How do I fund a student magazine? What do I need to know?

Question

I'm a student at a UK university and I've rallied together a load of people to contribute to a new student magazine I'm hoping to launch in September. The problem is I have NO IDEA about how to fund it, the typical costs of prinitng and all the financial side of maintaining a magazine to stay in print.

What do I need to know and who should I talk to?

Answer 1

hmm, big question.  Simple answer - to find the cost of printing, you should submit your potential job to various printers and let them bid on it - that will give you an idea of how much it is going to cost to print it.  Once you have that figure, you will need to raise the money.  The two ways magazines raise money are 1) subscriptions, and 2) advertisements.  So you can either sell subscriptions or sell advertisements, or both.  Since you know the approximate cost, you can figure out how many ads you will need to sell to make the magazine viable (oh, and include the cost of paying your writers if you want to do that also).    As I said, this is a simple answer - selling advertisements for a new magazine is not going to be an easy task, but if you serve a specific niche you can target businesses that target that niche and that might make it easier to address.   If your magazine will address student issues, you can go to local stores and businesses that rely on student trade and traffic and start with them - they should be more motivated to purchase an ad then national businesses or unrelated industries.  If you are affiliated with a university or college, you can bring your project to the marketing department and see if they can assist you further in your efforts.  Good luck!

Answer 2

You should think of this project as you would any other business,  and develop a business plan.

Most magazines will gain more than 80% of their revenue from advertising. The rest will come from copy sales although increasingly publishers need to think about other ways to generate revenue from their printed product - events for example.

To get advertising revenue you will need to develop a media kit that 'sells' your magazine to potential advertisers. You should include information about your target readers, distribution methods and an idea of the content. If you can produce a dummy edition to show them they'll appreciate it.

Who should you talk to? Well, you could so worse than trying to speak to the editor of your local newspaper. At the very least you might get some coverage but you might also get an insight into the world of publishing.

Good luck.