Author / Magdiaries

by Magdiaries

Life’s utterly wonderful

Circulation: tiny. Profit to date: zero. Hours: insane.

But life’s utterly wonderful.

After three decades working for a huge magazine company, I thought it was all over: my title got sold, and I took redundancy. Then, from a gallon of Guinness shared with a mate, a fresh magazine idea emerged. When we’d sobered up, it was still a good idea. We launched on a shoestring in autumn 2012.

We’re print. We’re digital. We’re just four partners, with no staff and no corporate crap. Our readers love us, and we love surprising them (and ourselves) with the amazing stories we discover.

Mick Oakey | Managing Editor, The Aviation Historian



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

A dedicated follower of fashion

Publishing is like fashion.

You have to follow the trends, live them, watch them, indulge them. Your pages are a mirror, your readers want to see content that reflects them. The economy dictates spending. Your advertisers will be either be freely spending or penny pinching.

Your magazine is a wardrobe. Mixing the timeless, vintage pages of print with the contemporary, modern slickness of digital – or discarding one so there is more room for the other.

Trends will be tried, some will work, and others won’t. There is no ‘one size fits all’, but there are many dedicated followers of fashion.

Leanne Taylor | Group Editor, Plastics, Rapid News Communications Group



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

Connected like never before

As a relative newcomer to independent publishing, I can’t pretend to know how things used to be, but I have quickly realised that we have a connection with the reader like never before.

Everything is now at an editor’s fingertips: authors who submit online, artists to work with, crowd-fundable financial backing and, most importantly, readers eager to discover new magazines. There are real connections to be made via the internet and social media, where opinions can be voiced and new talent championed.

It seems that the power to direct the future of magazine publishing is firmly in the readers’ hands.

Dan Burgess | Editor, Firewords Quarterly

 

 



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

15-year old magazines

I have a stack of magazines, years old, that I cannot bring myself to throw out. The very thought fills me with dread.

I also have many magazines stored neatly on my iPad, most of which will never be deleted.

My point? Let’s not waste any more time on the ‘print vs digital’ debate and focus our energy on what’s important – the future.

Let’s support one another through times of change, so that years from now, another woman like me can sit with a 15-year old copy of your magazine, printed or digital, and feel like a little girl again.

Jessica Pinch | Marketing Communications Manager, YUDU Media

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Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

Mighty tree killers

I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life fighting to save magazines.

In doing that, I’ve made more enemies than friends. From industry grandees to brand new trainees, people don’t want to hear that the folded paper idea of a magazine is in serious decline.

Somehow, they’ve lost sight of the purpose of a magazine – to inform and entertain those with a passion for a subject – and become focused on the form.

Maybe an industry obsessed with killing trees and printing their precious words on their abused, pulped corpses doesn’t really deserve to survive. But I think it does.

Adam Tinworth | One Man & His Blog

 



Grub Street Journal