The practical guide to publishing a magazine
Publishing a magazine is a chain of jobs that depend on each other: the audience decides the rates, the bookings decide the flatplan, the flatplan decides what goes to print and what gets invoiced. This guide walks through that chain in order, with a short practical summary and checklist for each step and links to the detailed guides. New to the vocabulary? Keep the magazine publishing glossary open alongside.
Plan the title and its audience
Start with the reader, not the cover. Write down who the magazine is for in one sentence, what they will get from it that they cannot get elsewhere, and how often it will appear. Frequency drives everything after it: page count, print cost, how many advertising deadlines your sales team works to each year and how subscriptions are priced.
Then decide where the money comes from. Most magazines combine advertising, subscriptions, single-copy sales and sponsorship in different proportions. Put rough numbers on each for the first year, including the cost of one issue, so that later decisions about rates and print runs have something to be checked against.
Checklist
- One-sentence reader definition and the reason they will pay attention
- Frequency, page count and format for the first year
- Revenue mix: advertising, subscriptions, single copies, sponsorship
- Cost of one issue: print, distribution, editorial, design, sales
Read the detailed guides
Build the media kit and rate card
The media kit sells the magazine to advertisers: who reads it, how many copies go out and where, what the editorial calendar covers and what advertisers can buy. The rate card is the price list and terms that sit inside or beside it. Keep them separate in your head: the media kit explains why to advertise, the rate card says what it costs.
Set rates from your own numbers. Take the share of an issue’s cost that advertising has to cover, divide it by the pages you can realistically sell, and allow for the discounts you will give. Derive the smaller sizes and premium positions from that full-page rate, and date every version of the card.
Checklist
- Media kit: reader profile, circulation and distribution, editorial calendar, ad specifications, contact
- Rate card: sizes and positions, price per insertion, frequency discounts
- Rate card terms: currency and tax, payment terms, booking, cancellation and material deadlines per issue
- Validity date and the issues the rates apply to
Read the detailed guides
Sell advertising and agree contracts
Advertising sales is a pipeline: prospects, conversations, proposals, signed agreements and renewals. Give every advertiser one record with its contacts and history, so the next rep or the next season starts from what actually happened. A proposal is an offer to one advertiser with chosen products, issues and an expiry date; when it is accepted it becomes a contract that production and finance can act on.
Agree in writing what was sold, for which issues, at what price and with which deadlines. Most disputes later come from details nobody wrote down: a position promised verbally, a discount without an approver, or a cancellation date that was never stated.
Read the detailed guides
- A guide to magazine sales operations
- An ad sales pipeline for magazine publishers
- How to forecast advertising sales
- How to streamline proposal approvals
- How to manage publishing advertising contracts
- An eSignature workflow for advertising contracts
- How to manage and automate advertising renewals
In RunMags, advertiser organizations, contacts and activities sit on one record, and contracts hold the order rows that were sold, including package bundles. See how it works.
Run the editorial calendar
The editorial calendar is a promise to readers and a selling tool for advertisers, so publish it in the media kit and keep it current. For each issue, list the themes, the stories planned, who is writing them and when copy, images and approvals are due.
Keep one current version of every story and image. Most late pages come from the same few causes: unclear ownership, approvals that arrive by email after layout has started and competing “final” files.
Read the detailed guides
Plan the flatplan and production schedule
The flatplan is the page-by-page map of the issue: which pages carry editorial, which carry advertising and where each booked ad goes. Build it from the signed bookings rather than a separate list, so sales and production see the same issue.
Work back from the print date. The deadlines below are the usual sequence; set the dates to suit your printer and page count. What matters is that every deadline has an owner and that advertisers know their material deadline when they book.
Checklist
- Booking deadline: last day to sell space in the issue
- Material deadline: advertiser artwork due, with reminders before it
- Editorial copy and image deadline, then layout and proofing
- Final page check against the flatplan, then files to the printer
Read the detailed guides
- How to plan a magazine flatplan
- How to organize magazine issue production
- How to collect advertiser artwork without chasing
- A guide to advertising orders and fulfillment
The RunMags flatplan is built from live advertising orders, so the booked orders for an issue are ready to place on its pages. See how it works.
Print and distribute the issue
Ask printers to quote on the same specification: format, page count, paper, binding, print run and delivery addresses. Book press time for the whole year once the frequency is fixed, and confirm file requirements before the first issue rather than on press day.
Distribution is a list problem as much as a logistics one. Subscriber addresses, complimentary copies, retail and event copies each need their own counts, and the mailing list has to be exported from current subscriptions just before the issue ships.
Read the detailed guides
RunMags keeps subscriptions and the distribution batches for each issue in the same system. See how it works.
Sell subscriptions and manage circulation
Decide what a subscription is before you sell one: a number of issues or a period of time, print or digital or both, and what happens at the end. Gifts need a payer and a recipient; schools and companies may buy several copies. Write down these rules first, because changing them later means changing every live subscription.
Renewals are where subscription revenue is kept or lost. Plan when reminders go out, what they say and when they stop, and keep address changes and cancellations in the same record so the next mailing is right.
Read the detailed guides
- How to launch magazine subscriptions
- How to reduce subscription renewal churn
- A self-service portal for magazine subscribers
- A guide to recurring subscriber billing
RunMags keeps print and digital subscriptions on issue-based or time-based terms, with renewal orders, gift subscriptions and subscriber imports in the same system. See how it works.
Invoice advertisers and collect payment
Invoice from what was agreed and what was published, not from memory. The contract says what to bill; the published issue confirms it ran. Decide whether you invoice at booking, at publication or on a schedule, and apply the same rule to every advertiser.
Chase late payments on a fixed rhythm, and note disputes where sales will see them before the next booking. Connect invoicing to your accounting system early; reconciling two systems by hand every month is where small publishers lose most of their time.
Read the detailed guides
- A guide to advertiser invoicing and disputes
- How to improve advertiser payment collection
- Payment reconciliation for magazine publishers
- How publishers can accept ACH payments
- QuickBooks and accounting integration for publisher billing
- How to review magazine billing software
RunMags invoices advertisers, sends payment reminders and connects to accounting systems including Fortnox, QuickBooks and Xero. See how it works.
Grow to several titles
A second title rarely doubles the work, but it does expose every shortcut taken with the first. Shared advertisers, shared subscribers and shared staff mean you need one customer record across titles, with each title keeping its own issues, rates and editorial calendar.
If the titles belong to different companies, keep invoicing and accounting separate per legal entity from the start. Review your software and processes before the second launch, not after it.
Read the detailed guides
- A guide to managing multiple publishing titles
- How to choose publishing operations software
- Publishing CRM, ERP and ad booking
- WordPress integration for magazine publishers
RunMags plans are sized by the number of legal entities and magazine brands you run. See how it works.
Run the whole chain in one system
RunMags connects advertisers and subscribers with contracts, the flatplan and invoicing, and Maggie, the built-in assistant, points out what needs attention next. Try it with your own titles, or walk through your workflow with us.
