Quarto Creative

Louanne Welcome to “Covering the Spread, Magazine Design for the Next Age,” a monthly discussion of all things related to our favorite medium, magazines.

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Scott Whether you're a seasoned designer, an aspiring creative, an editor or publisher, or just someone who appreciates the art of storytelling through visuals, this is the place for you.

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Louanne  I’m your host, Louanne Welgoss from LTD Creative, a graphic design firm located in Frederick, Maryland, and I've been working on publications for thirty-two years. You can see our work at LTDCreative.com.

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Scott  And I'm Scott Oldham from Quarto Creative, who's been making magazines for twenty-five years. You can see my work at QuartoCreative.com. And on this podcast, we'll chat with industry experts, designers, editors, and production pros to uncover the secrets of all things magazine.

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Louanne  It's time to turn the page and what you thought you knew and reimagine the future of publishing.

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Scott  Welcome to our second international edition of Covering the Spread. We’re joined today by Megan Wray Schertler of In Real Life Media, whose specialty is helping independent magazines to achieve their best goals. Megan, can you tell us a little bit about In Real Life and what brought you to this point in your career?

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Megan  Absolutely. And thank you so much for speaking with me today and having me. It’s always a pleasure to be able to talk print, so I appreciate the invitation. My whole career has been spent inside the print magazine world. I had grand ambitions at first to be a writer or be on the creative side, but I very quickly realized that’s actually not where I get the most excitement. I really love being the operational person, the organizer. I love thinking about how to take someone’s creative vision, as wild as it might be, and translate that into like a realistic execution plan. So I really found my lane, being a managing editor for different independent titles. I started off at Fantastic Man. I had the great honor of being there for several years, then moved back home to New York and ran Document Journal as part of the team that brought Interview back after its bankruptcy. I was at CR Fashion Book for a couple of seasons, also Hype Beast, and then my last full time role was as the publishing director for High Snobiety, really helping them think about how they monetize their editorial platforms and create new non-media products as extensions of the community that they’ve built and their brand resonance, post-Covid. I saw so many independent titles launch, which personally, as someone who’s been obsessed with magazines since I was a kid, I was like, “This is amazing. You know, magazines are back. This whole thing about magazines being dead is over. This is great.” But then I would see them… That spot of, I’d say, the third to fifth issue, and they would just disappear. And, as someone who’s always worked at print-first titles, I was genuinely confused in terms of, “What’s going on? Why aren’t these publishers making it last?” And when I would reach out to them, there were two things that really became obvious. One: A lot of the best titles are really run by creatives, and they don’t always have that business experience or understand the kind of mechanics of how to make print successful. And that’s not their fault. That’s just not where they come from. They think from a content perspective. And then the other thing I realized is that across, I’d say, the past ten to fifteen years, we’ve really doubled down on digital media. When someone is an advertiser seller, they’re pretty much digital-first. Now, a lot of designers are digital-first. So there’s really a gap in understanding how to leverage print. What we’re doing with our agency now, In Real Life Media, is helping both publishers and brands leverage print as a trust-building mechanism for their businesses. And something I could talk about at nauseam — I’m sure I’ll bring it up multiple times in this conversation — is, as we embark into this new AI era, (which is coming whether we like it or not), it’s going to be our new reality or how our new reality is shaped, but it’s going to really impact our relationship with content online. That trust is already eroding, and that creates a huge opportunity then for offline businesses and, more specifically, print-focused businesses. So what we’re really doing at In Real Life Media is helping people navigate the new realities and needs of print-first businesses in this new landscape.

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Scott  Now you have partners in this endeavor. Is that right?

