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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Louanne  Hi everybody, and welcome to our newest podcast. We are now going international where we welcome Nikki Simpson. She is with the International Magazine Centre in Scotland. And the International Magazine Centre is an organization that supports about one hundred and sixty independent publishers and freelancers that work in magazines, kind of like an association does. She runs online and in-person events and training for magazine publishers and freelancers, and mentors people for whatever stage of their career they’re at. And so, without further ado, I would like to introduce Nikki Simpson.

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Nikki  Thanks, Louanne. Nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

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Louanne  So, Nikki, tell us a little bit more about what I just said about your organization, the International Magazine Centre. I’m sure there’s far more to it than what I just said.

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Nikki  Yeah, sure. Of course. Well, first point, it’s actually more than one hundred and seventy members now, so that’s nice. That’s an update since the last time I think we spoke. I don’t know what the definition, exactly, is of a trade association, but we are essentially a trade association. We run events and training courses and a mentoring scheme for independent publishers. Specifically, we define independent publishers as teams of between one and ten people in a company. We’ve been going about seven years now. Yes, we’re based in Scotland, but as the name suggests — International Magazine Centre — we have members all over the world. The vast majority are in the UK for obvious reasons. But yes, we have lots of members in America and Canada and the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand… all over the place — really, predominantly, English-speaking countries. And that’s one of my bugbears. I would love to be able to offer things a bit more multilingual, but maybe that’s in about five years. Maybe.

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Louanne  So for clarification, an independent magazine is simply a magazine that is independent of a larger company. In my world, I work with a lot of association magazines, and they are magazines that are part of an association. I would not call that an independent magazine, just for clarification purposes. Is that correct?

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Nikki  My only definition is that there’s only between one and ten people working on that magazine. Because there are so many ways to define it. You could define it as not a PLC, or you could define it as a small company. For me, it just means companies between one and ten people. The vast majority of my members are teams of one or two. We’ve got a few bigger members that are ten, twenty, twenty-five kind of thing, but they’re not as involved as the smaller publishers, really. And so they’re all owner-run, or they’re often just one person doing everything in the company. So they are the editor, sometimes the designer, too. They’re the circulation manager, the marketer, they’re their own IT department. They do all their own finance… everything. And what you tend to find is that, if they get to the size where they can start to employ people, that’s a massive shift for them. And it’s incredible. Suddenly they’ve got two sets of hands to be able to help on things. But then there’s quite a few of our members who were just husband and wife teams. Or we’ve got a team that was started by two sisters, and they’ve grown to a team of about six or seven now, I think. To us, that’s like a massive success story. It’s like, “Wow, you have six employees. That’s incredible. Well done.” You know, the nature of them is that they are incredibly niche and often very, very personal and sometimes — not always by any means — but sometimes, they don’t have ambitions to grow massively. They just want to be able to support themselves and their family. It doesn’t matter that they’re not millionaires and they’re not employing a whole massive team. They just want to know that they can put food on the table. And that can be enough, because a magazine is quite capable of doing that, if you if you’ve got the right mechanisms in place. One of the reasons I love working with independent publishers is because I’ve held previous roles at other companies where I was working with much larger organizations, and they were all lovely people — don’t get me wrong — but they often were in those roles because it was a job, right? And independent publishers don’t feel that way. It is a calling. It is something that they are incredibly passionate about when it comes to their subject matter. It’s a lifestyle choice. People don’t just wake up one morning, go, “Oh, I know! I’ll go and work in magazines.” It’s something that’s where they feel really driven to do that.

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Scott  I know that people listening now are curious and want to look up these titles. Can you talk us through who some of your members are and what kind of magazines they produce?

