Overview of the industry

I thought that it would be good before I start making my magazine to make sure that I do an overview of the industry. This was I will be able to know exactly how I want to do things, and I will also have a wider knowledge of the media industry. I started off by discovering that there are more than 8000 titles published in Britain! Each of these titles can be categorised into different sections of the medias followed:

· Consumer; general and specialist
· Business/trade/professional; for people at work
· Customer; magazines that organisations give to their customers as a form of marketing
· Staff; to inform staff about their company
· Newspaper supplements; come free in the newspaper
· Part works; a set number of issues builds up into an encyclopaedia on a specific topic
· Academic journals; for university-level discussion of all sorts of arcane topics

The magazine that I am going to be making would be categorised as a consumer title. This means that I am aiming to make a general or specialist magazine that will be sold in newsagents or available online. Consumer magazines make up the bulk of the titles for sale in newsagents. They may be general titles which aim to entertain and inform (e.g. Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Radio times) or consumer specialist titles which aim at a specific interest or hobby (e.g. Total film, Gardeners’ World and Car).

The biggest consumer magazine publishers (by 2008 sales revenue in newsagents) are:

· Bauer Publising 25%
· ICP 20%
· BBC Magazines 7.8%
· National magazines 7.3%
Today in the UK there are over 3,200 different consumer titles whereas in 1980 there were only 1,383. This shows that the industry is rapidly growing. 1.4 billion Magazines are sold each year; this is a massive amount meaning that it must be a good industry to get involved in. There is a massive audience that could be targeted. 85% of the population reads a magazine. This means that only 15% of the population do not read magazines. Consumers spend £745 billion on magazines annually. Although it is such a successful industry, only 3 in 10 titles survive for more than 4 years which means that it must be tough, and the magazine has to be good to be successful!