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Megan  I do. So my co-founders in IRL are James Lafferty, who has a distribution company that focuses on independent magazines called Ra & Ollie. And where James is unique is that he really thinks about it from an industry-wide standpoint. So he’s not just thinking about his own business, but he’s thinking about how we can course-correct the fulfillment logistics across different regions, understanding the realities of shipping in different regions: global business, looking at tariff situations, UK Brexit impact … all of these things. And then our other business partner is David, from a company called Newsstand, which really focuses on single copy fulfillment and also subscription management in a kind of a nerdy way. You put the three of us together and we’re like this giant print brain, coming at it from all these different sides. But you have to look at print businesses holistically like that. I think that anybody that’s been in magazines for a long time is so used to working with a big publishing company. And so the editors and the designers don’t really know all of what it takes, if they wanted to branch out into an independent magazine. And that’s why I think a lot of them aren’t succeeding.

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Louanne  You know, somebody like me, I would just hit a wall after printing my first one and I’d go, “Well, now what?” But knowing that there’s resources out there for somebody who has a passion for this is phenomenal.

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Megan  What really motivated me to first go freelance and then develop this agency was: I was also hearing that a lot of these independent publishers were going to media consultants to try to get advice on their business, but they were getting all of this distracting digital-first advice … just saying to them, “You have to be making more content, and you have to be on every single social media platform, and you’ve got to just look at growing your numbers.” And that’s one business model. Sure, you have to look at what’s right for your brand. You have to look at what’s right for reaching your audience. And also the way that we’re seeing traffic decline. Now, that numbers game isn’t reliable. That’s really our goal: to just inspire publishers to know that there is a business model that’s right for them, and that the definitions of scale can be accustomed to their ambitions. Sure, digital is part of the game. Absolutely. But in order to be successful, this — the print piece — has to work first. Absolutely. Really, it’s flipping the way that we’ve approached it. When I got into the bigger media companies, like when I was managing Hypebeast and when I was publishing director of High Snobiety, print was usually the add-on. Whereas what we’re doing now is centering print and then using digital as amplification tools and extension strategies, but using it intentionally and only when it makes sense.

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Scott  So, our last episode, we talked to Nicky Simpson, who, I believe, you know from the International Magazine Centre, who, as you know, also works with a lot of independent publishers and was telling us about some of the challenges that she hears from them in her networking with them. What are some of the specific challenges that you at In Real Life Media have been able to address for independent publishers?

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Megan  Nikki is fantastic and it’s so funny that you guys also connected with her. Nikki and I are kind of coming at this from very similar places, where it’s really looking at the foundational issues, rather than looking at it top-level, from what I’m seeing. The first is really clarity on what actually you’re trying to achieve. So many publishers that I talk to lose the why of what they’re trying to do. And niche is powerful now. So if you really know the corner that you’re trying to tackle — the thematic that you’re really wanting to explore — if that’s really clear to you, a lot of other things start kicking into place. But too often, I see publishers get distracted by opportunities or wrong advice, and they veer from that original clarity that they had. I think, holding on to that and being confident in that is something that a lot of founders struggle with. Ten times a week, I have intro calls from people who are like, “I’ve got this great idea for a magazine. I’m going to tell you all about it.” And it is a brilliant idea. But they haven’t thought about the structure of how that’s going to exist. “What’s your go to market strategy? Where are you printing? Where are you housing the copies? Once you’ve hit print, what do you want the copies to achieve out in the world? Who are you trying to reach? When are you trying to reach them?” A lot of times, that kind of structural clarity isn’t thought about until you hit print, and that triggers this whole avalanche. You’ve gotten so excited. You’ve made the magazine, you’ve invested all of this money into making something that you’re so proud of. You find a printer, you have a good experience, the copies are sent back to you. You get all of these boxes, and then reality hits that you’ve got to do something with these issues, and then people really struggle because they might not be natural salespeople. Approaching people to buy the magazine might be difficult for them. Or, worst-case scenario, the boxes just sit there because the thought of doing something with them overwhelms them. And that’s the most demotivating thing in the world. So that lack of structure can really stop the project before it starts. The big picture hurdle that I see across so many titles is also a lack of ecosystem thinking. So many publishers are so focused on retail. “Oh, I’ve just got to get my magazine into like a ton of stores.” That’s the only single track they’re thinking about. Well, retail is going to be your lowest profit margin, so focusing all of your energy on that isn’t really the best use of your time. Retail has a value, for sure. It’s a great visibility driver. It’s a great validator, and when done right, it can drive decent revenue, but it has to be done within an ecosystem of other revenue options. The other thing that I think a lot of publishers get tripped up on is advertising in the back of our heads. We still want to be like the ‘90’s glory days of big publishers and big shot magazines with hundreds of pages of advertisers. That’s our vision of success, but that’s just not the reality. Now, successful brand partnerships are much more about 360 activations. So the way I like to work with publishers is really helping them create a full ecosystem of revenue opportunities. That way, their business isn’t as fragile and dependent only on one.