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Nikki  They are wide and varied. We have magazines that are in print only in and online, and online only. And both. We have magazines that cover a huge variety of subjects, from cycling to witchcraft to local titles. And there’s 180 of them. The two sisters, for example, publish a magazine called Rare Revolution. Rare Revolution is a magazine that supports people who either have themselves rare diseases or they have children with rare diseases. So one of the two sisters has a son, I believe, that has a rare disease. And when he was born, there was nothing for them to be able to pull on. They had no title that they could look at, no community of people that was talking about rare diseases. And because his condition was so rare, they weren’t getting much help from doctors. So they decided to create their own title. And now, as I say, they’ve got a team of about six people … six, seven people, I think. I said it was B2B because they work so much with drug companies and healthcare organizations. But essentially, the point of the magazine is to be an information source for people who have rare diseases and they don’t know where to turn. So that’s a really great example of one of our members. They are very, very niche. They are very specifically trying to create a community. And they do that really well. Another magazine along the other end of the spectrum, consumer title: Singletrack magazine, which is a magazine… I think it’s this world’s second biggest mountain biking title. And they have this enormous community, and most of their interaction happens on their forum. The last time I spoke to him about it, he gets 70,000 hits on his website a day, 60,000 of which goes direct to his forum. They make money through sponsorship and through paid advertising and through programmatic advertising and then through membership as well. And they’ve got — you name it, right — they’ve got puzzles with front covers of magazines on them. You know, they do everything. So it’s another good example. We’ve got another title that is hyper niche. It’s a woman who runs a magazine called West Ender Magazine, which is a local title for the West End of Glasgow, and she has quite recently launched an app for the magazine. So the app, I believe, showcases all the shops that are in the West End of Glasgow. And then she talks to all the shops and all the hotels and restaurants and so on, and they all advertise with her. And then she gives away the magazine for free in cafés and restaurants and so on. She’s just employed a full-time editor so that she can focus on sales. So that’s massive. Again, real success story.

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Scott  Let’s pause on those on those last two, because they’re doing something that so many magazines have done at the expense of print, which is to create an online brand for themselves, either through an app or through a forum, as you said, or where they’re getting a community that could support their endeavors by itself. And yet they still persist in producing a magazine, which so many publishers in our worlds — Louanne’s and mine — have stopped doing. Can you talk a little bit about where they see the value in continuing that print relationship?

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Nikki  Well, I think especially for Suzanne at West Ender Magazine, I would say that she needs that visibility for her advertisers. Because if you’re picking up a free copy of a title, you’re not going to have that same outlook on things unless you’re looking up a website. But she’s not like an event site, right? There’s plenty of local titles that do that. They go, “Oh, this is all the things that are going on in the local area.” But she doesn’t do that. Without that print copy, she wouldn’t have the advertisers, I would imagine. I mean, you’ve got the app as well. But then how do you promote the app if nobody’s coming to the website in the first place, unless you’re promoting that through print, through people picking it up. And because it’s so hyper local, she can really focus on the places where she knows that that will be picked up. And she can have really good relationships with the people that are advertising with her because she can go along and actually meet with them. Often, her advertisers, I think, are her distributors as well: the places where she’s actually leaving the copies of the magazine. So it’s all this just like nice little symbiotic thing, and I think for markets, Singletrack … it’s a good question. I mean, his website is definitely a huge part of it. And the magazine is smaller. I often feel as well that the magazine isn’t quite the same as the website. You know how sometimes, you see the magazine and then you go to the website and it’s just like a carbon copy of same design style and everything. But I don’t feel that way with Singletrack, but I know that it’s very highly regarded.

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Louanne  It’s interesting. Scott just mentioned that we have a lot of publishers not publishing anymore and simply going to the website mostly because of money: either the lack of ads or just the general budget in the association or whatnot. What are the most common problems that these niche publishers are seeing today?

