Welcome to our biggest magazine yet – 80 pages and still counting…
In order to begin the process of building our next magazine we start off with 64 pages. Our regular advertisers are already booked in, together with space for our regular features, articles, crossword, quiz and so on.
We then add newcomers and in order to maintain the integrity of our ethos – that we are a feature based community magazine funded entirely from our own advertisers – we choose to adhere to a ratio of approximately 65% adverts to 35% features and articles.
That’s been a bit of a battle this time as we have had 3 new advertisers each wanting a double page spread: Red Band, Loughborough Endowed Schools and East Midland Antiques. On top of this we have had a further 15 newcomers as well as returners with seasonal adverts – Charnwood Brewery, Birstall Garden Centre and Independent Traveller. By the time we had paused for breath, sometime on the Monday before the deadline, we were up to a total of 80 pages. Our previous record was with the same edition last year at 72 pages.
Our stalwart printers, Automedia of Loughborough, never quite know what’s coming and I am sure they sit there biting their nails on deadline day waiting for our copy. At 80 pages we are now at the capacity of their stitching and folding equipment and if we get any bigger they will have to assemble the magazine in two parts, bringing them together at the end.
When we started out on this amazing journey more than 6 years ago, we never imagined we would grow this big, that we’d be giving our printer such a challenge. Back then we struggled to fill 32 pages, 18 months later we were filling 48, a year later 64, then 72 and now 80. Add to this how many copies we have printed which is now 33,000 magazines delivered to different addresses over two months and you can perhaps see the measure of our growth. And the reason, we believe, is because we strive to create the very best little magazine in Charnwood – never mind the width then, its all to do with the quality!
Steve & Mary Johns
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