2. Industry

My magazine is going to be published by Bauer Publishing. They are highly prolific publishers and print the worlds No.1 and 2 best selling magazines at retail. Bauer have a diverse plethora of publications and print over 600 magazines, with a diverse breadth of content.

The first thing you see on the website is the slogan " We Think Popular." which indicates that whilst, I would like to give my magazine a more indie vibe, it must have a relatively mainstream, or 'popular'
feel to it. 

One of  Bauer Publishing's main fashion magazines, and the closest competition to my own magazine in terms of content is 'Grazia'. The Bauer website states that Grazia is: "Brave, bold, innovative", which are all aspects that I hope my own magazine will have, furthermore our magazines share a common AB audience. On the other hand, the Grazia audience is mostly female and older than my own, with the core demographic being "25-45 year old women". This means that it is plausable that Bauer could publish a more indie fashion magazine, aimed at a younger audience as the two publications would not be in direct competiton with each other.

Magazine sales in general have declined in recent times, for example 'Vogue' (a contempory fashion magazine) has seen its sales fall by 2.6% and 'Grazie' has seen drops in sales of 13.4%. To me, this indicates a deterioration in the breadth of people reading fashion magazines and hence a gap in the market for a magazine to break through and target the younger groups in society- something I aim to do with my own magazine.

Regulation for magazines is left to IPSO (Independant Press Standards Organistion) who are "the independent regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK". On their website they claim to "hold newspapers and magazines to account for their actions, protect individual rights, uphold high standards of journalism and help to maintain freedom of expression for the press."

One of the ways in which they do this is to make sure all publications uphold the 'Editors' Code'- which is a set of rules to ensure that any publication has integrity and is not damaging to society in its message. This is important to consider as I do not wish for my magazine to be censored, which can happen if information provided is innacurate, with a recent example of this being The Times' article on international politics sparked by the curruption within FIFA- where false claims were made about certain individuals.

Independent magazine production companies are not too common in the modern market, however in recent times a few have discovered success in niche markets. For example, Kinfolk Magazine is an indie magazine production company whose publication has gone worldwide and been translated into Chinese, Russian, Japanese and a readership of over 55,000. The fact that Kinfolk is independently produced but not independently distributed means that they can create a  "distinct ripple in the publishing world with an aesthetic all its own" (Portland monthly), whilst still being able to create and reach a large audience due to the publisher (Ouur).

Increasingly, it is becoming imperative that magazines exapand into all areas online in order to capture the largest possible audience while maintaining a synergistic brand image and converging back to a central hub. In this case, Vogue's instagram displays competant digital convergence by featuring the magazines iconic 'V' logo as its display picture, furthermore, the magazine converges digitally by featuring a link to the homepage. This not only makes it easy, but encourages readers to head back to Vogue's homepage, thus providing the reader with even more content and also exposing them to more advertising opportunities, which enables Vogue to generate more revenue.