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Nikki  God, there’s so many problems. I mean, distribution is a major problem for a lot of publishers. This kind of scale, it’s difficult to do it yourself, and nobody really wants to do distribution themselves, I don’t think. But when you hand it over to a supplier, you’re taking 50% of your earnings away. That’s hard. And sometimes I think that people find it difficult to get the information from the distributors that they need, like: Where has it been distributed and how many copies have they sold at the most basic level? But then other distributors are fantastic. So it really just depends on what your relationship is like with that distributor. On a wider note, as I say, they’re on the run, so lack of time to do anything is one of the most major problems. I don’t know about you guys, but I mean, I run a small business as well. And when you are caught in the weeds of the business, doing the things that you have to do every day, it’s very, very difficult to think strategically. It’s very difficult to give time to your own mental health, for one. But then on top of that, to give time to coming up with new ideas for your title or how to implement them. I met with a new member the other day. He publishes four different titles, has a small team, and I suggested he run an event with one of his with one of his titles, and he said, “Yeah, we’ve been thinking about it for years, but just haven’t quite got around to it because we’re such a small team.” There’s only four people working on that title, so if they’re already maxed out on time, just actually creating the title in the first place, how are they meant to put together an event as well? A lot of publishers who are publishing independent titles supplement their magazine income with freelance work as well. And that’s a problem in itself, because sometimes the freelance work will complement the work of the magazine. There’s one of my members who publishes a homes and interiors magazine and so much of her network around that is connected to her through her freelance work, which is also around homes and interiors. So she writes for other magazines, she does interviews and things like this. She likes that kind of symbiosis of the freelance and the magazine itself. But it does mean — not just for her specifically, I’m not picking on you, Jen — but for any publisher that is also working freelance at the same time, your brain goes to where the money is coming, right? Because you need to eat and so you naturally go and spend more time with the thing that will earn you more money and not forever. And what tends to happen is that people put their heart and souls into actually creating the magazine in the first place, and then don’t have the energy or the inclination or the time to market it. And so they’re like, “Wow, I created this incredible magazine,” or, “Next issue out now.” But then actually, struggle with the marketing for that. So a lot of the training courses that we run are around marketing. I’ve literally just agreed a series of marketing training courses for next year. I think when it comes to print, it depends which kind of market you’ve got. One of our members has a magazine about neurosurgery. It’s, again, very niche. And she’s recently finished up her print edition and just gone online because she wants to make more of her forum. She wants to really connect with her community there. That’s the community that makes sense to do that, too. And because the print edition … she wasn’t sure how many people were actually reading it. She couldn’t really get a feel for that because it was a free title. It was free, controlled circulation. It wasn’t being picked up like West Ender magazine was, and it wasn’t being subscribed to. Whereas on her website, she can see exactly how many people are coming and if they’re going to the forum, then she can actually communicate with them and chat to them and so on. But then, conversely, one of my members publishes an online gardening title, and since the day I met her, she’s always been going, “Oh, online’s amazing. I’m not really that fussed about print.” And then about eight months ago, she got in touch with me and she said, “Nikki, I’m thinking about doing an annual in print. What do you think?” I’m like, “Oh my God, this is really exciting.” And she wants to do it, to be able to offer something extra for her readers. She wants to be able to do something that, especially for a gardening title, is a really good idea. Because you can take it with you to your allotment or just into the garden. It’s a very offline experience, gardening, anyway, right? So it’s a really natural progression to want to open a print title. Plus, she has absolutely reams and reams of evergreen content. It really makes sense there. So some are closing, some are launching.

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Louanne  How many people get it up and running and get all excited, and then, a year into it or so you’ll … the old adage, “Squirrel!” And they go and they look a different way and off it goes?

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Nikki  The majority of my members are established publishers who’ve been going for years. One of the things that we do is we have a monthly “How to Launch a Magazine” workshop. And that’s really important to me for lots of reasons: for lead generation — because I want to connect with new publishers — to encourage the next generation of magazine publishers to come into the world, to help support people with ideas, where they haven’t quite been able to kind of tip it over the edge into actually doing the thing. But it’s always well-attended and it’s monthly. I heard a really interesting talk the other day from the publishers of Broccoli, which… I think they’ve actually renamed their whole company. I don’t even know if it was renamed, but that was maybe the original name for the company: Broccoli. She’s based in Portland, and she said that they launched Broccoli, which was a title about marijuana, when they started to see the marijuana industry really take off in the US. But then as they started to see it calm down, they decided to close it because now they are publishers. They’re not just publishers of Broccoli magazine. They now understand what it takes to create a magazine. They understand how to distribute it, how to send it to retail, how to edit it, how to design it properly, and so on. They know how to market it. So rather than stopping publishing and going, “Oh well, Broccoli’s not working anymore,” they’ve launched a new magazine called Catnip — which you might have seen — which I think is possibly the smartest thing I’ve ever seen. “Oh, okay. Well, you know, marijuana’s not working, so let’s talk about cats, because cats, there are wild cats.”

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Louanne  There’s a combination for you.

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Nikki  Yeah. For sure. And that’s what I love to see, is I love to see people going, “Okay, well, I’m a publisher. I’m not the publisher of this one specific thing.” And for some publishers, that wouldn’t be relevant. The woman who does the neuroscience magazine isn’t going to turn around and start publishing something completely different, right? There are some people who will just be flash in the pan publishers and here today, gone tomorrow. But there are also people who have that longevity and who understand the way that the media industry or the magazine industry, specifically, is moving away from more mass consumer titles to more niche, more community-led titles.

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Louanne  The name Broccoli is genius, by the way.

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Nikki  Yeah, as is Catnip.

