Reed Business would distribute and publish my media product for many reasons. They are a large company with many magazine titles under their belt . Some of these are computers and technology based (e.g. Computer Weekly, Electronics Weekly and New Scientist), however there are none that appeal to a younger audience, so to fill this gap in the market my magazine would get some of the tech news from the other magazines with a focus on a younger audience to buy their products and expand their appeal. They also have no music-related media products that I can see so this would be a new direction to bring in a larger audience.
Because they are already producing a lot of magazines they already have deals with large distributors so my product would be widely available in a variety of places. They will also have contacts in the kind of companies that would advertise in my magazine and have a large enough presence to get heard by new companies. This large number of magazines also means that if the magazine were to fall into financial difficulty they could support us while we wait for sales to pick up.
The main reason I chose Reed though is because they have a heavy online presence which will allow a online version of the magazine which could increase revenue by advertising. This would support many of the things that tech-savvy young people use regularly (twitter, Youtube, facebook, RSS etc.). This will allow international appeal, easy sharing and make use of the 'Viral' effect as the stories are shared over online communities.
The magazine could lose some editorial Independence and have a large quantity of adverts but I think that would be good because then they can see the new devices and music out there. My audience will be very much consumers, clawing over the latest album or device. However the issue of editorial independence, or lack of it, could cause the magazine to lose the small rebellious appeal that it has. It could also cause the magazine to become more mainstream which may or may not be a good thing.
I did consider Bauer Media to distribute my magazine because they have a lot of magazines already aimed at teens. But being such a large company they would have a lot of control over that the magazine could do, which is bad when their magazines aimed at a teenage audience include "ASTROgirl" and "J-14" which may put off my, predominately, male audience.
I also considered independant publishing because it would give complete control of the content of the magazine and the number of and type of adverts featuring in the magazine. However this would make it hard to get the magazine into shops, find advertisers for it and back the magazine up financially in the case of it making a loss earlier on. I came to the conclusion that it would be better to lose some control and keep financial stability than to risk the magazine and keep full control.
No comments:
Post a Comment