Getting your print magazine published and distributed can be confusing – particularly for new publishers. Without the right ingredients, you may easily find yourselves with a publication that doesn’t deliver as intended, reach its true potential or even reach your target readers in the first place. Having been in the specialist magazine publishing market for over 30 years, Warners Circulation Solutions understand the difficulties associated with getting your own magazine published and distributed. As such, we’ve created a guide below for new publishers with answers to commonly asked questions.
Tips for New Magazine Creators
New Publishing Costs and Tips
To get copies of your magazine physically printed you will need a printer. Choosing a printer is an important decision (and one that as your distributor we can help with) as it impacts 2 significant aspects of your magazine…
The quality of magazine paper, how it looks and feels to your potential customers is important when considering getting your magazine published. First impressions matter, especially for a new magazine being picked up by a potential customer for the first time
The cost: this is one of the main factors to consider in your profitability plans as the printing of your magazine is one of the largest costs you will have to deal with. A good printer will be able to advise on numbers, paper quality and the efficient use of paper to maximise the use of the paper and minimise the cost – to talk to someone who can help please contact (Midlands/Danny link)
To get copies into retailers and onto the shelf, you will need a Distributor. It’s a Distributors role to help and give advice to Publishers on how many copies to print, where copies should be placed to give the best chance of selling, what retail activity your magazine may benefit from and the deadlines and logistics surrounding the tasks above. Your Distributor will also liaise with and create the agreements and paperwork for the rest of the supply chain on your behalf including…
The pricing of your magazine should be based on a mixture of factors:
Apart from a few exceptions, offering a cheaper magazine or much cheaper than potential competitors or similar titles does not necessarily help you to sell more copies or more profitable. For example, it is far easier and more profitable to sell 1,000 copies at £4.99 to generate £4,990 than to have to sell 2,508 at £1.99 to generate the same.
In addition to this, a good sales efficiency (how many copies you sell out of the number you supply) is 50% so selling 1,000 copies at £4.99 you would require 2,000 copies to be printed – 2,508 copies at £1.99 would require 5,000+ copies and as mentioned before – print is one of the biggest costs facing a Publisher.
For specialist magazines, in particular, quality and the relevance of the content to the customer tends to be far more important than the number of pages, and higher prices provide added benefits to both the Publisher and the customer.…
For an existing magazine (where sales are known) Retailer store level sales will be used to create appropriate store level supplies, any promotional copies or copies being used to expand into new retailers for the first time will be added and then any copies you require for subscribers, export copies to be sent abroad and advertiser/office copies you require for yourself. These added together will give you the print order – something your Distributor will create with you and then notify the relevant parts of the supply chain for you
For the launch of a new magazine, the initial print order will be based on a level of appropriate supplies into the retailers that are initially targeted and that stocking agreements are agreed – the number and size of these retailers being the largest part of your initial print order – any overseas, subscriptions or office copies that are required will then be added to give a complete launch issue print order – as with an existing magazine your Distributor will create the print order with you and notify the relevant parts of the supply chain for you
Unfortunately, there is no way to establish the costs until the objectives and the plan have been agreed so that’s a ‘how long is a piece of string’ question initially. Costs will depend on the frequency of the magazine, how many copies you decide to print, any promotions you may choose to take part in and the remit offered to you by the Distributor. That said once the above is known then budgeting and costs are easy to establish – again your Distributor will be able to provide this information
Content is king – while the look and feel of the magazine is important the content is what customers will come back for – Avoid over production and ‘Publishing for vanity’
Deciding how many copies to put out initially is always a little difficult – but once sales are known adjust the print order accordingly. This can be done in such a way as to still leave copies available to try new outlets and grow the title
Retail promotions are expensive and will not always give you a direct revenue return or necessarily increase listings. Have your magazines objectives firmly in mind when thinking what the benefit of a promotion will be
Be clear about what levels of ROI (Return On Investment – ie how much you will gain back financially from any additional spend that you allocate) you need