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Louanne  Yes, that is too. Yeah, it’s too bad Broccoli’s not around. That just would have been a fun magazine to look at.

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Nikki  One of our publishers also produces a different one: marijuana and psychedelics title called Leafie, if you’re interested in that. So, yeah, have a look.

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Louanne  Not my thing.

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Scott  Oh, really? You’re just very, very curious …

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Louanne  I just I love the names. That was really what I was talking about. But when somebody comes to you and they want some help, what’s the first question you would ask them?

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Nikki  The first thing I ask them is just tell me about their idea or their magazine. What you often find with independent publishers is that they are so used to pitching their title, usually to advertisers, that they present it as this perfectly formed thing with no problems whatsoever. But then I get to the end of that conversation and I go, “Okay, so how can I help you? And what are your pain points?” And occasionally I’ll say, “Well, it sounds like you’ve got it licked. I’m not sure I can really help you.” And then they go, “Oh, what? No, no, that’s not what I meant.” And then it all comes out right that they are struggling for one thing or another. It’s really interesting, the way that magazines present themselves sometimes as well. I had a conversation with somebody the other day and, not to say they’re not doing well — I think they’re doing brilliantly — but I think I had this perception in my mind that they would have a subscription base of a few thousand people or something, which is a lot for an independent publisher. But when I asked them, “How many subscribers have you got?” They were like, “Oh, so we’ve got one hundred subscribers, and I’m pretty happy with that.” And so suddenly you’re like, “Okay, so you’re just doing that thing again where you’re presenting yourself as this fantastic organization.” And I find that really difficult because I’m a really honest — annoyingly honest — person. And so when people aren’t upfront with me, I’m like, “Oh God, man, just give me the juice. I want to know the honest thing here. I want to know how I can help you, essentially, because if you won’t tell me how I can help you, then I’m not going to be able to.” So that was helpful in that instance because then I could go, “Well, okay, so we need to boost your subscribers. We need to find out a way to do that. What’s holding you back there?” And then that started a wider conversation. So those are the things really: What are you doing? How are you doing it and how can we help you? Those are the those are the three questions.

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Scott  You said something at the beginning of that that I didn’t think was a thing. And I just want to confirm this: Do any of your members start a magazine with the intention of one day pitching it to a bigger media company like Bauer or Condé Nast or something?

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Nikki  I got approached a little while ago by an Italian guy who had a really great idea for a magazine, and he’s like, “So I really want to just pitch this to some major publishing house.” And I was like, “Well, I think that’s the kind of backwards way to do it, right? I think what you want to do is you want to launch the magazine yourself, create an incredible list of loyal subscribers, and then say, ‘Okay, media House, I’ll sell this to you, sell the assets basically to you.’” But he thought that the idea was so strong that he could go direct to the media house. But to me, that’s crazy because media houses have teams of people working just on new publications. “What could we launch next?” Because they are publishing houses, essentially. They are not specifically interested in that one subject matter that they’re publishing on. That’s the first time that’s ever happened. Nobody’s ever come to me and gone, “Oh, so I’m thinking of launching a magazine so that I can sell it and get rich.”

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Louanne  I mean, it’s a passion project for them.

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Nikki  But a passion project implies that they’re only doing because they’re really passionate about the subject rather than to make money. It’s not that. They’re definitely in it as a business. But I would say that I think I know one publisher who would like to sell his business, but he’s been doing it for years and years, and most people don’t come into it looking for an exit strategy. They’re not thinking, “How will I build this up so that I can sell it?” That would be nice. But it’s not their main focus for the company. They’re focused on making it the best that they possibly can — supporting that community the best that they can. And that’s a joy to work with, right? I don’t want to work with the companies who are like, “Well, how can we get rid of this fantastic thing that we’ve built?”

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Louanne  Right. I, as a graphic designer, built my company to support myself and to be what I wanted to be. I never wanted to build a company to sell it.

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Nikki  No. And you wanted to do that thing that you had control over as well. Lots of independent publishers start exactly the same way. They go, “How can I make money on this thing that I really love and am really passionate about?” And then they go, “Okay, well, now I’m doing that thing and I’m in control of it.” There’s a lot of joy in that: just being able to own your own business and not have to kowtow to somebody else, to make your own decisions.

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Louanne  And three of us know now.

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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 and consult relevant professionals 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  What specific skills do you think that they are struggling with the most?