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Scott  Do people consider the subscription model an afterthought then?

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Megan  Most do when they’re starting. What I think is so interesting is there’s a few that are knocking subscriptions out of the park. You look at a magazine like Mountain Gazette, and their whole business model is subscriptions, which is phenomenal. Mike, who’s the owner and publisher of Mountain Gazette, has built it into over a 30,000 subscriber network for an annual huge-format premium magazine. And that’s no small feat, and that’s a fantastic business. Most publishers, when they’re starting out, have it in their heads — because it’s been said so many times — that no one subscribes anymore. This business model is dead, etc., and yes, the old subscription model of subscribing to monthly magazines might have gone away, but we’re seeing a huge increase in subscriptions for biannual titles, quarterly titles — more premium offerings. And people feel more inclined to invest in alternative media platforms or businesses or people who are wanting to provide different perspectives on more diverse human experiences. And so we’re seeing people really want to feel a part of magazine’s success stories. So, rather than it feeling like a transactional subscription. It’s more of a membership psychology model. It’s like I’m a part of this group because I believe in what they’re doing, and this magazine is value-aligned with what I feel is important in this world. I then do that education with publishers. They then see it as a great path for revenue. It’s also a much more predictable path of revenue than advertising is. And same with wholesale. Wholesale payouts can just be so delayed.

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Scott  It’s surprising to me that, particularly, niche publishers wouldn’t leap on that model just from the start, because how else are you going to connect with this audience that has a built-in passion for whatever your subject matter is? But then again, I would imagine that it’s a big research hill to climb in terms of building up a subscriber base from zero.

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Megan  Exactly. The only thing I would say that stands in publishers’ ways, initially, is so many publishers or people who want to start magazines are really creatives, or coming at it more from the creative side. The thought of having to figure out how to set up subscriptions and what that workflow is, setting up the e-commerce backend and the renewal timings and what software to be using, the different kind of marketing strategies you could be turning on to grow those subscription numbers. Usually that is a huge obstacle — or that’s how it’s seen from publishers — and there isn’t great advice anywhere online. That’s the really interesting thing about being in print right now is when you go to Google or search for solutions to this type of business, it’s hard to find advice. It feels like you’re all alone. And so, a lot of what we do is thought leadership or community building that works for publishers. This year we’ve got a couple of them scheduled in the US. We can get more publishers together to actually be gate-opening information rather than gatekeeping. I think we’d see a lot of these businesses be more successful from the start. And what’s also so interesting is usually independent publishers are really excited for their peers’ wins. It’s actually not a very gatekeeping industry anymore. Everyone’s really excited to connect with other publishers because it can feel like such a lonely endeavor. I like to identify three variables. One: There’s the founder’s passion. You obviously want to make a magazine. You’ve identified that. But what else do you really like to do? Are you someone who naturally likes to host dinner parties, or are you someone who really loves to be that type of kind of community organizer? Then doing events to build your community is where you should look first. If you’re someone who is a real natural content creator, visually, Instagram is going to be really effective for you, because that’s going to be where you can actually express yourself best. If you are really great at writing and a blank page doesn’t daunt you — it does me, but I know it doesn’t do to others — then maybe building a newsletter base is a great place to start. Then the second variable is thinking about where you fit into your readers’ habits or your desired audience’s habits. The example I like to give there is: There’s a reason that the supplements always came out — and still do — on a Sunday for the newspapers, not a Tuesday. You really need to think about where you’re landing in your audience’s day. What else are they doing? If you’re sending a novella-length newsletter to people, and you’re delivering to them on a Tuesday, your audience isn’t going to have time to read it. The third piece, which is the actionable item, is how do you take what you’re really obsessed about and what you love doing, and how do you translate it to that audience? Knowing their habits, knowing what problems you’re solving for them, etc. Your go to market strategy should sit somewhere in that third element. If the thought of making content for Instagram just feels so icky to you and you hate posting yourself, then don’t think about doing it for your business, because that content just isn’t gonna emote in the way that you need it to. One example that comes to mind. There’s this magazine called Glotta, which is based on Hydra in Greece, and it’s a literary and culture magazine. It’s an annual — comes out once a year. They have zero digital presence, no social media, no website, nothing. And they have sold out twice now of their first issue. This is because they knew their audience. So they knew their offering and they didn’t get distracted trying to be on every platform. They just knew they wanted people who were visiting the island or who had emotional connections to the island to purchase the magazine. And then what was cool is, because they were so offline, that exclusivity fed into the lore of the magazine. So now all of these retailers want it.

