Does anyone run their own community magazine?

[CurlyMcGirly]

I'm looking to start up my own independent family community magazine and have run into a couple of areas that I know nothing about and don't seem to be able to get information on.

Does anyone run a business like this? Would you be willing to answer a couple of questions?

Also, freelance journos, how much would you charge for a 750-word article?

Thanks in advance

Emma

Some of these local mags are franchises (for instance Families, see their site www.familiesonline.co.uk/)

I am an editor for the NCT newsletter, so my experience at the moment is not strictly commercial but what I can say to you is that if you print in colour costs are quite high, nearly double! So we print mostly in b/w and with colour cover.

Wearing my freelance journo hat, rates do vary, average used to be 300 pounds for 1000 words but websites pay less and smaller magazines usually target less experienced writers to keep costs down.

From what I see, many small mags use people who have services to advertise (such as an osteopath)and thus get articles for free or even charge for them as advertorials. Or you can use journalism students.

Good luck, wish I had the guts to do like you as I can write and design courtesy of my previous career as a layout subeditor.

Hi, thanks for your reply - I'm an NCT editor myself! I hadn't thought about journalism students, thanks for that suggestion.

I did look into franchises but the cost was so prohibitive for what was on offer.

The main area I'm struggling with is distribution (I'm fine with design, layout, printing etc) - a lot of the small mags round our way are posted through letterboxes and obviously the NCT effectively has subscriptions through it's members.

I want to distribute to schools and nurseries and so on, but don't know a) how to arrange that, is it a case of calling each place in the county individually? and b) is there a way of having casual help with physically delivering the mags as it would take me a long time to drive round 300-odd places myself!

Anyone willing to point me in the right direction? I'd be very grateful!

Thanks

Emma