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Nikki  Every publisher comes at it from a different angle, but the thing that I’m asked most often for is sales support. Most people either come and publish a magazine because they really love their subject matter and they’re writers and they love writing about it, or they come at it as a designer and they’ve got this brilliant idea for something more art-led, perhaps, or occasionally, you get marketers who go, “This feels like a really clear communication avenue where I can connect to a community of people who can consistently support me.” But the one thing that nobody loves is sales, right? Just actually being able to pick the phone up and go, “Hi, do you want to advertise in my magazine?” I try to talk to people about this a lot and just try to say to so many people, “Come on my ‘How to Launch a Magazine’ workshop,” with that. “Oh no, we’re not going to have any advertising. It’s going to be just subscriptions only.” And I’m like, “Okay, well that’s nice. Good luck with that.” They think that they’ll put one post on social media and loads of people will pick up the magazine. They’ll have  a thousand subscribers within a couple of days, but it just doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. But what I say to them is: Try not to think of sales as the root of all evil. Try to think of it as you helping your friends to talk to your other friends. Try to think of it not as a double-glazing salesman, but as a product that is really connected to your audience, a product that you really love personally, that you want to be able to promote to the people who are working with you. The thing with the independent publishing scene is that, if you are publishing a magazine, nobody really knows where they end and their magazine begins. They’re so ensconced in it all day, every day. They’re so deep in the subject matter. And so to ask them to promote it or to sell the magazine to an advertiser is like selling themselves or promoting themselves. And I don’t know if you’ve ever promoted yourself or tried to sell yourself. It’s hard. You’re talking, however old you are, many years of fear of rejection and being told that you’re not quite good enough. And so, especially for people with smaller audiences, it’s harder. Even more so because they have this perception in their head of, “Well, the ‘successful’ magazines have huge readerships: a million people or a million hits on websites… How can I possibly compete with that?” And you’re like, “Well, you’re not selling to the kind of people who are advertising in Vogue, right? You’re selling to completely different audiences, completely different advertisers.” But I always say to them to try and be really proud of their audience, no matter how small. To me, I have 170 members. If I told that to the people at Vogue, they’d be like, “Well, big wow. How long have we been in business? What have you been doing for the past seven years?” And but to me, I’m like, “No, I’ve got 170 publishers, right?” If a printer wants to connect with independent publishers, I’m the place to come. Even for the people who aren’t members, I’ve got 170 members. Well, according to LinkedIn, like 6,000 or more people who are in that publishing industry. So I’m really proud of that audience. That entire audience has money to spend in one way or another, right? They all have a footprint. They all have to market their product. They all have to get it distributed in one way or another. And these are opportunities for people.

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Louanne  Yeah, this is a great resource for everybody to come together and learn from each other. The fact that you’re so small, too, also makes it even better that people get to know each other. They can call each other. They know each other by their first name.

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Nikki  That’s the dream for me, right? I mean, it’s not even a dream now. It happens all the time. People go, “Oh, I met up with [name of other member].” I’m like, “Oh my God, did you? Wow. That’s amazing. Why did you do that?” And they’re like, “Oh, well, we met at one of your events and we thought it’d be fun.” We had two Christmas parties on Tuesday night: one in Edinburgh and one in London at the same time. I was like, “Oh, I’ll introduce you to so and so,” and she’s like, “Oh don’t worry. I met her at the last event.” I’m like, “Okay, brilliant, thanks very much.” And I just love that because then I’m curating this community. But then it takes on a life of its own and that’s just so joyful for me. I love that.

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Scott  Speaking of events, can you talk a little bit about Magazine Street?

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Nikki  Oh, I’d love to. So this is a two-day event. Now, we always hold it in Scotland because I live in Scotland. That is the only reason. It’s a full day of talks, aimed at independent publishers. We have masterclasses on the first day, then we have a pre-party. So that’s like a panel session. Everybody comes along, we have a bit of networking, a few beers, and that kind of gives people a chance to relax a little bit before the main day, when they know it’s going to be a bit more full on. And then on the main day, we have two stages. First stage is mostly inspiration and ideas and interesting publishers, doing great things. And then the second stage is more workshops and how to do it. What’s the practical kind of side of things? This year we had one-to-ones going on at the same time. We always have a photographer come along and take people’s photos for their LinkedIn profiles and so on, because there’s so many people who don’t have that kind of thing. We always have exhibitors there. We have a magazine shop run by Ra and Olly. I take all the speakers and staff out for dinner afterwards, and we all just kind of go, “Oh, right, okay, that’s enough for a year.” There is no prerequisite to join the International Magazine Centre. You can be just a …. sorry, not just a designer. I don’t mean that in that way, but you can be designer or just an editor, or you can be somebody who works freelance sales or whatever, right? I’ve got members who are writers, editors, journalists, designers, social media people, sales people and specialists, but don’t actually have their own magazine. Had a bus driver who was a member for a while. He just had an interest in magazines and, and he said he never wanted to meet me or come to any of my events, but he just wanted to be a member for a while. Fine. Whatever. So no, there’s no prerequisite. You don’t have to apply and then have six people sign off and say, “Oh yes, they would be good for this membership.” It’s not like that. It’s not that hierarchical. It’s not that closed. It’s basically just, “Could you convince yourself to part with five pounds a month?” Then you’re in. That’s it.

