How often have you looked at the latest issue of Raygun or GQ and said to yourself, "I can do this?" Well, as John F. Kennedy Jr., publisher of George, recently demonstrated, publishing your own magazine is as easy as raiding your bank account. If you have considered starting your own magazine, here are a few helpful tips based on John Jr. (and Grace and Bob Guccione's son and Normal Lear's ex-wife)'s vast publishing experience:
1) Start with a lot of money. A million dollars is good. Several million is better. And the best part is that hardly anybody cares where the money comes from. For instance, it's okay to have a rich friend fund your magazine. However, keep two things in mind: your friend will likely want to contribute to the magazine, diluting your vision, or your friend likely won't remain your friend for very long.
2) Fret over the "personality" of the magazine. Will your magazine be "playful yet sincere"? Will it have a "thoughtful but insouciant" air about it? Perhaps it will be "sexy, with a loopy pedanticism" with which readers will naturally fall in love.
Personality is an inestimably important quality for a new magazine to have. If your magazine's attitude cannot be summed up in half a dozen words, people will not be able to tell it apart from the thousands of other publications all your friends will be putting out. For this reason, most of your pre-publication effort should be devoted to creating a pithy yet evocative description of your magazine.
3) Do some market research. Advertisers need to know that your magazine will be read by people who have enough money to buy their products before they will buy space from you. Therefore, before your first issue, ask all the people in your social circle (at least, the ones who aren't among the thousands who are starting their own magazines) if they will read your magazine. After they have all said yes (after all, it's your magazine, and who would dare not read it?), get one who owns a market research company to write up the results of this informal survey in the most boring language possible and sign his name to it.4) Promote the first issue of the magazine. You want to create a "buzz" around the magazine that will have readers lining up outside bookstores for days before it comes out. (Hint: billboard ads with scantily clad teenagers always attract attention.)
Most socialites prefer to stay out of the spotlight, and are not used to giving interviews. Here's a tip: think of an interview as a private conversation eavesdropped upon by your 100 million closest friends.
5) Hire staff. An editor, for instance. An editor is a cross between spell check and grammer check computer programmes. However, a good human editor has an advantage over a word processor: an editor can be fired if early reviews of the magazine aren't positive.
There will be a lot of other positions on the magazine, so try and get really good people to fill them. If you can't think of all of them, ask the editor - after all, that's what you're paying him for!
Follow these simple steps, add a lot of hard work and you'll get your new magazine up and running in no time. Of course, three quarters of new magazines fail within the first year, but because yours is so oleaginous yet breathy (not to mention funded by somebody with vast financial resources), it's bound to be a success!
It's so simple! What are you waiting for?
