Start the Press

A behind-the-scenes look at running a print magazine, and other afflictions.

A still from the movie The French Dispatch

I spent three days on the soggy outskirts of Brisbane for Year 3 camp, sharing a room with three eight-year-olds. On our first morning together I woke up to the sound of one of my tiny flatmates opening and closing every cupboard door she could find. 

‘What are you doing?’ I whispered from my dorm room bed.

‘I’m looking for a fridge,’ she said. ‘Sometimes they hide them in cupboards.’

Stop Start the Press

After two years of publishing and editing Galah, I am not sure - perhaps even less sure than when I started which is saying something - about how to run a profitable, independent print magazine in a way that does not feel like drowning.

This newsletter is my version of looking for the fridges they sometimes hide in cupboards as I try to make sense of the magazine publishing world. I want to open up all the doors, big and small, to try to work out how to run a print magazine. Do you have to have advertising? What is the best way to work with writers and photographers? What do readers actually want to pay for? I want to look at the challenges behind not only publishing and being an editor, but also running a start-up business.

This newsletter is for people who want a behind-the-scenes look at running a magazine, but also, I hope, for anyone who finds themselves running their own start-up. It’s also going to be a home for my personal writing - something that has taken a backseat thanks to Galah.

This is not the Galah shopfront, but rather the messy office out the back littered with dirty coffee cups. If you would like to find out about Galah via the normal shopfront where things look under control (I hope), click here and if you’d like to sign up to the Galah newsletter, where we share news about the magazine and details about the products and events, click here. This ‘Start the Press’ newsletter is a different place altogether.

Time to open some cupboards.

Annabelle

Ps, do let me know if there’s anything in particular you want to read about. Business models/how to pitch/how much does it cost to print etc - the more specific the better. I’ll have an open book policy in this Start the Press world. No question is off limits. Maybe we can work out this magazine/life game together.