Writing And Publishing Skills
If you are not already a trained journalist or manager, you may need training in some specialist skills. Some areas in which you could train include:
- writing
- editing
- interviewing
- design
- PR
- sales and marketing
- finance
- website design.
The professional bodies run courses on many of these areas and you can get information on them through the contact details given in the resource list, Appendix 2.
Box Number
While it is important to publish contact details for the magazine, so that contributors, advertisers and readers can find you, you may wish to have a box number rather than give a full postal address.
To find out about this, contact your local postal service.
Legal Issues
Copyright and intellectual property rights have already been mentioned earlier (Chapter 20) and, in the UK, copyright is automatically ‘owned’ by the author/creator of an item, unless a specific agreement is made to the contrary, but you may wish to have a statement within the magazine or newsletter re-iterating the copyright and intellectual property rights position of you as the publisher and contributors in their own right.
Other legal issues that you should be aware of include contractual arrangements (what contracts, written or implied, you have with contributors, suppliers, employees and others) and libel, defamation and slander (being careful not to print, imply or say, incorrect facts about people).
Uk Anti-Spam Regulations
It is now a criminal offence to send spam to individuals; spam is defined as unsolicited electronic messages. The new laws came into force in the UK on
11 December 2003 and are: The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. Statutory Instrument (SI) number 2426. Under this law, companies have to get permission from an individual before they can send emails or text messages, but the law does not cover business email addresses. (The anti-spam group ‘Spamhouse’ has criticised the Government for excluding work addresses in this legislation.)