Publishing 101

I’ve always had a passion for writing and publishing. There’s something about seeing your hard work nicely designed and ready for distribution. It’s instant gratification.

I meet so many people who tell me they have an idea for a magazine, or a book. If people knew how the business works, they would quickly be discouraged. I became a publishing expert after leaving our big time publishers (post Ozzy Osbourne lawsuit) and opting to go direct with an international distributor. With the publisher, we were able to come out on an established magazine's BIPAD number—one owned by the publishers since the early 1960s, formerly Movie Mirror magazine. This BIPAD number is now used for specialty issues like Metal Maniacs.

What is a BIPAD number? Within the Universal Product Code that is applied to all supermarket products (including magazine covers) and used for retail scanning/data-capturing purposes, each newsstand-distributed magazine is assigned a five-digit BIPAD number. The BIPAD is used for purposes of distribution, billing and credits for unsold copies, or returns. Returns is the big issue.

With that established BIPAD number, we were pre-approved for shelf placement. We simply handed the finished product to our publisher, and voila, like magic we were in every newsstand and magazine rack in the United States, Canada and abroad.

Acting as independent publishers, we were assigned a new BIPAD number, as all new magazines are. That meant we had to be authorized to be on any shelf, from the magazine stand to the supermarket. One person makes this decision. In the case of supermarkets, it’s the same person that says yes to everything from a brand of lettuce to a new soft drink. There are new and eager magazine publishers lining up for authorization. Unfortunately, the shelves are quite small, and very few magazines get placement. Unless of course your Hugh Hefner and you’ve just come out with a new magazine. Hugh can go the pay for placement route, which can cost a fortune.

So what happens when your print run is 100,000 (a minimum requirement before a major distributor will even think of signing you up) and you only have authorization for a third of those magazines? They get shredded. It’s an awful process to watch. I actually went from warehouse to warehouse, from Southern California to Northern California, just to see what was happening. I watched our beautiful glossy magazines going through the shredder. All that’s left is that BIPAD number, which is torn off and sent back to the warehouse to be counted.

Then there’s the returns. Even the stores that do authorize you, the few mom and pop’s that are willing to take your magazine, don’t sell all of them so they are picked up and brought back to the warehouse. More BIPAD numbers are torn off and counted. More magazines shredded equals more of our investor's money shredded! That's the bottom line.

I haven't given up on publishing, but I will never again go the mainstream, supermarket, drug-store, magazine stand route. Nor will I ever go with a publisher - they take more than half of anything you own. There is a better way. Coming next post.