Publishing for profit: launching a magazine is a risky venture. Navigating the pitfalls requires sufficient advertising, circulation, content—and a bit of luck

Black Enterprise, May, 2004 by Marcia A. Wade

Dana Powell's career in publishing began in the early 1990s when her father, Gary, asked her to go magazine shopping before her senior prom. "At that time, my father--he's a firefighter now, but he used to design clothes back in the day--sent me out to find samples of dresses that I wanted," recalls Powell. "So I went to various bookstores for a bridal magazine featuring women of color because I wanted to see colors on skin tones like mine and I just couldn't find it."

After she returned empty-handed, Powell's father recommended that she do something about it. So the 16-year-old Powell promised her father that she would start one herself should there be no black bridal magazine by the time she completed college.

Serious about her publishing ambitions. Powell immersed herself in the industry, majoring in mass communication at Illinois State University, where she met Shannon Bonner in 1996. At the time, Bonner held a bachelor's degree in mass communication and was working toward a master's degree in marketing communication, all the while learning everything possible about the magazine publishing business. Powell was impressed with Bonner's business expertise, and the two would soon become partners.

Some six years later, Powell, 28, would keep her promise to her father when she and Bonner, 31, launched Brides Noir from their Chicago home office. Catering to an underserved black consumer group, Brides Noir officially debuted in 2002 throughout 43 states. The test copy even caught the eye of a CBS producer, who asked to use one as a set prop on the hit sitcom Everybody Loves Baymond. The 116-page premiere issue was distributed it] over 40,000 retail stores nationwide.

The duo raised some $80,000 for startup costs by pooling personal savings, loans from family and friends, and a $20,000 award from the Miller Urban Entrepreneurs Series Business Grant Competition they won in 2001. "We were able to use that as seed money along with our personal assets and money from friends and family to launch our first issue," recalls Powell. They spent 25% of their seed capital on promotions and total selling expenses, such as bridal expos throughout Chicago, sales commissions, and advertising through their Website; 32% on administrative costs such as utilities, legal fees, and editorial outsourcing; 35% on printing and distribution: and another 8% on miscellaneous expenses.

They also produced 15,000 test copies of the publication, but ran into a roadblock when they could not find a distributor. "We had all of this money and work on the line, but the book wasn't going to be anywhere," Powell says. Fortunately, Circulation Specialist West, a Colorado-based circulation consulting company, contacted Powell and Bonner after reading an article in The Wall Street Journal about their winning the business plan competition. Working with the firm, they were able to get a distribution company to deliver their test copies to several stores, including Barnes & Noble bookstores, in 2002. By the following year, the publishing duo would secure a contract with Anderson News Co. L.L.C (ANCO), a major wholesaler.

The publishing process has been rewarding for Powell and Bonner, who expect the magazine to generate some $250,000 this year. But they aren't the only ones who have successfully launched a magazine. More than 6,000 consumer magazines are produced each year in the U.S., over 700 of which are audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. ABC-audited magazines generated more than $16 billion in advertising sales and more than $10 billion in circulation revenue in 2002, according to Magazine Publishers of America. ABC is the leading third party auditing organization in the U.S. Being audited by ABC is crucial to measuring circulation, and therefore to determining how much a magazine can charge for advertising space. Powell, who says the circulation of Brides Noir is roughly 50,000, intends to become ABC-audited by the end of the year.

But with the financial perks of publishing come many pitfalls that publishers must navigate if they are to not only get their magazines off the ground, but also sustain them for years while remaining competitive. It's a difficult task to master in a market where 60% of magazines fail their first year in business, only two out of 10 new magazines remain it, business after four years, and just one out of 10 makes it past its 10-year anniversary.

It's even more arduous in an industry where longevity is predicated on obtaining a successful balance among circulation, advertising, and editorial, but which offers no foolproof system for helping you achieve that balance. "Magazine publishing is not a science," says Samir A. Husni, professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi and author of Launch Your Own Magazine: A Guide for Succeeding in Today,'s Marketplace (Hamblett House Inc.: $26.95). "There is no formula. It is a know-how," he says.

That know-how starts with securing sufficient financing. Powell and Bonnet launched Brides Noir with less than $100,000, but it can cost a lot more to get a magazine off the ground. To avoid a cash crunch, Husni suggests that independent publishers operate on a budget of four times their estimated startup costs--that generally ranges from $1 million to $4 million a year.