Evaluation 3: What media institution might distribute your magazine and why?

 

 

 

I decided that Bauer is the best company to publish my magazine with. I did a lot of research before hand on publishers and found that Bauer was most commonly talked about and seemed very successful around Europe. Bauer has a range of magazine covering numerous genres involving music or even home baking. When constructing my magazine I was always attracted to the magazine 'Q' and this magazine is what gave me a lot of inspiration for my creating. When I found out that Bauer published 'Q', this made much sense to chose Bauer.

As well as Bauer, I wanted to have more knowledge of other magazine publishers so that I wasn't just being narrow minded. I found Warner Group Publications, IPC Media and Blaze Publishing. From research into these 3 in particular, I found IPC in particular was similar to Bauer as it published a wide range of magazines, however not as many as Bauer. The other two contrasted from IPC and Bauer as they are independent company's meaning they are not as widespread. This means that they won't have as much money to spend and therefore are not able to publish big magazines such as 'Q' or 'NME'. This is the main reason why I didn't choose either of the other publishers as I felt in order for my magazine to be successful, it would need a lot of investment.

 

Another reason I decided to choose Bauer was because I found that they sold many more 'acoustic' music magazines than other companies such as IPC Media, which I find is most important as my chosen genre is indie-pop, which is quite a niche market, and knowing Bauer sell these type of magazines gives me hope that my magazine will also be successful.

 

Moreover, I had to think about the type of locations I would want to sell my magazine. I was torn between selling it in supermarkets such as Tesco and Asda or book stores such as WHSmiths. To start with I was very sure of choosing a big, well known supermarket as my logic was that selling them here would give them more recognition, as hundreds of people shop in these type stores everyday for groceries, and may be walking by the magazine stands and see my magazine, whereas not as many go out of there way to go into a book store. However I then thought selling my magazine in a specific place made for magazines and books are obviously appealing to that certain target market. I finally decided that I would go with selling my magazine at WHSmiths because although supermarkets get thriving business all year round, people are more interested in buying their weekly food than buying a magazine. Where as businesses like WHSmiths still get customers all year round, but are specifically after books, magazines or even stationary. Plus when going into WHSmiths, they sell a huge range of magazines with a variety of genres which is why I decided to choose this place.