Welcome to The Magazine Diaries
People still print magazines. They still make money from them… lots of money!
But it’s not easy.
The Magazine Diaries is about making print magazines work in a digital world, how people do it, why they do it and the ideas you can steal to make your magazine business better.
So, if you’re in the market for a newsletter from the frontlines of the battle to make print magazines profitable you’re in the right place.
You might remember 2014’s OG Magazine Diaries, a wee blue book that featured 100 magazine pros writing 100 words each on how they felt about the magazine business.
I’ve spent much of the intervening decade interviewing publishing executives for Media Voices, from companies as diverse as Google and Delayed Gratification.
Through our podcasts, newsletters, reports, awards and industry summits, Media Voices highlights the trends to watch across the global media landscape.
But I also publish The Grub Street Journal, a print quarterly for magazine people that are looking for an honest but optimistic take on modern magazine publishing. It’s through that project that I’ve settled on a new mission for The Magazine Diaries:
Helping people to make print magazines work in this modern, messed up digital-media landscape.
Every week I send out my thoughts on the things that I think magazine publishers need to do to make their print titles sustainable, even as digital threatens to take over the world.
I’ve written about:
This all sounds a bit worthy, so I should probably mention, I quite like to have fun with all this. Silly GIFs, gentle snark and the odd magazine-themed Spotify recommendation are likely to make an appearance.
So, if you work in magazine publishing and would like to see your print titles thrive rather than be dispatched to the great magazine graveyard in the Cloud, welcome to The Magazine Diaries.
Peter
