WE ARE STARTING A MAGAZINE - ARE YOU SAM?

I work alone!

Any advice welcome.

I edit/produce/write a quarterly 76-page glossy magazine for the finance sector on my own, with 1 external designer. Is this normal?

I do have a real job marketing conferences, raising .5m GDP in sponsorship, press relations, complex monthly e-mailouts and proofing 6-monthly research reports for finance sector among others. They I can do - but no-one here seems to understand how many people should/could be employed just manage a great professional magazine. What roles would be expected for this task.

1) editor, 2) production manager, 3) proofreader, 4) 1+ designer? - or these days are these just luxuries? (This is a commerical firm, not a publishing company).

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Permalink Reply by 6thAveConcepts on January 26, 2010 at 7:19am

I helped design a monthly 230+ (some months more, some months less) page real estate magazine for a newspaper. Since it was a newspaper we had a nice size staff. Still, for those two weeks each month we all ate, slept and breathed the property magazine. Our staff consisted of 6 designers + 5 or 6 sales reps + 1 ad director.

Sales reps is something I've not seen you mention. Advertising sales. How is your magazine funded? Where does it get money? For it to be successful it needs to earn money. Either you have donations/contributions or you have advertising. Or, perhaps you've found a revenue source I can't think of at the moment.

76 page magazine? I can easily see that magazine being handled by 1) editor/production manager + 2) proofreade/copy editorr (part-time) + 3) sales rep (or two) + 4) designer. Bare bones total staff of 4 people (including one part-time). I really wouldn't suggest any staff smaller than that.

If you're handling editing, writing and producing on your own now how are you not being overloaded and overwhelmed?

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Permalink Reply by Martin Keane on January 26, 2010 at 7:58am

Now that's what I thought. We're an Association, so there's no advertising (or need for revenue as such, thankfully). Most articles are commissioned by me to banks etc. who supply me with there copy. I and research colleague write 10 pages and a ton of graphs.
Thereon I manage everything. Just finishing one now - taken since mid-Dec, meantime I'm promoting our conference, creating sponsorship packages and AV plans for the conference, major Press event and story last week, editing our own articles for other magazines and faffing with our website. Jeez what else...!?
Anyway, I am being overwhelmed (we're a staff of 6 researchers/accountants) and it's slowly dawning on me.
I actually need to find what's common practise out there - so when push comes to shove (and this latest issue appears in early Feb rather than Jan (despite all the figures/forecasts being published ONLY IN JAN!!!), I know how to explain my shortcomings.

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Permalink Reply by 6thAveConcepts on January 26, 2010 at 1:36pm

Sales is a full-time job in itself. I worked for a coupon advertising company for a while. They put coupons on the back of sales receipts. Small company with the owner who did some sales + 2 part-time designers + 1 full-time sales and 2 part-time sales.

If you don't need advertising revenue and you get your financial support from another source then great! That's one less staffer. It still seems you're overworked (but who isn't? you either do 2 or more jobs anymore or you're out of work, LOL).

Your designer is going to need to design the pages. That takes a bit of time. I design monthly newsletters and a couple of reports a month. Counting editing and revisions I spend about 2 hours per page on a 16 page newsletter; the reports are easier and I crank out about 30 pages an hour, counting revisions and corrections. You need to allow time for photo placement, artwork, illustrations, etc...

At the same time you need someone to read everything. That's your copy editor/proofreader. Every story, ever article, every word needs to be read. It is a plus if your copy editor IS NOT the writer. Generally speaking it's hard for us to see our own mistakes. In addition to checking for grammar, spelling and punctuation the copy editor may need to check facts and figures, make sure the websites referred to are correct (or still active), etc...

I imagine for a small magazine the editor and production manager can be shared duties. Still, this can be time consuming. The editor needs to act like the manager for the magazine itself and also operate as the magazine's "face" to the community, other departments, outside world, etc... Someone needs to be there to deal with clients, irate readers, etc...

Sounds like you know what each role does, esp. since you're involved with the day-to-day operations. It's a lot of work.

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Permalink Reply by Martin Keane on January 28, 2010 at 8:47am

Thanks... you break it up nicely. Those are pretty much all what i do - but it's always interesting to see in compartmentalised. Can see things getting simpler of course - but it's exhilerating, just bloody frustrating too!! :)

6thAveConcepts said:

Sales is a full-time job in itself. I worked for a coupon advertising company for a while. They put coupons on the back of sales receipts. Small company with the owner who did some sales + 2 part-time designers + 1 full-time sales and 2 part-time sales.

If you don't need advertising revenue and you get your financial support from another source then great! That's one less staffer. It still seems you're overworked (but who isn't? you either do 2 or more jobs anymore or you're out of work, LOL).

Your designer is going to need to design the pages. That takes a bit of time. I design monthly newsletters and a couple of reports a month. Counting editing and revisions I spend about 2 hours per page on a 16 page newsletter; the reports are easier and I crank out about 30 pages an hour, counting revisions and corrections. You need to allow time for photo placement, artwork, illustrations, etc...

At the same time you need someone to read everything. That's your copy editor/proofreader. Every story, ever article, every word needs to be read. It is a plus if your copy editor IS NOT the writer. Generally speaking it's hard for us to see our own mistakes. In addition to checking for grammar, spelling and punctuation the copy editor may need to check facts and figures, make sure the websites referred to are correct (or still active), etc...

I imagine for a small magazine the editor and production manager can be shared duties. Still, this can be time consuming. The editor needs to act like the manager for the magazine itself and also operate as the magazine's "face" to the community, other departments, outside world, etc... Someone needs to be there to deal with clients, irate readers, etc...

Sounds like you know what each role does, esp. since you're involved with the day-to-day operations. It's a lot of work.