The Best Niche Magazines of 2015, and How to Make a Business of One

This is a business built on curiosity, courage and intelligence. But then, what cool business doesn't need those?

Compared with books, magazines offer a kind of "sustainable sexiness." A single book is hard to turn into a series; a magazine is a series by nature. Over years, it can carry out an editorial vision at a steady rhythm and bring like-minded people together. But magazine ventures often start grandly and end in disappointment. "I want something the market doesn't offer, so I'll make it myself": many magazines begin with that thought, and three months later they stall, short of story ideas and money.

Is running an independent magazine really that hard? It is. To win advertisers you first need enough readers, or good enough readers. To find readers you need distribution. If you want to name the biggest divide between traditional and new media, it is new media's relative advantage in distribution: even if you do nothing, new media spreads to some degree. Whether it spreads well is another matter. Magazines can't do that. If fewer and fewer people sell magazines, where are readers supposed to buy them?

But you want to make an independent magazine. That takes courage, and it takes a long game: from day one, you have to plan for how it will last.

"How to make a niche magazine" is a vast subject; graphic design alone could fill several books. (Speaking of which, we highly recommend a big book called Turning Pages, on the aesthetics and innovations of all kinds of print media.) So let's start with successful examples from abroad. In an industry that keeps getting more niche, whoever is still doing well has lessons for anyone with the passion to get something done.

London's Stack recently announced its "Independent Magazines of the Year 2015". London's food magazine The Gourmand won Magazine of the Year, and Weapons of Reason won both Best New Magazine and Best Illustration.

What is Stack, and why run an award? It began as a whim of a Briton, Steven Watson, a London magazine fanatic. Each month he picks the best title from the flood of independent publications and mails it to subscribers. Pay for a Stack subscription and you can sit at home and receive independent magazines from around the world, 12 a year. In bookstores these magazines cost about 10 euros each; through Stack you pay 60% less. For magazine lovers, it is a good way to discover new titles.

Above: magazines Stack recommended in 2015

Stack's magazine subscription page

Now to The Gourmand, winner of Magazine of the Year. Since its founding in 2011, this food magazine has drawn plenty of attention. It is about eating, but not only about eating. It comes out just twice a year, each issue 120 pages of words and pictures on every side of food culture. We recommend its big, glossy food shoots. To see whether it suits your taste, start by following its Instagram account. The same goes for the other magazines here.

The Gourmand likes to shoot food against solid-color backgrounds, like a fashion editorial

Inside pages of The Gourmand

Best New Magazine went to Weapons of Reason. Also founded in London, it is a charming popular-science magazine whose articles center on global issues such as population growth and climate change. Its creators plan eight issues in all; two have come out so far. It pairs beautiful illustrations with thought-provoking writing.

Cover of Weapons of Reason

Inside pages of Weapons of Reason

Inside pages of Weapons of Reason

The two magazines have a lot in common: both were born in London, and both have a company or a foundation behind them. Weapons of Reason is backed by D&AD, an educational charity; The Gourmand relies on the publisher Lane & Associates Ltd. Abroad, it is common for big companies and foundations to support magazines. New York's Printed Matter, for one, has a large foundation and art institutions behind it.

Successful independent magazines share two more keywords. One is "outside the mainstream," non-mainstream in the broad sense. The other is youth. Both come from the history of independent magazines. In the 1980s, young Americans began making magazines themselves, and these highly personal publications circulated through bars, boutiques, small bookshops and other small circles. In 1980, Terry Jones stapled together an issue of i-D, which went on to become one of the classic independent magazines and has since been bought by VICE. Terry, now revered as a master, started with nothing. His photographers were people with passion who worked for free; his models were his wife's students; after a shoot, everyone happily ate whatever had been cooked at home. We once asked Terry Jones what kept him going in those early days. He said: "I just wanted to capture what those young people were doing on the street. They were cool."

Today, independent magazines are founded mostly by photographers, journalists, artists, writers and designers. They dislike being bound by popular culture and want to push their personal taste as far as it will go. Good independent magazines give readers the pleasure of reading, and an aesthetic experience, from outside the mainstream.

