Publishers

Emap is a British Media company part owned by the Guardian Media Group Founded in 1947. The Guardian Media Group publishes 59 “business to business” magazines, including Broadcast, and Screen International. It had a turnover of £1.154 billion in 2006. Despite the fact its success in a variety of magazine genres, it currently has no operating music magazines, therefore would not be a suitable candidate for a publisher of my magazine. Also, all the previous magazines published are no longer published, such as Smash Hits, a pop music magazine that ran from 1978 to 2006.

Future is owned by UK parent company Future Plc and was founded in 1985. It is a media corporation based in San Francisco specializing in targeted magazines, such as music magazine Guitar World, targeted at guitarists. However, its primary expertise falls under the video-game magazine and website industry, which has no relevance to the genre of my magazine.

The Bauer Media Group is an international German publishing company founded in 1975 based in Hamburg. It is an institution which dominates the magazine/ media industry, because of its publishing of many magazines in a wide variety of genres. Bauer manages an average circulation of 38 million magazines a week, expressing the popularity and demand of the skilful magazine publisher. Bauer have also won many awards due to their wide range of media products aimed at the young and teenage/ young adult audiences.

However, as it is such a large institution, I feel my magazine could be undermined in the production of the various available magazines.

IPC Media was set up in 1969, and is one of the UK’s leading magazine publishers selling over 350 million copies each year. It is owned by US media giant Time Inc. who publish Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated. IPC has a wide range of publishing rights in 15 countries, enabling globalisation of my own magazine. IPC media distributes its magazines weekly. They are a very successful media publishing company. They also produce very well known magazines such as; NME, Chat, Look, Now and Women, I think it is important that the intuition that distributes my magazine is capable of innovating, to survive the changes that occur within the industry, and allow success of the publication. I want my magazine to be distributed by a large intuition, to increase in fluctuations in the sales of the modern magazine industry. Also, for my magazine to be successful I want my publisher to have a positive reputation within the market, resources and divine expertise. I think that IPC would be an appropriate company to distribute my product because IPC Media produces over 85 iconic media brands, with print brands alone reaching almost two thirds of UK women and 44% of UK men (almost 27 million UK adults). Their online brands collectively reach 20 million users every month.

If IPC were to publish my magazine it would have the advantage because IPC have the experience of distributing music magazines such as NME, one of the leading UK music magazines. It also used to distribute Flavour magazine, which is the correct genre for my magazine, and is very popular in the USA. It is an institution with a strong reputation for successful products in a variety of genres, including women’s Lifestyle and home interest, and men’s lifestyle and entertainment. It also has the vast resources of being a part of Time Inc, which itself is a subsidy of Time Warner, the world’s largest entertainment conglomerate. Also, IPC Media distributes its magazines weekly, which could mean excessive sales and a great deal of interest in my magazine. Originally, I was going to use Bauer distributing; however, most of the magazines distributed by them are of the rock/indie genre. Additionally, a lot of the magazines published are successful, but quite old, so there will be space in the market for my magazine.