How to Start a Magazine

Entrepreneur:

Benjamin Franklin helped write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Yet Franklin’s own publication, General Magazine, folded after just six issues. Magazines are tough business.

In fact, 9 out of 10 new magazines fail, according to Cheryl Woodward, publishing business consultant and author of Starting and Running a Successful Newsletter or Magazine.

Those stats didn’t stop Simone Gold, a practicing emergency physician now making her mark on the publishing industry. As other doctors zipped through the hospital emergency room, Gold, 39, overheard frequent conversations about lifestyle issues such as technology, money and travel. That was when lightning struck the key. For two years, she mulled the idea of a lifestyle magazine for doctors. Once she began working on her publication, it took her only 13 months to launch her regional magazine, MedicaLife, in the winter of 2005.

Gold isn’t alone. Roughly 1,000 magazines are launched every year, says Samir “Mr. Magazine” Husni, a magazine consultant and chair of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi. Nearly 20,000 consumer and trade publications exist in North America, according to the National Directory of Magazines. So how can you launch a magazine that stands out?

Photo by Sarcasmo.

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