A good magazine draws out the people who share your interests, and once they show up, almost anything you want to do next becomes easy. If you doubt it, look at Kinfolk. But be warned: print publishing has razor-thin margins. If you want to make a living from it, first think through the questions below.

1. Is your positioning precise?

Only precise positioning finds the right readers. A magazine is a medium; it has to deliver value and information. If you make a magazine purely for your own pleasure, that isn't necessarily bad: only something a person truly loves can attract others. But your own love is not enough. You have to find people who share your taste, and you have to consider what they need and like.

Here are a few examples of precise positioning:

A magazine for cat lovers: Cat People

Founded in 2013, this bilingual English-Japanese magazine runs 146 pages an issue. In each one, the editor interviews a few writers, designers and musicians who adore cats and asks them to share their cat stories. The magazine debuted at the Tokyo Art Book Fair and comes out only once every two years.

A travel magazine: Cereal

You'll find this aloof travel magazine in many clothing stores and boutiques. It uses an ultra-thin typeface, and the places it covers are both dreamlike and little known, which makes its tone especially cool and distant. It comes out once a quarter.

A magazine for interns: Intern

Founded in 2013, Intern is made for interns. Set aside the practical advice, such as how to write a résumé and how to fight unpaid overtime, and the design, layout, photography and illustration alone are well worth a look.

A magazine for vegetarians: Chickpea

This independent magazine was founded by two New Yorkers who were tired of hearing that "being vegetarian is for rich idiots" and decided to fight back with a magazine. Under their fresh editing, it looks lovely, reads with humor, and makes eating vegetarian seem genuinely hip.

2. Do you look different enough from everyone else?

Whatever theme you choose, your magazine needs a distinct personality and editorial style: unorthodox, many-angled and fresh. Everyone is busy now. If you just repeat what others have said, no one will notice what you make. You have to use your own intelligence and taste to create original content that others draw on. Take The Gourmand. It once ran a feature on bananas: the writer started from the fact that bananas are rich in vitamin B, branched out into the cultural phenomena behind the fruit, and even tied it to sex, fashion and the runway.

An image from The Gourmand's banana feature: Chloé, Spring Summer 2004

Jean Paul Gaultier, Spring Summer 2010 Couture, also in the banana feature

Prada, Spring Summer 2011, also in the banana feature

KENZO, Autumn Winter 2013

To connect things this fluently, you need to know food, culture and fashion. It tests an editor's knowledge and imagination. Many people assume editing is fairly leisurely work. After all, how busy can you be at a magazine that comes out every six months, or even once a year? That view misses something: good things take time, and all the more so for traditional media that set out to overturn people's assumptions and prejudices.

3. What paper are you using?

People read in different ways. Some read novels on their phones on the subway, some read biographies on a Kindle in a café, and some love paper magazines and the ritual of holding one in their hands. So you must play to paper's strengths: work out where paper beats a screen, and push those qualities as far as they go.

Look at the Danish magazine Plethora Magazine: no ads, no logo, a page as big as a poster, no fixed publishing schedule, and printed by monks at an Indian temple. In concept and in physical form, it challenges the traditional magazine. Your magazine doesn't need monks to print it, of course, but it must stand out as an object.

Plethora Magazine

Good magazines don't skimp on paper. Cereal, mentioned above, chooses its paper with great care and proudly prints "printed in England" in every issue; running a fingertip across the page feels like touching a work of art. Besides the magazine, Cereal also designs and makes paper goods, a sign of how closely it has studied paper.

Cereal

Cereal gift pack, with two magazines and gift postcards

Notebooks from Cereal, made of eco-friendly paper

Diagonal-grid paper Cereal made with an artist

4. Who pays?

A magazine has to keep coming out on time, or nothing else matters. In practice: is it written in-house or by outside contributors? If by contributors, how do you keep the style consistent? Where does the money come from? Do you seek sponsorship from big companies or charities, or do you support yourself?

Many people remember only a magazine's lovely cultural side and forget that it is also a business. Commissioning, printing, shipping and promotion all cost money. Remember that print margins are always low (unless you can sell in the millions), so don't hang everything on print. You need to make money elsewhere too.