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Louanne  Membership is very, very, very affordable, just FYI.

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Nikki  So we have a closed group on LinkedIn. That’s where all of our members talk to each other. Or if they want to do it publicly, they can obviously get in touch with each other directly through that group. And we run events both online and in person. I try to run all of my events in the afternoons so that it’s accessible to people who are in America and Canada as well. But it just depends where you are.

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Scott  So what is your take, personally, on the role that the independent publishers have in the greater media landscape that we find ourselves in at the end of 2025?

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Nikki  As I said earlier, I think that this is the way that the industry is moving now: to become increasingly niche, specialist, community-driven. There are larger publishers that are doing that as well — don’t get me wrong. But I think that the kind of magazines that I want to read, personally, are the ones where I might have met the editor, or I’ve been to an event where the editor was running the show, or somebody I know where I can actually get in touch with them and go, “Hey, I really love the design of your magazine. That’s really cool what you’ve done there.” And I know that I’ll be emailing the designer. They are very, very different from larger titles. They’re very, very different approaches to everything. Really, when you think about it in the UK … I don’t know what the system is called now. I forget what it’s called, but historically it was a company called the ABC, the Audit Bureau of Circulation. I don’t know what they’re called… Can you remember?

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Scott  I think it’s just the Audit Bureau or something. I think they just took “Circulation” out of it. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I know what you’re talking about.

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Nikki  So for me, they’re doing a brilliant job at what they’ve been asked to do. Don’t get me wrong. But I feel like the narrative around the ABC six-monthly figures is just so detrimental to the wider publishing industry. I just find it very frustrating. So they tend to say things like, “Oh, two titles increase their circulation this past six months, and everybody else took a nosedive right in their circulation. So hey, advertisers look at this, basically, dying industry.” And that’s not what I see in the independent publishing industry, but that narrative trickles down across advertisers and is talked about. And we just pick it up without even noticing. It’s the same with everybody talking about AI. All day, every day. That constant narrative starts to trickle down to consumers. It’s difficult to fight that, I suppose. I also find it very, very difficult to hear the words “Print isn’t dead.” You’re putting the words “print” and “dead” in the same sentence. And no matter how positively you say that, and with a big smile on your face and your thumbs up and “Happy, happy joy, joy! Print isn’t dead,” it’s all people hear: print is dead, when you put those words together. Or they hear you fighting too hard against that sentence, you know?

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Scott  Yes, exactly. This is threatening you because you’re not recognizing the economic realities of this. You’re just you’re just thinking about how it affects you personally. And that’s not the case at all.

