The biggest step of all is an idea. What aspiring thoughts have you had that you think the world would love to hear? For people like us, it is pretty simple, we want to save the animals. This is a great start, however, to ensure longevity, you must have a theme, a look or a concept that your magazine publication will have. It is essential that you create this idea in your mind, so that every-time you publish your next great piece it is in line with all the rest that you done. If you keep on chopping and changing, it can confuse your reader and all of a sudden you have lost everyone that you have worked so hard to get.
Once again, don't confuse things, there is an old saying in marketing 101 'Keep It Simple Stupid' or KISS. Nothing could be further from the truth. Once again, for us it is pretty simple. Think of a few key words and picture what goes with this word. For example, we are saving the animals, so what do you think goes with this - Love, Peace, Compassion. There you go, you have just got yourself a theme and idea, you are ready to get pumping.
Editor-At-Large Laura Hooper Beck decided she needed to make a zine after being inspired by others and recognizing a niche waiting to be filled. Beck recently launched Fat Zine!, which she says cost her about $76 from start to finish, and is paying that amount back with the proceeds of her zine sold online and at the recent San Francisco Zine Fest. “There just isn't that much stuff out there that's body positive for women. I wanted to make something that said, ‘hey, it's okay if you're not skinny, or it's okay if you are—whatever!’ and I did it with a fat-positive bend because hardly anything is,” said Beck. “I want to open up that dialogue more. Plus, I love working with glitter, and my zine has a lot of it.”
Here is a great link to get you thinking about what you need to do. The site is called Micro Publishing. They have very helpful hints and tips on how to get up and running.
Once you have got yourself ready to go, and have done all the fun layouts and articles the next step you will need to do is convert your magazine to a PDF file. There are a number of free programs that can do this for you, as well as some word processing software that can convert files to PDF format, such as Zoho and Open Office. Both wordprocessing packages have their advantages and disadvantages however. Alternatively the magazine can be completely created with desktop publishing software which should also be able to save the document as a PDF file.
Sign up to your preferred magazine hosting website. It can pay to check out a number of these sites because the free options can offer different levels of service. A basic option may only allow you to upload the PDF file without other alternatives such as allowing readers to download the magazine. Different websites also have different levels of advertising that will be presented to your readers.
Now you have to share your voice with the world. The best, easiest and cheapest way to do this is via the big 2 - Facebook and Twitter. Get yourself known amongst the Vegan community. Target those pages that have a large, dedicated following and keep on plugging your work.
We hope that this information has helped. If you have any questions, please let us know - we would love to help spread the beautiful Vegan message to the world.
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