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Scott  So I was just going to ask: Do you think they would have cannibalized their audience if they had posted content online and not had those sell-outs?

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Megan  I think it just would have been a much slower debut. I don’t think it would have felt as special. There wouldn’t be this kind of word of mouth lore around it. So I think it was so clever to do that. The reason I say that is because that digital marketing playbook— sure, those tools are available to you and they can be successful in terms of driving new visibility, but it’s not necessarily the way you have to go to be successful.

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Louanne  Did they have any digital presence to at least tell people that this exists?

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Megan  Nothing.

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Louanne  This is an island in Greece, right?

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Megan  Exactly.

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Louanne  Okay. So it was word of mouth within that community then?

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Megan  Exactly. It’s very much a beloved destination for artists and writers and the creative set from New York and Paris and all of these international places. So a lot of different communities really descend on the island for a few months out of the year. There’s already a warm audience there. They just knew we’re going to be their best ambassadors for what they were trying to build. Better than a kind of social media strategy would have been.

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Louanne  So it sounds like it’s a place where people want to go to be unplugged.

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Megan  And it’s exactly that.

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Disclaimer  The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization, employer, or company they may be affiliated with. Covering the Spread is intended for informational and educational purposes only. While we explore topics such as design trends, industry practices, and future predictions, the content shared should not be interpreted as professional advice or a definitive guide. Listeners are encouraged to conduct their own research before making decisions related to magazine design, publishing or business strategy. We may reference or discuss third party content technologies or companies. These mentions are for context and commentary purposes and do not imply endorsement or affiliation unless explicitly stated. Additionally, given the ever-evolving nature of media and technology, some discussions may become outdated. We strive for accuracy, but we make no representations or warranties about the completeness or reliability of any information shared. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the spread.

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Louanne  Interesting.

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Scott  So the trajectory in the industry over the past decades really has been for the big major publishing organs to be winding down because of consolidation. They’re chasing ever more ambitious margins that are just not achievable anymore. And we’ve seen so many former standard-bearing titles sunset over the past few decades. Do you think that there is a strategy that these independent magazines are using that can or should benefit some of the bigger publishers, even though they are playing in vastly different arenas?

