If your magazine is very small, you may be able, or want, to produce it entirely on your own. If you are producing a more substantial publication, or have greater financial resources, you will probably need, or be able to use, the services of professional editorial staff.Editorial staff are responsible for the content of the magazine. There is generally an overall editor, who makes major decisions about content and there may be sub-editors who also work with text and illustrations.

Editorial staff also include writers and photographers who work with the content, rather than the production of the publication.If your magazine is academic, or very specialised, or you wish to give it added credibility, you may choose to have an editorial board. An editorial board is usually composed of people who are prominent in a field relevant to your subject, or who have particular expertise in one or more specialist areas, or who have general experience in publishing. The board is there to support the editorial team, to give opinions on relevant matters and to lend authority to the publication.If you do not have an editorial board, you may still wish to have some kind of review procedure – for example, sending articles on specialist topics to experts to ‘vet’.

This gives a second opinion – particularly useful where you may not have a good depth of knowledge yourself on a particular topic – and can also protect the editor from criticism for publishing contentious or inadvertently inaccurate material.There is a range of activities that come into editorial work and some of the most important are considered below.

Researching

Depending on your subject matter, you may need to undertake research into various aspects, for example:

• whom to invite to contribute
• what has previously been published on a subject
• readership surveys

It is important to brief researchers well, so they can focus on exactly what is needed. There are many sources of information on conducting research, and readership surveys are a specialised form of research with which you would be well advised to seek professional help (see Appendix 4).

Collating Information

If you can find people willing to take on the task voluntarily, or if you can afford to pay them to do so, you can have correspondents or column editors, whose responsibility it is to source and collate material for particular sections of the magazine. Some example of these are:

• diary editors
• book review editors
• news editors

By giving responsibility for these areas to different people, it spreads the editorial load and provides a variety of inputs and ideas.

Commissioning

This is the process of inviting contributions, or inviting specific people to provide defined items for publication. Material may be commissioned from people on a one-off basis, or you may have regular contributors, such as freelance writers or photographers, who produce items on a more frequent basis.

When you commission items, you should specify the following:

• the subject
• if text, the style and length of contribution you require
• if photographs or illustrations, the style and format you require
• the date by which material is required
• any fees or expenses that will be payable
• any travelling that might be required
• any other requirements

This subject is covered in more depth in Chapter 7 ‘Getting Contributions’.

Writing

It is usual for some material in magazines to be written by the editorial staff themselves and, if your magazine is very small, you may write most – or even all – of the material yourself. For other material, you should be able to get ‘free’ contributions in return for the publicity that is gained by the contributors. If you are publishing a commercial magazine, if you do not have your own in-house writers, you may commission freelance journalists to write for you. It is usual to have a column headed ‘Editorial’ in many magazines, and this is usually comments made by the overall editor, at the beginning of each issue, regarding current or topical issues.

Some issues to consider in relation to writing are:

• style of writing
• length of items
• variety of contributors

There is more information on writing skills in Chapter 8.