Magazine publishing is still one of the fastest growing industries in the country. More people get into this business, as it becomes a more popular way to get news and information. Magazines are available to fill just about every niche, and you can start your own, too. Here are some ways to begin a magazine without having to put up with a lot of headaches in the process.

1. Find your market

There are a lot of magazines out there, and many of them may look as though they already address your audience. So you’re going to have to take a close look and find a market that’s not already addressed. Research your readers not just for their demographic makeup, but to determine what they want to see in magazine articles, too. Are there particular products you know are lacking in your particular market and that you know you could provide? If possible, do some market research and find people that you can feature in your magazine that other people will be interested in reading about.

2. Find a columnist with name recognition

Now, it may not be true that a famous columnist is going to want to write for a little start-up magazine (after all, it’s not likely that you’re going to be able to pay big bucks to that columnist, at least at first). However, it just may be that this columnist is willing to give you, a newbie magazine publisher, a break. If you can find somebody who’s an expert in his or her field and can give your magazine a good kick in the butt its first issue out, try giving them a call and seeing if they’ll do a column for you. You may just have some success.

3. Content is king

Bottom line, if you don’t have good content, you don’t have anything. You can have all the name recognition you want with the particular columnist you choose, you can have good products to sell in your ads, but if you don’t have good content in the rest of your magazine, you’re going to fail.

When you aren’t clear, you can make poor decisions that won’t line up with your goals. For instance, many authors have a goal of making a lot of money, but they won’t consider self publishing. The fact is that unless you can immediately sell on the level of an Oprah’s Book Club selection or a James Patterson or a Dan Brown, it’s going to take a very long time before your royalties add up to much. When you self publish you take on risk, but you stand to gain much more because you get to keep all the profits (unless your agreement with the publishing company you use is a royalties-based one). Another strong reason to self publish: you can use your first book to build your platform for a bigger deal with a traditional publishing house in the future. Again, you can choose the self publishing deal that’s right for you. A print on demand company such as Xlibris charges just $500 for a basic package where you can get your book produced and copies made as they are ordered–so no inventory. Of course, when you pay more, you get more: better design, distribution services, maybe even some marketing help.

Once you understand what you want out of your book, you’ll not only know how much you’re willing to spend, you’ll also know better how to spend it. You can spend it smart or you can spend it dumb. Many writers spend it dumbly because they don’t know what they want. If you’re spending money on educating yourself about publishing, improving your writing skills, hiring a good editor or book consultant, and marketing that will help you reach your specific, targeted reader, that’s all smart money. You will get more out of those dollars than if you had never spent it at all. You are investing in your writing career. But if you spend money because someone told you this is “the only way you’ll ever get this book published” (and you haven’t researched any other ways), or buy advertising simply because it’s where other books are advertised, or go to writer’s conferences with no clear plan of what you want out of them, or pay agents “reader fees”, or pay editors whose work you don’t know or whose references you haven’t checked, that’s dumb money. You’ll put those dollars out there and see little or no return.