An important aspect of magazine production is how to dispatch copies to your readers. If your circulation is very small and very local you may be able to hand copies to people personally, put them through letter-boxes or give them out at meetings. Otherwise you will have to find different methods of distribution. Some options are considered below.

Methods Of Distribution

Post Out In Bulk

You can do this yourself or you can take on additional helpers to handle the dispatch. For small numbers you can just put stamps on and post them; for larger numbers you can frank envelopes, and for even larger quantities your post office will be able to frank them for you – and may also collect from you, although they will usually want pre-payment or for you to establish a regular account with them. In addition to standard postal services, there are many less expensive options to consider. Bulk mailings can save money, carrier services are useful for large quantities to single addresses and there are some services that are, strangely, cheaper if you can get your copies to countries overseas to distribute from there. It is well worth exploring options before making a final choice.

Ask Your Printer To Dispatch It

If you have printers producing your magazine, they may well be able to put copies in envelopes, or ‘polybags’, together with any inserts you may have to accompany them – advertisements or your own additional information. They will probably be able to purchase supplies of envelopes or polybags in bulk at better rates than you can. If you take this option, you will have to decide whether to let them have your mailing list to print recipients’ names and addresses from, or supply them with pre-printed labels each time an issue is sent out.

Ask A Specialist Mailing House To Dispatch It

Although it involves another organisation handling the magazine, it may be more economical for a specialist mailing house to handle the distribution for you. Your printer can send it to them direct and may even have their own links with a distribution service you can use.

Send Bulk Supplies To Other Bodies To Distribute For You

Another useful way of circulating your magazine is to send copies to other organisations with access to readers; for example, overseas organisations working in the same field, large companies or networking groups. In this way you can save on the mailing costs you would incur if you sent each copy directly to individual readers.

Use Electronic Means

Whether or not your magazine is produced initially as an e-zine, you may want to circulate some electronic copies of it. You can do this as direct email attachments to named recipients, or you can email or send a disk or CD Rom to another organisation to print out at their location. If you choose the latter of these, you will need to consider having a licence agreement with this organisation in relation to their reproducing the magazine. And, if it is reproduced elsewhere, you will also need to consider how, if at all, you ensure quality standards when the control of reproduction is out of your hands.

Free Copies

It is worth remembering that you will probably need to give away some copies of your magazine free and to allow for this in your costings and print runs. Some reasons for giving free copies are the following:

• Press/media copies. You can send copies to selected publications or other media for information and to alert them to possible news stories relating to the magazine.
• Library copies. You can send copies to selected libraries for reference.
• Review copies. You can send copies to relevant people/organisations for review. It is useful to send the Library Association copies for inclusion in its reviews of new publications.
• Exhibition copies. You can give copies to visitors if you have a stand at exhibitions, although you might want to make some charge, say a 50% reduction in the cover price, if you do this in large quantities.
• Talks/workshops copies. You might want to give copies to people who attend talks you do or workshops run by yourself, or third parties, on subjects relevant to the field covered by your magazine.
• Contributors’ copies. You will need copies to send to people who have contributed. Usually a single copy will be sufficient, but some people will want more and you can decide how many you can afford to give away. You will also need to decide what size of contribution merits a free copy.
• Advertisers’ copies. You will need copies to send to anyone placing a substantial advertisement with you – these are called ‘Voucher Copies’. If someone places only an events listing or a small classified advertisement, it is unlikely to be economical for you to give them a free copy in return.

 

Remember to distribute copies in good time and to keep to your stated publication dates unless there is an exceptional reason for not doing so. And if you have spare copies left over, it is useful to use them for publicity purposes by giving them away free, rather than having them take up space and become out of date.