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Nikki  Yeah. And I wish people would say things like, “Print is beautiful and print is so community-driven and print is wonderful to hold in your hands. And print has longevity, and you can curate the narrative with print and so on and so on.” You know, there’s so many reasons to really love print. Essentially, it’s just the bandwagon that we all jumped on when the digital revolution came around and, shock, here we go again with AI — everybody jumping on that bandwagon. If one more person says to me, “I think you’re going to be left behind if you don’t embrace AI, Nikki,” my head’s going to explode. I just feel like, “Really? You think I’m going to be left behind? What does that actually mean?” Does it mean that, if I use AI, that I won’t employ people anymore? Because that’s not something I want, right? I want to work with the freelancers that I work with. And if AI suddenly takes over that role, that will personally make me incredibly sad. What are you trying to do? What I want to do is work with real human beings, and I want to read something that has been created by a human being, and I want to spend time on things. I think that the work that I produce will be better if I spend more time on it. I think it will be worse if I stick it through an AI. It will also make me lazier. It will change the way that I think about things. I’ll start thinking in large language models. Who wants that? In fairness, I spoke to a publisher — sorry, an editor — the other day. He was opinions editor at the magazine he works for, and he was saying that he doesn’t mind using AI for things like, “Here are all the winners of the awards last night for the award ceremony that we ran.” Because there’s no real editorial content, there’s no creation of content. It’s just literally data that he’s using that for. So yes, that’s useful. He also said that if an article would normally take him four hours and the AI could do it in fifteen minutes, he’s going to spend the next three hours double-checking it anyway to make sure the content is so good, because that’s the nature of journalism, and you never want to let anything go through your fingers that could be bad. So what exactly has that AI saved him? Maybe an hour’s work. At which point he’s not feeling creative enough. He’s feeling drained and stressed out from the whole process. And, you know, you could say, “Okay, well, maybe as the AI improves, you want to trust it more and more.” But every article you see in the media industry at the moment is about, “Oh, such and such a company trusted their AI and look at the crap it spat out.” To me, publishing is a space where people can actually turn, to know that there isn’t AI there, to know that it has been produced by a human. And that is our USP. That is the thing we should be leaning into, not going, “Yes, yes, let’s save money, producing rubbish.”

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Scott  I notice you use the American accent when we talk about money.

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Nikki  I’m sorry! I didn’t think I was.

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Scott  I saw a clipping recently from a newspaper where they had forgotten to take out the last paragraph from the ChatGPT thread, where ChatGPT was asking, “Would you like me to restate this article?” And it made it all the way into print.

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Nikki  That’s genius.

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Louanne  See, that’s the editor that did not spend the three hours writing it.

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Nikki  Essentially, I mean, the problem is not the AI. The problem is the pressure that journalists are being put under to produce so much work in so little time. I’ve spoken to so many editors who have told me that when they first joined the company, they had five people on their team and that people either got made redundant or they went on maternity leave and then they never came back. They never replaced them or they pulled in somebody more junior. And essentially, that team of five has gone down to a team of one, and the people who have been making those decisions have said to them, “But you still have enough time. I have a spreadsheet that tells me how long it takes you to create an article, and I can see that you should at least have half an hour in your day for thinking time.” And that, to me, is just madness. It’s not understanding the value in carefully crafted content. It’s not understanding the value in people who have been working in this industry for so long and know what they’re doing and how to do it well. It’s offering them tools to make their work worse. Why would you do that as a publisher? It’s exactly what happened when so many print publishers went, “I will give it away free online. Why wouldn’t we do that?” Oh, well, maybe because you can’t monetize it quite as easily. And then, about ten years into the digital revolution, everybody went, “Oh gosh, we should probably get people to pay for that, shouldn’t we? Because we haven’t really got businesses anymore.” I just think these things are absolute lunacy. And because everybody keeps saying those words: “You’re going to be left behind. You’re going to be left behind.” You’re like, “Well, okay, we better get on that bandwagon then.” No, thanks. I’m not getting on that bandwagon. What is the point in life when you are completely detached from the thing that you love — to completely detach from the thing that you want to be a part of? Completely detached from. I know my members, right? I know what their pain points are. I know where they live. I know their names. I know whether they’ve got a dog or not. This is important to me and that is very important to the organization. And that’s not the same as other organizations. I understand that, and I’m not saying that those other organizations are bad in any way. But for me — and what is right for me — I do not want to go down the AI route, because to me, that sense of community is so important.

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Louanne  I think that what makes a world of difference is that one on one, and independent publishers … if I subscribe to Catnip Magazine and I had an idea for a story, I know that I could probably go to Catnip magazine. I have a couple of cats.

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Scott  You can’t see the cat tree in her background right now.

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Louanne  Yeah, there’s a cat tree over there.

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Nikki  Are you saying that you have cats here?

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Louanne  There are no cats currently residing in the tree at the moment, though. Anyway, I could call the editor personally or email them and get a response right away, as opposed to if I had wanted to pitch an article for Vogue, no way am I getting anybody of importance on that.

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Nikki  They wouldn’t even be available anyway. They wouldn’t even have a LinkedIn profile because they’d be so massive. I was talking to a publisher the other day who said that people still come round to his house with a cheque to subscribe. I mean, how cool is that? And that’s not even a local title, right? I just thought, “Oh my God, it’s an actual boutique.” But wonderful to come ‘round and have a cup of tea. But pay me, please.