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Megan  Absolutely. The playbook where independents have been successful is: They’re much more in dialogue with their communities. So they’ve been able to read the shifts in consumer needs and consumer behavior much faster, and in a much more detailed, nuanced way than these larger publishing houses. There are lots of different format approaches that larger publishing houses could take inspiration from. The difference is: Those larger publishing houses have continued to play this as a numbers game. That’s just not the way that you’re going to be successful. I think in any business in this next era, it’s not about infinite traffic; it’s not about infinite followers. I think that those bigger — like Condé Nast and Hearst titles — are still somewhat beholden to those revenue models, but I think they’re also measuring their success in that dated, solely-by-the-numbers way. Whereas I think now, what we’re really looking for is the trust-building mechanics of a brand where their whole thing is leveraging the trust that they build with their audiences directly, and then being fiercely protective of that trust. The nice thing about independent magazines is that it’s like sitting down with a good book; they’re not going to tell you what the ending is ahead of time. And post-Covid, every single demographic — every single one — has screen fatigue. If you have a free hour in your day, you’re not going to say to yourself, “Oh my gosh, I’m gonna use that hour to be online even more.” Literally no one is saying that. Print gives us this relief and this moment of luxury, and it feels like self-investment, regardless of the content. It could be a stressful current affairs magazine, but you’re still treating yourself to time offline.

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Scott  You mentioned AI towards the beginning of this, and a safeguard against having your content be pillaged by bots is by not hosting it online or not being forced to join something like the Magazine Coalition, which I presume you’re familiar with, right?

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Megan  And it’s really interesting because we’re already seeing early support, where publishers are starting to do that. “I got into this magazine business to do things differently. I’m really not going to participate in the scraping or have my content be in that, so I’m just not going to upload it.” But then we’re seeing audiences really support that decision, you know? So I think that’s why we’re seeing far more people take out subscriptions or feel like patrons to those magazines that exist fully offline because they want to be a part of that alternative. We’re seeing consumer behavior really invest in carving out those alternative spaces, specifically offline. Anyone running an independent magazine business is going to stand to benefit from that shift in consumer behavior and that desire to invest in offline media.

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Scott  This might be kind of a leading question, but to the extent that a print publication is hearkening to what most people consider an era that preceded artificial intelligence — that there is sort of this built-in trust mechanism that users or readers will not automatically assume, as they do with a lot of online content, that this was generated by a robot or an algorithm somewhere. Do you think that independent publishers need to lean into that more? And if so, should there be some kind of a certification or something that they can offer to demonstrate to audiences that this is human-produced?

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Megan  That’s interesting. I’ve never thought about taking it as far as a certification. But what we are seeing more and more are publishers really pulling the curtain back. Certain publishers are starting Substacks now to actually talk about the journey of being an independent publisher. What are the trials and tribulations that they’re going through? What motivates them? They’re diaries in a way, but they’re having great resonance because people are so curious to know what goes into it. “We work with these people. We cultivate the talent that we work with. We’re wanting to create a community of contributors, not just have it be transactional or not looking for like the cheapest writers and the cheapest visual makers.” But I think a lot of people are wanting to lift up the contributor network that goes into the magazine as a way of saying, “Hey, this is made by people who care about people and we’re all in this together.”

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Scott  That’s a great point. And it’s something that a lot of magazines have developed on their own. And as you point out people — irrespective of their distrust of AI — want to see how the sausage gets made, even though those of us who have worked in magazines know it’s a process you do not want to see happening. People don’t know that they do still romanticize it from what they see in movies and TV shows.

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Louanne  Megan, tell us a little bit about the Magazine Accelerator. Tell us what it is, why you created it.

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Megan  So the Magazine Accelerator … the simplest way to explain it is it’s an audit. And then, essentially, a business development roadmap. When I first went freelance, I had all of these people reaching out to me, being like, “I want to make a magazine. I’ve got this great idea.” They would give me the whole spiel, and usually the idea was amazing. But then I would come in as this wet blanket saying, “Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? What are you going to do in this instance? And what happens here? Do you know how many copies you want to print? Oh, actually, you probably shouldn’t be printing 30,000 out the gate. That’s not a good idea.” And then I started to kind of keep track of which questions I was asking, and realized that a lot of them were the same across the board. So I spent some time with it and then designed about 70 questions that are intentional, to guide us through the process of figuring out what’s on the board for this other idea. If you’re launching, what are your ambitions? What are the resources you have available to you? What revenue streams should you be looking at, how you should be staffing, what your market is, etc. Let’s say you’ve done a few issues of the magazine. People are really loving it, but you’re producing it issue by issue. What we do is come in and audit the mechanics of the business and what you’re producing and where you want to go, and then create that roadmap. What’s been really interesting in this program is that the feedback we’ve gotten is, through developing these really clear business roadmaps, people have a predictable operational rhythm rather than just producing ad hoc. They really know how their year is structured. They have pricing clarity. They know their revenue pathways beyond the advertising and wholesale methods. But most importantly — where I think it’s had the most impact — is a mindset shift for the makers of the magazine. Truly — and why I find it so exciting that there’s people like yourselves wanting to drive visibility to magazines — there’s just so much hangover and outdated belief about, “Oh, you know, magazine businesses will never be successful and making a magazine is so hard, and running a magazine is so hard.” Well, yeah, that’s business. Running a restaurant is easier? That’s business. As founders, if you don’t believe in the success of your business, and if you don’t really think that your magazine could be successful, then you shouldn’t be trying to make one.

