From Schizophrenia To Entrepreneuria

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August 1, 2003

Byline: HEATHER HOLLIDAY

William MacPhee, the founder and publisher of Schizophrenia Digest, does not hesitate to tell of his wild dreams and great adventures. (At 19, for example, MacPhee was a commercial diver working in the South China Sea.) Neither is he reluctant to recount the hallucinations and delusions that overtook him at the age of 24, leading to five nightmare years of emergency rooms, group homes, and a suicide attempt.

Schizophrenia had turned the globe-trotting Canadian youth into an unmotivated and joyless adult. "I knew I had to find a spark," he says. He came across a how-to book on starting a business with little or no capital. He certainly lacked capital, but at least he had found his spark. He attended classes on how to start a small business and, 16 months later, founded a publishing company.

Since then, MacPhee, now 40, has built Schizophrenia Digest into a quarterly sponsored by drugmakers. It targets anyone who is affected by schizophrenia, from those who suffer from the disease to their families, case managers, and occupational therapists. For MacPhee, who heads a staff of five, this title is very much a labor of love. "I lived with the illness," he says. "I wanted to create a support group on paper. We try to make the magazine as helpful and practical as possible to people with mental illness."

After nine years of publishing Schizophrenia Digest in Canada, MacPhee brought the title to the United States in June. The U.S. version, with a ratebase of 50,000, will have twice the circ of the Canadian edition.

According to MacPhee, the Digest needed a U.S. editor, someone who would give the launch an American feel and who would be aware of cultural and political differences, such as in health care coverage. So he hired William McDermott, who's from the Buffalo area but has lived in Seattle in recent years, to edit both versions. The Canadian and U.S. editions will share research and news from around the world, but McDermott will be running features and profiles that are unique to each market.

The only magazine that could be seen as a competitor, says Joanne Garvey, Digest's vice president of sales, is Reintegration Today, which is published by the Center for Reintegration and funded through grants. Rosemary Aquila-Sanders, the Center's managing director, believes there is room in the market for the new book. "There's multiple magazines on fashion. There should also be multiple magazines on mental health," she says. "The more information out there, the better."

According to Garvey, the bulk of the magazine's revenue will come from pharmaceutical industry sponsorships. In Canada, 78 percent of revenue comes from those sponsorships, 5 percent from other ads, 8 percent from subscriptions, and 10 percent from the Canadian government. She expects that the business in the U.S. will rely more on subscription and ad revenue, to make up for the absence of a government subsidy.

As with the Canadian edition, the drug company sponsors will be deeply involved in determining the content. (U.S. sponsors include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Janssen Pharmeceutica Products, Eli Lilly, and Pfizer.) There are platinum, gold, and silver sponsorships; the level affects such things as ad placement and a company's exposure on the magazine's Web site. (The magazine would not reveal the cost of sponsorships.) When a company sponsors an article or a column, the copy goes through the sponsor's lawyers to ensure its accuracy, says Garvey.

However, she insists that the sponsorship model does not affect the publication's integrity. "Our editor is such a purist, there is no way that we are being told what to write," Garvey says. "It is totally our control, and it has to be that way. If we do anything else, we lose our credibility."

"Without the pharmaceutical industry, there would never be a magazine called Schizophrenia Digest," Garvey adds. "The goal is to help the family and the sufferer manage a really horrendous and devastating disease." This can only be reached, she believes, with the financial support of the drugmakers.

MAG STATS

Schizophrenia Digest Launch date: June Company: Magpie Media, Inc. Frequency: Quarterly in 2003, increasing to bimonthly Target audience: People affected by schizophrenia Subscription: $19.95 Newsstand price: $4.95 Ad rate: $6,000 for full page Editor: William McDermott Publisher: William MacPhee