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Louanne  Circling back to publishing, I just want to close this out a little bit. What makes the best publishers successful?

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Nikki  Dedicated time to the magazine. The people who have it as their main income are the people that watch the customer journey, who think consistently about new ways to make money. New advertisers — the advertisers they can connect with, or advertisers that they can approach with a different offer. They’re just people who are really, really focused on the finances and the magazine because they know that’s their only income. Those are the ones that are successful. And I know that that’s a privileged position to be in, right? Not everybody can launch a magazine and be successful overnight by any means. But I would say that that should always be something you’re working towards. When I first started the International Magazine Centre, I worked freelance, doing comms work for a whiskey distillery visitor center organization, and then that was helping me with set-up of the International Magazine Center. But my goal was always to finish with distillery tours and just put all my time and energy into the International Magazine Centre, and that’s what I focused on more than anything every day. I was like, “Well, how much am I earning there? What could make me earn that here? How many members do I need? How many events do I need to run? What do I need to make on each event, to be able to cover what I would have earned from him in a month?” That felt amazing when I stopped my freelance work, right? It was just wonderful when I could leave it behind and go, “Okay, now I can put all my time and love and energy into this organization.” That’s so much more fulfilling. And I know that publishers are not failing.

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Louanne  Yeah, that’s what it really takes to make any company successful, but primarily a magazine, I can imagine.

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Nikki  I’ve recently realized that I need to work evenings as well, if I want to make this organization more successful. So I think if you’re starting your own business, it’s that realization that if you want it to do as brilliantly as you know it deserves, then you need to absolutely knock your pan in and don’t hold back on that. Don’t think, “Oh, it should be more successful by now.” Really? Should it? What did you do last night? Did you watch a movie? Did you sit with your feet up and have a glass of wine? Or did you spend three hours working really hard, marketing your business or meeting with people in other countries? You can’t do that every night. Don’t get me wrong: It’s a really important balance, when it comes to mental health and so on. But I do think that that kind of legacy that all magazines are like a license to print money has maybe trickled down through the years, and people think that it should be easier than it is. I do quite a lot of lectures at universities, and I often say to them, “You are going to work your ass off and you’re probably never going to get rich, but you will be happy. If you’re not happy in whatever job you’re in at the moment, then maybe think about publishing because it’s so fulfilling in so many different ways.”

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Scott  Do you know the average age of your members?

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Nikki  The more established ones tend to be a little bit older, I guess, just by nature. You can only be established for a long time if you’ve been working on something for a long time, which makes you older. Maybe 40-ish up. But there’s lots of new people coming into the market. When I do my “How to Launch a Magazine” workshop, there was a real mixture of people who were long established in whatever it is that they’re currently doing, and they just see the need for a magazine there, or they feel like this could be a great communication tool — a mixture of that. And people who are straight out of uni really want to publish a magazine. I love the fact that younger folks in their twenties want to see stuff in print. There’s no hesitation there. They’re not like, “Oh, I just want to use AI as a journalist.” Why would you study journalism if you’re going to use AI? They’re not like, “Oh, I just want to see my work online.” Nobody ever says that, right? They want to see it in print.

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Louanne  So before we go here, we want to give you a chance to talk up the IMC and your newsletter and anything else you want to mention before we go. Tell people how to get in touch with you.

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Nikki  Thank you. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. My name is Nikki Simpson, that’s N-i-k-k-i Simpson, or you can Google: International Magazine Centre will come up. You can come to our annual conference next year, which is on the 16th and 17th of September. It’s called Magazine Street, not to be confused with the actual Magazine Street, which is in America somewhere. You can sign up to our newsletter. I send out information about interesting things happening in magazines, interesting organizations that you can connect with, interesting ideas for how you can publish your magazine better in one way or another. You can become a member. You can find all that through our website. It starts at five pounds a month. I think that’s about seven dollars a month, or something like that. We do two or three events a month at the moment, which, when I say those words, makes me feel a little bit scared about next year. I know it’s at least two a month. It’s just a lovely community to be a part of. Although my bus driver doesn’t agree anymore. He left, but that’s okay. Well, where’s the bus magazine?

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Louanne  Maybe he went to New Orleans to Magazine Street.

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Nikki  There you go. New Orleans. That’s the word I was looking for. Maybe he went there.

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Louanne  Well, thank you, Nikki, this has been great pleasure.

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Nikki  It’s nice to meet you both. And thank you for inviting me on the podcast. It’s nice.