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Scott  One of the things that keeps coming up on this podcast is how, in the States anyways, there is an association for literally every single subject. And I wonder, Megan —without naming names — if anyone has ever come to you with an idea for a magazine that was so niche — they went down such a specific rabbit hole — that you felt like this is just not going to find an audience?

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Megan  No. And almost the wilder and more specific, the better. Literally, just on a call earlier today, someone was telling me about a magazine all about model trains, and apparently, it’s been going for years and years and years. He was like, “It’s the leading global magazine of model trains.” And in my head I’m like, “Oh my God, that means there’s more of them. This is fantastic.”

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Scott  Like, dozens of them. I happen to know this. In England, It’s a huge thing. Yes, there are publishers who literally put out a magazine for every type of model train that there is. As you may know, there’s a half dozen types.

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Megan  I think that when there’s a kind of hyper-niche to something or that specificity, there’s just bound to be a few others, and they’re going to be so grateful that you’ve made something. And it might be a small group of people. It might not be hundreds of thousands that are going to flock to your title, but if you can find that core group of people, it’s much more about the depth that you’re gaining with them — the high conversion, that’s what’s going to make a successful and sustainable business. The more specific, the weirder —the rabbit holes you fall down — that makes the best magazine. The ones where I say, “You shouldn’t make that,” is when they’re too general. What’s the point? We have the internet for that.

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Louanne  So I have two questions for you. Everybody’s producing niche magazines and you’re advising them. Is there a magazine that you want to do personally, or are you doing something that we just don’t know about?

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Megan  Well, I love that you ask that because, several years into my career, having like the great fortune to work with all these amazing people and just really loving what I would do, I was like, “Well, maybe I should make a magazine.” And I was trying to think about it for so long, and I would have ideas, but the thought of having to ideate on it, that’s just not where I get excited. Having a blank piece of paper in front of me is more anxiety-inducing for me than it is exciting. What I’m really good at and where I get excited is if someone hands me this glob of wet clay of an idea and then I’m like, “Okay, let me shape that for you. Here’s your whole business on top of it.” Never say never. Maybe that lightning bolt idea will hit me at some point, but I get way more excited about crawling into someone else’s idea and being their partner in crime with it.

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Scott  Well, maybe we can make Covering the Spread into a magazine instead of a podcast as the next stage.

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Megan  Let’s go. I’m here. Give me a call.

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Louanne  Okay, so my next question then, if you took over Vogue magazine tomorrow, what would you do differently, without insulting Vogue in any way, shape or form?

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Scott  Because they’re doing everything right.

