Some quotes:
"It's a difficult task to master in a market where 60% of magazines fail their first year in business, only two out of 10 new magazines remain in business after four years, and just one out of 10 makes it past its 10-year anniversary.
It's even more arduous in an industry where longevity is predicated on obtaining a successful balance among circulation, advertising, and editorial, but which offers no foolproof system for helping you achieve that balance. "Magazine publishing is not a science," says Samir A. Husni, professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi and author of Launch Your Own Magazine: A Guide for Succeeding in Today,'s Marketplace (Hamblett House Inc.: $26.95). "There is no formula. It is a know-how," he says.
That know-how starts with securing sufficient financing. Powell and Bonnet launched Brides Noir with less than $100,000, but it can cost a lot more to get a magazine off the ground. To avoid a cash crunch, Husni suggests that independent publishers operate on a budget of four times their estimated startup costs--that generally ranges from $1 million to $4 million a year." (Wade)
"To convince advertisers to purchase space in your publication. determine your magazine's rate base. Rate base represents the guaranteed circulation advertisers expect the magazine to maintain. The higher your magazine's rate base, the more attractive your magazine will be to potential advertisers. An established magazine is considered successful if it reaches 10% of its total universe, which is the number of people who fit the magazine's target audience.
To maintain your rate base and guarantee advertisers that the magazine will continue to sustain its audience, nurture renewed subscriptions and establish new ones. One way that you can do this is through a direct mail marketing campaign to members of your magazine's total universe. Powell and Banner used their Website to attract new subscribers. In fact, they averaged about 20,000 hits a month on the Website before they launched the test issue. After its release, they got over 50,000 hits in one week's time. To date, Brides Noir has more than 3,000 subscribers.
"[Our Website] was the most powerful tool we had in terms of getting subscribers," says Bonner, who expects 12% of Brides Noir's sales to come from subscriptions.
Circulation revenue comes from subscriptions, newsstand sales, and other venues in which a publication is sold. Generally, subscriptions account for about 83% of an established magazine's sales and newsstand sales make up 17%. With startups, the opposite is true: New magazines depend more on newsstand sales." (Wade)
"STEPS TO A SUCCESSFUL MAGAZINE
According to publishing experts, the first things to do when starting a magazine are to:
1 Generate an idea and secure a target audience. To make your magazine concept a reality, first research the idea to determine if there is an audience that will support it. "People who tell me. 'This magazine is for everybody, about everything, reaching every age' [are wrong]," Husni says. "There is no such thing anymore. We are in the era of laser targeting." Brides Noir successfully identified and targeted the underserved African American bridal market.
2 Find advertisers and identify your audience. According to Cheryl Woodard's Starting & Running a Successful Newsletter or Magazine (Nolo Press; $29.99), the key is identifying an audience that is interested in purchasing a particular publication. Holding focus groups or conducting surveys can gather this information.
3 Find a distributor. More often than not, this requires the use of a circulation consulting company to get periodicals from the printer to bookstores and other retail outlets. These companies have contacts with national distributors and wholesalers. They generally charge $1,000 to $3,000 per month but can shop your magazine idea around to national distributors.
4 Monitor costs at all times. When calculating costs, keep in mind that a healthy, established magazine spends one-third of its budget on printing and production, one-third on editorial expenses, and another third on distribution. Also, in the beginning stages of starting a magazine, 60% to 70% of the startup budget will go toward or printing.
Starting and operating a magazine can be expensive, so publishers must prepare themselves for the possibility of negative revenue. "You have to plan on zero revenue for the first year." Husni warns. "Do you have enough money to publish a magazine for a whole year without getting a penny back?" If the answer is no, Husni says you may want to rethink starting a magazine, otherwise you could become one of the many publications that never make it to a second issue. To get your magazine past its freshman effort, create a five-year budget that outlines your costs.
5 Manage printing and postage. Printing is the largest expense of starting a magazine. Depending on the paper's quality and weight, printing costs generally range from 75 cents to $1.50 per copy, with the amount decreasing as the number of copies increases. New publishers are usually required to pay up front, until a printer-publisher rapport has been established. after which a payment plan is granted.
The cost of postage fluctuates regularly but is generally one-third of the magazine's production costs. Periodical rate postage can decrease your costs significantly, but requires a complex application process. The appropriate forms and statements for periodical rate applications can be found at www.usps.com/forms/periodical.htm.
6 Create editorial and design. Magazines require a staff that can produce compelling content and design. Graphic designers can cost $35 to $50 per hour. In-house writers are generally salaried positions and their pay should be in line with industry standards. Freelance writers often set their own fees, with some charging at least $1 per word and others charging a flat fee per article. Costs for equipment vary depending on the type used, but desktop publishing programs required for the design of magazines can run upward of $1,000 per program.
7 Become a knowledgeable publisher. Successful publishers understand how the magazine process works from editorial to advertising to printing to circulation and everything in between." (Wade)
Here's a primer/bib for interested parties:
Wade, Marcia A.; 2004. "Publishing for Profit: Launching a Magazine Is a Risky Venture. Navigating the Pitfalls Requires Sufficient Advertising, Circulation, Content-And a Bit of Luck" Black Enterprise, Vol. 34.
Kurtz, Paul.; 1993. "Are We Approaching the End of the Age of Books? Prometheus at Twenty-Five" Free Inquiry, Vol. 14,
CoserLewis A., Kadushin, Charles, Powell, Walter W. ; 1982. Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing; Basic Books.
Oliver, Sandra M.; 2004; A Handbook of Corporate Communication and Strategic Public Relations: Pure and Applied; Routledge.
Greco, Albert N. 2004.; The Book Publishing Industry; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Geiser, Elizabeth A.; Dolin,Arnold; Topkis, Gladys S.; 1985. The Business of Book Publishing: Papers by Practitioners, Westview Press.
Any one of these resources should help to provide an interested party with exceedingly reliable information from professional practicioners on the current and projected future state of both books and book publishing. Print magazines, too.
All of these resources are available at www.questia.com and you can register for a free trial period at Questia to review the materials free of charge.
I highly recommend the Kurtz article: short, illuminative, based in real world experience.
"Art is the celebration of the ego's destruction."
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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