We are far more than just a design and printing company. As active CAMRA members, involved in the organisation at local and national level, we understand and appreciate the role of volunteers. We are proud to offer top quality support to our editors.
There are a number of things to consider when launching a new pub magazine
Volunteers
Do you have members of your branch who can help you? Volunteers like to know the specific roles you are asking for:
- Writing articles and content such as pub and brewery news
- Proof reading
- Taking good quality photographs
- Distributing flyers/rate-card and magazines
- Collating adverts and sending invoices
Advertisers
Do you have enough advertisers to make the magazine viable? We will work with you to carry out market research in order to find out before you commit to publishing. We will design a flyer to help with this, which you can distribute to pubs, breweries and local businesses. Many people find selling advertising in branch magazines the most daunting task in magazine production – We help with this.
Images
The importance of having good quality photos cannot be over-stated. It is much better to have fewer larger photos than lots of small thumbnails that no one can see. Be wary of using images from the web – seek permission, check copyright and image size. Most images from the web are going to be far too small for print.
Design
Think about layout and design. We can help you choose the right magazine size, style, typeface and colour scheme. We have a list of style guidelines that you can use to ensure that your magazine is consistent and looks professional. We appreciate that your magazine may be read in dimly lit pubs, so text legibility is important.
Content
Remember your audience. Content is king, so a range of articles that appeal to different audiences is what is needed. Encourage people to write in and share their thoughts even if they are somewhat controversial. Part of our service is to provide you with news, features and content that you can choose to use.
We recommend that you read the editorial and legal guidelines produced by CAMRA for magazine editors.
Website
When you sign up to our service, we will build a dedicated website for your magazine at no extra cost. The site will contain digital issues for download, forms for advertisers to make enquiries and for contributors to send news as well as an EXTRA page for additional content that enhances the print version of your magazine.
Things to avoid
The magazine judging criteria produced by CAMRA’s Communications Committee contains lots of good advice. This is a list of things we would suggest you avoid.
- Lists of pubs offering discounts or Locale
- Boring inward looking features that only appeal to members
- Too many photos of the same people presenting certificates – though pictures of those receiving them are great
- Abbreviations – use Good Beer Guide not GBG
- Membership forms – use promotional material from CAMRA that directs readers to camra.org.uk/join
- Too many ‘what we did on our holidays’ features
If you have a question, then get in touch.