In most cases there is no ‘charge’ for working with a Distributor. The Distributor, Publisher and Retailer get paid from the remit left after the Publisher gets paid – so if the Publishers remit is 50% (ie they get paid 50% of the cover price x number of copies sold) then the other 50% goes to paying Retail, Wholesale and your Distributor
Payments are worked out based on RSV (Retail Sales Value) this is the cover price multiplied by the number of copies you sell. The RSV for selling 1,000 copies at £4.99 would be 1,000 x £4.99 = £4,990 then multiplied by the remit that you have agreed with your Distributor, so if 50% then £4,990 x 50% = £2,495
Your sale is based on how many copies are returned (not sold) taken from the number of copies supplied. So, 2,000 copies supplied, 1,000 copies returned = 2,000 – 1,000 = a sale of 1,000 copies
How much you get paid will depend on the remit offered to you by your Distributor. The remit is the % of the cover price of the copies that sell that you get paid. So as a simple example if you have a magazine that has a cover price of £4.99 and you sell 1,000 copies and you have a remit from your Distributor of 50% then you would get paid 1,000 (copies) x £4.99 (cover price) x 50% (remit) = £2,495
In the example above the other 50% of the cover price goes to paying the rest of the supply chain and is split between the retailer, wholesaler and Distributor
There are other costs that may impact on this payment – primarily any retail handling/promotions and carriage costs – but these would all be agreed upon with you in advance
While a little complicated, the question of ‘when’ you get paid is equally important. It is recognised that not paying a Publisher until sales are known (normally 28 days after the issue is recalled either manually or due to the new issue going on-sale) would be too much of a burden so advanced payments are made to help with cash flow. This is called payment phasing and is worked out on an estimated or anticipated sale.
For existing titles. this is relatively easy and would be based on the actual sales history of previous issues, in the case of a new title, it is a little more difficult, but would be a figure based on an agreed anticipated sale.
To continue with a simplistic example, if it had been agreed that the anticipated sale was going to be 1,000 (the cover price still being £4.99 and the remit 50%) then as already identified the payment due would be £2,495. If we take the payment phasing as 60/20/20 (each figure represents a percentage) then you would get paid 60% of the anticipated £2,495 the month after the issue went on sale, 20% of the anticipated £2,495 the month after that and by month 3 the actual sale would be known so the final payment would be a reconciliation of the amount due based on the actual known sale less what had already been advanced.
Using this example, if we anticipated 1,000 copies sale and we sold exactly 1,000 copies the amount due would be £2,495 then the payments would be:
The final sale is normally different from the anticipated sale. In which case, if it is higher or lower this is reflected in Payment 3 the reconciliation payment.
Whilst it can seem a little complicated, your Distributor will be able to give you a tailored example based on your magazine once the variables are known.
While this does vary depending largely on the level of retail support and promotions required normally 2 and a half to 3 months should be planned into schedules from initial contact to a magazine appearing on a shelf
There are many thousands of retailer outlets that stock magazines in the UK, they tend to be split up as follows
This depends on several things:
But more generally speaking, the prime place for specialist magazines to stock your magazine is WHS High Street and WHS Travel. There are additional costs involved in being stocked in these outlets, (promotional which are optional to a degree and sales based which are not).
Grocery/Supermarkets will often avoid low frequency (less frequent than Monthly, bi-monthlies, 6 monthly etc) and low price magazines (there are additional promotional costs involved in being stocked in these outlets).
Independents tend to have the lowest individual store sales and because of this can have lower sales efficiencies.
The range of magazines that retailers take is split into subject specific segments with magazines of similar appeal and audience target sitting together on the shelf
There is activity available to move magazines to more visible areas of the store with higher footfall or bring your magazine to the front of the shelf – these are called promotional packages and are used to boost sales through increased awareness of special issues and new titles
Copies that are unsold are wasted (pulped) via a secure and environmentally regulated process by wholesale once they have been returned, counted and scanned from retail.
All magazines MUST have a barcode before being sold into retail so this is an important area that needs to be sorted out early in planning.
Generating a barcode is simple, (normally) free and something your Distributor can do for you but it requires an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number)
ISSN are provided by the British Library (BL instructions or link)
If you’re looking to offer your magazine both in print and digitally, this can be done yourself or in conjunction with your Distributor who can then help with promotional activity and the integration into the Newstrade and Print Subscription plans that you have.
There are typically three Digital options available, each with their own benefits:
Deadlines
Basic P&L
