How To Start A Literary Magazine

Written By Kolby Granville
 
From The Presentation
 

*** This post is from my 2024 Presentation. I redid the presentations in 2025 and recorded them. You can find them here and here. ~Kolby

How To Start A Literary Magazine

This last weekend I did an hour long presentation at Phoenix Fan Fusion on “How To Start A Literary Magazine.” I thought I would share the outline and links from my presentation in case anyone else finds it useful. I’m by no means saying that mine is the only way this can be done. If I have learned nothing, it’s that there are lots of different ways to approach this, but here is my take on it as a way to add perspective to the discussion.

Also, if you find typos or errors in my outline below (you will), just pretend you don’t see them. Honestly, I just wanted to get the information out to others, but this is all time that is taken away keeping me from running the magazine… so, you know, just be grateful for what I’ve included.

Kolby Granville - After Dinner Conversation Editor-In-Chief

Presentation Outline

The Modern Guide to Starting a Literary Magazine

Presented by:  Kolby @ After Dinner Conversation

www.afterdinnerconversation.com 

  1. Tiers of Literary Magazine

    1. Entry Level Blog (Prose And Pose)

    2. Publish Regularly On a Website (evergreen Review)

    3. Publish Digital on Amazon

      1. Or Draft2Digital for all other platforms.

    4. Create a Substack (Or Some Other Paid Platform) (After Dinner Conversation)

      1. Paid (Readers pay $5/Month or Unpaid)

        1. Can set up a paywall to read more.

      2. Free way to keep an email list

    5. Create a Zine

      1. Wasted Ink Zine Store

    6. Create a Digital Download Magazine To Sell On Website

      1. Paid Subscription Base (After Dinner Example)

    7. Create a Print Magazine

      1. Tier One – Print On Demand

        1. Amazon (Bookshop.org)

        2. Draft2Digital.com

      2. Tier Two – Do Print Runs (250+ Copies)

        1. Bookmobile (Mixam)

      3. Tier Three – Distribution in Indie Bookstores

        1. Asterism

        2. Or, just call them one at a time to ask

      4. Tier Four – Distribution with Distributor

        1. Publishers Distribution Group

          1. 2,000 prints, a horrible deal for you…

            1. Distributor takes a huge cut, and you only break even if all the stores sell out.

          2. Support magazine with advertising? (The Cosmo Model)

    8. Alt:  Content Distribution Apps

      1. Zinio (After Dinner loses money w/them, but it gets us into library apps)

      2. Readly (After Dinner make money with them)

      3. Magster (Not Recommended)

      4. Issuu (More for fancy digital magazines, we lost money on them)

      5. Flipster/EBSCO (Horrible website/interface, but gets you in library locations)

      6. Exact Editions (Good platform for tracking and email your digital subscribers and a fairly turnkey way to it, but not great for getting new subscribers)

      7. Protagonist.app (New kid o the block, basically TikTok for short stories)

  2. How Do You Actually Create the Magazine?

    1. Let People Know You Are Accepting Submissions

      1. Submittable

      2. Submission Grinder

      3. Poets and Writers Magazine

      4. Duotrope

      5. Chillsubs

      6. Social Media Groups

    2. Do I Pay My Writers?

      1. Most Do Not (All Lit Mag Listing)

      2. Some pay $50 or less/author print copies

      3. The Very Best Pay $100-$500

    3. How Do I Collect Submissions

      1. Submittable (Charges $$$$)

      2. Google Forms

      3. Elfsight.com (Add On)

      4. Via Email

      5. Snail Mail (Really?!?!)

    4. Read The Submissions

      1. Get volunteer readers?

    5. Select What You Are Going to Publish

      1. Send them a contract

    6. Pay them?

    7. Get An ISSN Number? (Different than an ISBN #)

    8. Create The Magazine Interior

      1. Create in anything, save as a .pdf or templates

      2. We use Word

      3. Fancy people use Adobe InDesign

      4. Vellum (Mac Only)

      5. Atticus (PC)

    9. Whatever you use, have a proof reading checklist.

      1. Use a copy editor!

      2. Upload where you want it sold (if applicable)

    10. Create Magazine Covers

      1. Photoshop or other photo software

      2. Save as .pdf

      3. Sizing Depends on Size and # of Pages (Amazon Calculator)

    11. Order a Proof

    12. Order Copies to ship to people

      1. Or Do Authors Copies w/Amazon POD

    13. Get Book Reviews

    14. Send out Advance Reader Copies

      1. Work with paid services to find reviewers?

        1. Paid to find you readers for the ARC

        2. NOT paid reviewers…

    15. Amazon/Goodreads/Etc

    16. Do it again next month/quarter/year.

  3.  How Do You Get Paid?

    1. Mostly, you don’t…

      1. Example From Big Publisher Lawsuit

        1. 58,000 Titles Published

          1. 90% sold less than 2,000 copies

          2. 50% sold less than 12 copies

    2. Straight Genre Magazines Can Make Money

      1. Romance/Mystery/Science Fiction/Fantasy

    3. If you want to get paid…

      1. Create a bank account

        1. Create LLC, Sole Proprietorship, Nonprofit

          1. For Sole Prop, you just open the bank under your own name with a DBA (“Doing Business As”)

        2. Set up Paypal, Venmo, or other payment platform

        3. Set up Stripe Payments tied into Squarespace for our website payments

      2. Sell via your website, or other platforms (Loads of these to pick from)

        1. Squarespace (This is what we use)

        2. Wix

        3. Shopify

        4. Square

        5. Wordpress (with payment plugins)

        6. Substack

        7. Sell Via Amazon/Draft2Digital or Other Platforms

    4. How Do You Track Money

      1. Accounting Software (Quickbooks Online)

      2. Excel (or Google Sheets) works fine to when starting out.

  4. How Do People Find Your Magazine/Website?

    1. SEO

    2. Social Media (Taco Bell Quarterly)

      1. Follow/Unfollow/DM’s

    3. Bookfunnel.com for free samples to get readers

      1. Our Website Links

    4. Email Distribution Lists

      1. Mailchimp (There are loads of different email list companies)

      2. Squarespace (This is what we use)

    5. Buy Ads

      1. Facebook Ads (Worth it if you have a series to sell)

      2. Google Ads (Probably not worth it)

        1. If you are a nonprofit, can get Google Ad Grants

      3. Amazon Ads (Worth it if you have a series to sell)

    6. The “I’ll post on my social media page/to my list” for a fee all suck.

      1. https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/ isn’t bad…

  5. Other Useful Website

    1. CLMP.org (Professional Organization, Worth Joining)

    2. Zapier.com (Action Automation)

    3. Shutterstock (Purchase Photo Rights)

    4. Alliance of Independent Authors

    5. Kindlepreneur (https://kindlepreneur.com/secret-vip-page)

    6. Publisherrocket (https://publisherrocket.com/)

    7. IngramSpark (Used to be more popular, we never used it, but people like it)

  6.  The Secret Is, There Is No Secret…  It’s Just Work.

I hope this information helped. You can always email me at editor@afterdinnerconversation.com if you have questions. Kolby

Kolby Granville

Founder and editor of “After Dinner Conversation”

https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com
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