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Megan  So I have been thinking a lot about this since we first were talking. Before I answer this, I will say something I always say to my own clients is it’s very easy to diagnose from the outside. Whenever I work with a magazine, whether it’s an indie or a global brand that’s wanting to have their own magazine, the first step is always a proper audit. That’s why I developed the Magazine Accelerator. Because there isn’t a plug-and-play business model anymore. There’s no flat solution that works for everyone, including larger titles like Vogue. Vogue has developed an extraordinary international IP that is still intact. It also has really interesting, more specific resonance in different markets. So what Vogue means in the US is very different than like what Vogue means in China or here in Germany. I don’t even actually know how many different markets they have, but I think that IP is what has let them kind of franchise in that way. I would, I think, focus in terms of: How can you reorganize the business to really let the parts that are thriving be more independent, because being a globally run brand is just going to give you disconnect? I also think that their “why” has become blurred, even though they’re very recognizable. It’s hard to tell what Vogue offers that no one else does, or the problem that they’re trying to solve for their audience. This might piss people off there, but they no longer have uncontested authority on fashion. There’s so many amazing fashion magazines and bloggers, and that whole space has just blown up. When they lost that, I think that’s when they really lost their dominance. They’ve recently announced that they’re reducing their print frequency. That is essentially taking a page from the indie magazines’ playbook. That’s them really understanding that it should be much more about anticipation and a premium offering. I think even the layout structure of Vogue feels really outdated. I’m hoping that this whole refresh gives us a much more luxurious printed product for them, because I think that will start to make pathways or kind of make steps in the right direction. I’m curious about what Vogue is. How many people inside actually have indie publishing backgrounds? Because if it’s people who are coming from this more outdated commercial media business model training, they might understand the right tactic to take or the steps to take, but they would deploy it with the wrong strategy. So I’m very curious to see what they do with this reduced print run, how they focus it. The thing that I also see as a marker of where there’s a missed opportunity is them recently folding Teen Vogue. Teen Vogue has such strong audience connection out of the entire portfolio, it probably had the most community resonance. And so the fact that they folded that into this undefined Vogue brand … I just think is such a huge misstep. Symbolically, I think it’s going to lose trust for a lot of their readership. I think Vogue, as a brand, needs to be restructured. All of that said, I think that comes from how it’s run and how it’s staffed. If you have a lot of people who are trained in digital-first media, but they’re wanting to create a print-first business, they’re not going to hit the mark. I’m very curious about where they’re going and would love to crawl inside. So, you know, Anna, Zoe, give me a call.

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Louanne  Yeah. I mean, I think I think it’s a shame they killed Teen Vogue because it was so sad. It’s probably a business strategy and money and things that we don’t know. But from my personal perspective, you’re missing an entire audience. A print-based audience that you could convert and keep and focus on and get them away from the computers. And I, as a parent, may not want my daughter to be receiving the full Vogue because it’s too much adult-based content.

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Megan  I forget exactly how old I was, but I was a teenager when Teen Vogue launched. That felt like it really spoke to me. I felt so excited, and I didn’t really idolize Vogue. My mom had a subscription and so did my grandma. But when you’re a teenager, it feels like old people’s content, even though it’s meant for just 20 years or ten years down the line. It didn’t feel for me at all. And so where I thought Teen Vogue was so amazing was that it spoke to me from a publishing house perspective. If I have a title that’s capturing young readers and building trust and building loyalty, and then I’m funneling them through my other publications, that’s so valuable. So essentially, now they’ve cut off their trust-building vehicle.

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Scott  Now, can you tell the people listening how they can get in touch with In Real Life Media and anything else that you’ve got coming up?

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Megan  The best way to stay up to date with what we’re doing, and a better sense for our approach and our experience is via our newsletter. People can sign up at inreallife.media. You can see all the articles that I publish weekly. So there’s quite a few up there now. And then what’s really exciting is, this year, we’re almost on a bit of a US road show. We’re gonna be in lots of different cities this year. What I’m really excited about is going to be in New Orleans at the end of May, which is regional publishers, focusing on those more regional titles in the US. We are aiming to be in Portland as well later this spring. We will be in New York in March and also in the fall. But if you subscribe to our newsletter, we’ll be announcing these events.

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Louanne  It is so inspiring to have somebody as a mentor in the industry. I think every industry has somebody they can always listen to, talk to, subscribe to. And it’s just refreshing that these independent magazines have somebody like you.

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Scott  Great conversation. And we would love to have you back anytime you’re ready.

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Megan  Amazing. Thank you both so much. This has been great.