Take the German magazine Mono.Kultur. Mono.Kultur is an independent quarterly. Its editor-in-chief, Kai von Rabenau, was once a photographer, and he set out to make a pure, simple interview magazine. The team comes from across the creative fields: artists, designers, curators, journalists, writers and photographers. The magazine is now ten years old.

Like many independent magazines, Mono.Kultur doesn't rely on publishing alone; it has found other ways to survive. In 2009, Kai and his girlfriend co-founded the womenswear label Mono.Gramm, which has since released several seasons. The clothing line keeps the magazine in print.

Mono.Kultur

Mono.Kultur

The latest issue of Mono.Kultur

5. How do you find the people who might like your magazine?

How do you find your first 300 readers, and then your first 30,000? There are plenty of routes: run your social media accounts well, run your WeChat official account well, or start with a small circle.

Two more examples. The first is Acne Paper, a minimalist, everyday Swedish magazine. It isn't really independent: it is backed by a large company, Acne, the brand famous for its skinny jeans. Since its launch in 2004, Acne Paper has showcased everyday Nordic design. It is distributed in many European cities and sold at newsstands and boutiques. Many people knew the jeans first, followed the company's culture, and only then discovered the magazine. The reverse path exists too.

ACNE PAPER

The second is the Dutch photography magazine Foam. Foam also has a strong institution behind it: Amsterdam's photography museum, Foam-Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. Since its launch in 2001, Foam has grown steadily, pairing photographers' work with critics' essays on it. Because its positioning is precise, it first spread within photography circles.

Both magazines built a reputation within a small group before reaching a wider one. Kinfolk did the same. Kinfolk's founder is a devoted dinner-party host: he often used his blog to invite friends and writers to dinner at his home, and the idea for Kinfolk slowly grew out of those meals.

6. Do you need a website or an app? Why?

The magazine belongs to the pre-app era. Today an app can do much of what a magazine does, and more ambitious young people may choose to build an app instead. If you really choose a magazine, think hard about where paper beats a screen. What can a screen not replace? Where does paper's future lie? For now, most independent magazines build a website only to show and sell the product, not to publish the print edition in full.

Take Monocle, a name everyone in print magazines knows. Monocle publishes 10 issues a year, plus a newspaper in summer and winter. (No, it isn't a daily paper in the usual sense; it reportedly takes newspaper form so readers can read it more easily while sunbathing on the beach.) It runs five shops (selling products the editors like, many of them made in collaboration with Monocle), a magazine café, a website and a 24-hour radio station.

Monocle café

Of all these, the website matters least; even its online shop feels like an afterthought. Editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé says he has no interest in new-media channels. His reasoning is simple: every experience with real texture happens offline. On this point, his strategy matches that of many luxury brands.

This doesn't mean the online version has no value; it is just that few people manage to do both well. To balance online and offline better, you can come up with many more new ideas. In new media, there is still a very large market for truly excellent products, in both content and form.

Finally, here is Stack's "Independent Magazines of the Year" list, which is sure to open your eyes. Besides Stack, you can buy from the magazines' own websites or on Amazon. Day to day, you can look for magazine news on itsnicethat, or browse new titles in bookstores. (We have written about the Shanghai independent bookstore Closing Ceremony, and many boutiques also stock good new magazines.) Unless the magazine you want is extremely niche, you can probably find it on Taobao too (with or without a markup, who knows).

Enjoy!

Magazine of the Year

Winner: The Gourmand

Nominees: Flaneur (Berlin, Germany)

The Outpost (Beirut, Lebanon)

Best New Magazine

Winner: Weapons of Reason (London, UK)

Nominees: American Chordata (New York, US)

Benji Knewman (Riga, Latvia)

Best Cover of the Year

Winner: Guts (Dublin, Ireland)

Nominees: Avaunt (London, UK)

Cercle (Strasbourg, France)

Best Photography of the Year

Winner: Victory (New York, US)

Nominees: Four & Sons (Melbourne, Australia)

Gather Journal (New York, US)

Best Illustration of the Year

Winner: Weapons of Reason (London, UK)

Nominees: Little White Lies (London, UK)

The Ride Journal (London, UK)

Best Fiction of the Year

American Chordata (New York, US)

Best Non-Fiction of the Year

The Lifted Brow (Melbourne, Australia)

Cover image: Woody Allen, Sleeper