Entreprensurial Journalism Masterclass: How to become a magazine publisher

David Howell is a freelance journalist who has become a successful magazine publisher. In this extract from Masterclass 12 of Multimeda journalism: A Practical Guide he shares his experience of how to create, publish and sell a magazine.
He also gives his tips on how to be a successful freelance.

1 How to become a magazine publisher

First of all, you must identify your market, and determine what sort of publication will serve that market’s needs.
David Howell got into magazine publishing as part of an effort to develop a business that was less reliant on him as a writer, and less identified with him personally: he wanted a business that he could, potentially, hand on at some point.
In the clip he explains how he did it.

David began by identifying a market that was not currently served by a magazine, and hit on homeworkers, the hundreds of thousands who work from home and whose need for advice and support he discovered was not met.
With the success of that project he looked for a second area that was not served, and discovered that the self-publishing industry also didn’t have a magazine dedicated to it, and Publish Now! was born.
Publish Now! Includes practical advice for those publishing their own magazines, books, and websites, and guides readers to the tools and technology driving the rise in self-publishing.
David says: “I saw self-publishing coming of age with the likes of Lulu and now the iPad, electronic books, and it had no support”, so he set out to create a magazine that would support the market he had identified.

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