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Subject
business model?
Name
Kiki
E-mail
romgateway@yahoo.com
Date & Time
5/18/2004 6:34:45 PM
Hi Tom, If I wanted to publish a new magazine what would a business model have to look like? I’d like to start a magazine featuring mainly popular women’s fiction. What could the costs be like? What would I have to consider? Advertising. Printing. Distribution… Looking through your articles I might start with a newsletter and then let it grow, but would like to hear from you first. Thanks!

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Message
Subject
re: business model?
Name
Tom Person
E-mail
editor@laughingbear.com
Date & Time
5/19/2004 11:44:54 PM
For popular fiction, and women's at that, you are looking at a literary model. Everything depends on what you want out of this. If you are doing it for the sake of literature, this is a good idea. If you are doing it for a living, fiction of any kind is pretty scarey. You do have the advantage of having a nice niche to approach grant givers with. I would suggest you get in touch with CLMP and the Small Press Center (www.clmp.org and www.smallpress.org respectively). CLMP especially can help you find grants to get this magazine off the ground and sustain it. I would suggest that you limit advertising to other literary magazines, and most of that will be exchange. But it will help you get your name around. Those organizations and other lit magazines will be able to give you better suggestions on distribution than I can. Most importantly, once you are ready to get started, contact the best female fiction writers you can think of. Explain that you are a new magazine and ask for a story or just advice. Sometimes the bigger they are, the nicer they are to publishers starting out. Lastly, you don't have to start with a newsletter, but there is nothing wrong with starting a magazine in chapbook format. Many magazines have started very simply and grown as it became prudent. Someday those funky first issues will be all the more collectible.