I have won a few, though only a few, writing contests for my age group here in Perth. I have chosen to be the only editor and have executive control to avoid the risks of a partner bailing out, or simply just being more interested and simpl doing more work than any partners I might already have.

There isn't nearly asbig a market for speculative fiction short stories here as in America so I'm not looking to hit it big, or expecting any particula competition, just to give up-to-17-year-old writers and artists a venture into the world of published work without the risks and plenty to gain.

I'm not planning on paying the writers up front from issue subscriptions, but will offer readers the option of getting their favourite writer/artist to personally sign their copy of an issue for an extra $1.50 on top of the original issue prce of $3.50.

Gathering stories and editing them are only a tiny fraction of what you need to do to be successful. If you want to hand distribute a few dozen copies of your compilation then you can do it from your home computer and printer. But if you want to make a printed magazine publication available for the Australian market, you have a lot of work ahead of you. Consider learning web design skills and publishing electronically.

First is arranging a weekly writers group to help writers get motivated and have a proper critiquing of their WIPs on a weekly basis. This will probably be free provided I can get a venue, or else very cheap.

The pay rate I'm thinking of would be around 3.5c a word up to $300 as the cut off. I'm not sure why magazine owners do this but no doubt there's a good reason and I'll have to look into it.

Also, and some australian hatrackers may disagree with me here, Australian speculative fiction writes, even of the highest calibur, aren't very hard to get in touch with to do one off interviews for small ventures like this. I personally know my second favourite - OSC being my favourite - author, though not all that well. He's a local West Australian, not a speculative fiction writer, but a great writer in the eyes of just about all Australians none the less. I've talked to him about this and he's more than happy to do an interview for the first issue.

I've even got a chartered accountant, my friends dad, who has agreed to mentor me until I get settled in. And I do have investment capitalization (not sure if that's the right terminology, still learning economics). My oldest brother has offered to loan me between $4000 and $10000 with a very low interest rate we're to work out later. On top of all that, and this may make it harder to run a magazine but oh well, I have an apprenticeship lined up to start next year so I'll have full time income to support myself and pay my brother back faster. I know what I'm doing bussinesswise, sort of. That's not to say that I know everything. But I'm in a good position to learn as I go right now.

Mike, I don't appreciate the "when this fails" comment. I don't think this will fail but you're free to your own opinion so I'll leave it at that. Anyway, you've all been very helpful and I thank you for your time.

mattdamon

Up to $300 per story sounds like a lot of money for a startup magazine -- but may draw more response than the 'up to $50' crew -- keep us in the loop here at hatrack.

I can't see why two people would be needed to make one 90 page magazine in three months. I'm not going to have any co-editors, but will have at least one secretary.

I've decided to make it 2c/word up to $175. This is not going to be a quarterly magazine. It will be a monthly. That could work well with an e-zine, constantly updating it's material no doubt. But to get patron readers who have to wait three months to get the next issue seems too unreasonable to me, I'm afraid.

I'm not sure there are very many fiction magazines with that kind of distribution numbers.

Edit: With a great international distribution plan, you might might hit 10,000 at the end of one year.

Now, consider that you are looking at an Australian market and have not been established for decades and rethink your numbers. A realistic business model will help you succeed in your project.

You will probably want to get your premier edition printed in at least a mock-up so you can both sell it to prospective markets and sell advertising once you get a better feel for the size of your market. What is your market? Bookstores? Newstands? Will you be selling an e-zine version or just using the web to post teasers so people will then purchase the print copy?

Do you have an advertising plan beyond putting a flashy cover and hoping people will notice it on the magazine racks?

You do seem to actually want to invest the effort into this to take this all the way.

How many stories will you include in the first edition? How much will you have to pay for the works? Will you be including your own fiction as a sort of vanity press? How much does it cost to print per copy? Given that, How big of a first run can you print?

Now, as I understand it, the actual RoI on a $5 magazine is about $1.

But then again, you may already have plenty of helpers.

quote:

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Now, as I understand it, the actual RoI on a $5 magazine is about $1.

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We had a unit cost of about $5.40, the retail price was $8.95. Subscribers want a cut-price deal, so it was $7.95 plus $8.00 postage and handling. When I finished, the distribution was 3500 per issue. We were always pushing subscriptions and promoting our back issues just to stay afloat. We found that most new subscribers would order back issues too -- which was great. The mag was full colour, 48 pp plus covers and contained about 27000 words per issue. Much of our space was taken up by images (people love their wildlife photos). Our advertising was limited, people usually opted for smaller adverts for longer periods. I sent out a lot of Advertising Spec sheets which converted to about a 1 in 5 ad placement -- which I thought was pretty good. We got about 5-10% of our subscription online so most were directly from the ads we printed in the mag itself.

I'm going to be selling it wholesale at shopping centres, from home and by post. Three friends in statewide (It's a huge state!) rural towns have agreed to take fifty each to distribute them for a profit to both of us. I'm also going to be putting weekly advertisements in the State Newspaper that month advertising it. Most of all, though, I will be counting on word of mouth. It's going to be a professionally published, colour but not glossy, magazine starting with 2000 prints for the first issue.

I plan to build up "regular readers" numbers gradually from there. I'm thinking of having a small, tight knit, staff and rewarding them raises for helping me achieve quarterly sales goals.

I don't know if I've said this before, but I'm planning on having critique groups weekly for writers. Whether they sell to me or not, this will energize the teen speculative fiction market here a little, which can't hurt. I'm counting on having at least a few more credentials myself by the time that starts.

Thanks for your help and the time you took to research that. Even if it was something you wanted to do, I really appreciate it. just wondering, what is a Rol? And what did you google to find out "The largest US print speculative fiction magazines have print runs of about 200,000 and a subscriber base around 40,000."?

I was wondering, its been a long time since I was there, (17 years ) Maybe you should also try distributing through game shops and comic stores. Are there many there? There used to be a great comic/game shop in the city near the train station. The bigger newsagents may be interested too in taking a few.

As to size and colour, I think a colour cover is fine, but colour throughout may be a bit of a luxury. If you have a good designer, a single colour interior can be visually stunning and cut your production costs incredibly. If you want to print a black and white interior you can always use a print-on-demand place and have it perfect bound. (It also saves you stuffing up the pagination/imposition if your designer tries to do it themself. 90 pages is a lot to keep track of. Not to mention gutter creep.) It all depends on unit price. I think 90 pages is getting a bit too big for saddle-stitching.

(I lived with friends in Duncraig for a while, too. Used to go shopping at either Heathridge, Whitfords or Carine.)

I spent yesterday morning looking in newsagents and the local Library for a speculative fiction magazine. Couldn't find one, though. You wouldn't happen to know if Aurelias (sp?) and the like all have to be ordered?