Interview: Magnus Greaves, founder of MYMAG

“The idea was to find a solution to the problems plaguing the magazine industry”

To finish up my roundup of the launch of MYMAG (parts one, two and three), I’m delighted to offer a Blogsplosion magsclusive interview with its creator, Magnus Greaves, where he reveals how the idea began with ‘make your own’ magazines, explains how he’s trying to take the risk out of publishing, and tells us exactly what he looks for in a guest editor.

According to the website, idea came about in 2007. Why did it take two years to put together?
The initial idea behind MYMAG was to find a solution to the many problems plaguing the magazine industry. We had a vision of individuals creating their own print magazine using content from established publishers. We pursued this for a long time — looking into the challenges of technology, on-demand printing, how to acquire the content and so on. One day we realized that MYMAG was not about magazines in general; it was about personalized media in a way that takes advantage of the print-magazine format.

Once we made this shift in our thinking, we decided to focus on working with people who already had a following, as opposed to people making magazines purely for themselves.
 

Why print magazines? Why not books, websites, iPhone apps, something else? 
MYMAG is about the connection between a tastemaker and their fans, and creating a print magazine adds something new to the tools they use to do this. Plus, our limited-edition approach adds a certain level of intimacy that those other formats don’t offer. We use Web sites and apps and Twitter and the rest to promote each issue, but there’s just something special about the tactile magazine experience, especially when you’re deeply interested in the individual who created it.

 
How often will MYMAGs come out? Will they always appear in batches of three?
We decided to launch with three to emphasize the diversity and personalization aspects of MYMAG. Readers seeing just one magazine at first wouldn’t get the full picture of how different tastemakers can use the platform simultaneously to reach completely different audiences. We will continue to launch in series of three for a while, and then we’ll simply add individual tastemakers as they come onboard. As a company, we have no set schedule for when we’ll release each MYMAG, although many of the tastemakers we’re speaking with want to time their participation to coincide with other projects they have going on.
 
 
How much start-up capital did MYMAG require, and where did it come from? How many full-time staff work on MYMAG?
The initial capital came from me personally, and I continued to fund the business for the first two years. I then asked several of my friends to participate — which was great, as it allowed our little team to have outsiders to bounce ideas off and to share in all the excitement. We have four full-time staff — me; our COO, Phil Rugile; our creative director, Warren Noronha; and our marketing-and-sales coordinator, Vanessa Fuller. We also have an incredible group of experts who work with us on art direction, production, PR and logistics. And, of course, the amazing printing team at Fry.
 
 
What did the experience of Doubledown Media teach you about magazine publishing?
Doubledown was my first experience in the media business, so it taught me a lot! Probably the most meaningful lessons, in terms of the subsequent development of MYMAG, would be what I learned about the inefficiencies of the magazine business and its awful financial model. We actually had a pretty decent model at Doubledown — as far as magazines go, anyway — but I was able to witness how crazy magazine publishing is when it comes to building an audience, the painful distribution models (both newsstand and subscription) and the suicidal dependency on advertising income.

The MYMAG model aims to address all three of these problems — we work with tastemakers who have an existing audience; we use their existing channels to reach that audience and sell them the magazines; and we create a high-quality product that the fans are willing to pay $10 for.
 
 
What do you look for in a MYMAG guest editor?
We’re looking for well-known individuals who have something interesting to say, and an existing fan base that wants to hear it. We’re not looking purely for the most famous people, as popularity alone is no guarantee that they’ll create an interesting magazine. It’s also important that the tastemaker have a direct channel to his or her fans, whether through social media or live events such as concert tours. When we do the series of three, we might occasionally try to group the tastemakers so that the fans of one will presumably have some interest in the others we’ve selected. But those connections will be subtle.
 
 
How exactly does it work? Does the editor simply send a list of what they want, or does MYMAG work with each editor make their choices? And do they choose the individual articles or just the magazines themselves?
Warren sits down face to face with each tastemaker to hear what they want to communicate to their audience. He then finds out what their favorite magazines are and, specifically, which content they want included. Each tastemaker has 100 percent control over their MYMAG, and the more detail-oriented they are about the articles, the better. After the initial consultation, we work with the tastemaker and their team to establish the marketing plan and our sales strategy. MYMAG does most of the heavy lifting, but the process ends up being so personal and enjoyable that the tastemakers are willing to give us a lot of their time, which is how we can create great experiences for the reader.
 
 
I read that you don’t pay the publications that are featured. Is it easy to get the magazines to say yes? Was it easy to get the reprint rights for Spy, a now-defunct publication?
I’m happy to say that the overwhelming majority of the magazines we have approached have been very enthusiastic about contributing content. Given that we’re approaching each publisher on behalf of a well-known tastemaker, receiving such a personal, celebrity-driven endorsement of their magazine is obviously very appealing to them. We then continue to work with the publishers to promote their involvement in the project, and we see them as partners.

The only problems we’ve encountered so far have been trying to get to the right person at one of the major magazine companies — they seem to have so many people on staff that they don’t know who’s responsible for participating in an innovative project! In the case of Spy, we dealt directly with the gentleman who now owns all the rights to the content, and he was terrific in helping us out. For me, seeing the final Spy pullout in movie director Brett Ratner’s magazine has been one of the highlights of the entire MYMAG journey.
 
 
Are the intros actually written by each editor? How about the handwritten covers?
Every word you see comes directly from the tastemaker. We are not interested in working with anyone who doesn’t want to write their own intros and letter, as it defeats the purpose of MYMAG and would result in a magazine that the fans right away would recognize as inauthentic. The handwriting was a great feature for the first magazines; it really helped highlight the intimate and personalized nature of the project, although I’m not sure we’ll necessarily do that every time.
 
 
How do you decide how many copies to print of each magazine?
We agree on the issue’s print run with each tastemaker. MYMAG is a premium product in terms of content and quality, so the goal isn’t to sell as many as we can. Also, the brand sponsors we work with love the association with the tastemakers — that is, the ability to reach their most enthusiastic fans — so it’s not a numbers game to them, either.

Sales have been very strong across the three magazines. Fortunately, each MYMAG is about the tastemaker and not a collection of time-sensitive news items that will be stale in 30 days. This allows us not to be panicked about selling each magazine before the end of the month.
 
 
Why aren’t you distributing more widely?
Our job is to get the magazines into the hands of each tastemaker’s fans. Given that we select tastemakers who have existing channels to their audience, we have a very efficient distribution model. We’re having interesting conversations with tastemakers about leveraging their wider networks — tying in with their fashion labels, for example — and brand sponsors are interested in doing in-store sales of the magazines.

We will explore anything as long as it doesn’t involve putting 10 copies on a newsstand, hoping to sell three of them and collecting a tiny fraction of the revenue six months down the road! We ship internationally as well — and we’ll be launching in the United Kingdom within the next few months, so that will expand our visibility.
 

Magazines generally rely on a regular subscription base, in order to make money. Your model seems to be completely the opposite, with each magazine aimed at a completely separate audience of your editor’s fans. Doesn’t this repeated uncertainty bring with it great risks?
Personally, I feel the deeply discounted subscription model is much riskier, as is using that subscription base to try to sell more than 40 ads every month! When we start working with a new tastemaker, we do so on the assumption that they will create just one MYMAG, and we’ll later determine whether an opportunity exists to create another. It would therefore be very hard to sell a subscription.

Before I got into magazine publishing, I was a futures trader, so I always look at the risks — and how best to reduce them — before anything else. Here’s what we’ve done: First, we work with tastemakers who have an existing fan base, so there’s no time or money wasted on trying to figure out who the audience is and how to reach it. Second, we print a limited run of issues — a number, whatever it is, that’s a fraction of that tastemaker’s known fan base, so we don’t have to convert many of them in order to sell out the print run. Third, we’ve specifically avoided creating a business model that’s advertising-dependent, as that route is difficult even in the best of times and would be nearly impossible with a limited-edition product.
 

What are your ambitions and hopes for MYMAG in the future?
We just want to keep working with interesting people to help them connect with their fans. Our goal is to work with as wide a range of tastemakers as possible, from athletes and actors to academics and politicians. It’s also going to be fun to explore how we adapt our approach in other countries. Finally, we’ve been creating an amazing database as fans purchase issues on our Web site, MYMAG.com. That could lead to many interesting opportunities in the future.