10 Things I’ve Learned about Magazine Publishing from Dez Skinn

I’ve never met Derek “Dez” Skinn in person, which – if nothing else – remains a very good reason for him rejecting my somewhat fanboy-ish attempt (a few years back) to “connect” with him through LinkedIn. (To his credit, though, he took the time to explain his reasoning.) Given that I’m “of a certain age”, the Yorkshire-born British comic and magazine editor, and author, has been a not-insignificant influence on my life—specifically through publications he’d created such as Starburst, Doctor Who Weekly, and Warrior. 

To some, he’s “Britain’s Stan Lee” – though sadly without the cameos in (and income from) Hollywood Blockbusters. From various interviews and his own website, however, he’s proved (at least to me) to be an invaluable source of advice and information about the “do’s and don’ts” of periodical publishing—whether as a contributor, editor, or publisher.

Here are my 10, Skinn-inspired “rules”:

1. You should NEVER produce similar, consecutive covers. You should always vary the colour schemes and the images to make it abundantly clear – to even regular, loyal readers – that this is a new issue which people need to pick up. 
2. Keep a professional distance. It can be “a tricky balancing act” if you’re friends with the editor, or vice-versa. While I’ve managed to pick up quite a lot of work from a few friends over the years, a certain professional distance needs to be maintained. 
3. Never boast about what you’re GOING to do in case anything goes wrong. Stay quiet until it happens. Oh, Lordy! That’s been one lesson learned the hard way on several occasions! It can be difficult, especially when you’re excited about something, but it’s always best to keep quiet until things actually work out for you.
4. Structure is important in any publication. For example, Skinn has pointed out that, if you have two long and weighty features in a publication, they should never be run consecutively. “Dot-dash-dot-dash-dot-dash-dot. Short-long-short-long-short-long-short.” Even if relatively few people read a publication from cover to cover, having a good structure which clearly delineates the content is really useful when it comes to readers finding their way around.
5. “I have this theory that if you can’t read a magazine’s title from across the road, there’s something wrong with it.” Ah yes: I remember having an argument with a now successful SF author – this was many years ago, when the long-running Science Fiction/Fantasy Fiction magazine Interzone had just changed publisher, and the new team were clearly experimenting with different covers redesigns. The author insisted that the new issue had a brilliant cover: I disagreed: while it was a beautiful cover illustration, the masthead and body-text on it just didn’t stand out—as a cover I felt it was pretty much unreadable from more than three feet away, and certainly didn’t help the magazine “stand out” on the newsstand. The conversation did get a bit heated, if I remember rightly, but then it moved on to other things and so calmed down. A couple of months later, though, I felt vindicated: the next issue of Interzone presented a far bolder and more easily readable masthead. Long story short: ensuring you have an easily recognised (not necessarily read) logo and an attractive cover are vital to grab readers’ attention, pique their interest, stoke their desire, and persuade them to act—by picking up a copy of your magazine. Not least because every other publication on the newsstands – including your rivals – will be aiming to do the same thing! 
6. “If you can get the wholesale trade behind you, they will have copies to supply the retail (newsagent) trade, so they’ll have a visible presence on the stands.” This underlines the importance – useful if you’re an editor, vital if you’re a publisher – of knowing how the British consumer magazine market actually works. Otherwise, no matter how good your magazine is, you’re not going to get it “out there” on the shelves—unless, as a specialist title, you can somehow devise an alternative route to your readers. 
7. Know the limits of your tools: good advice for any creative type, I suppose, but especially in publishing. Have you ever wondered why, in most old British weekly boys and girls “papers”, characters’ dialogue invariably ended with an exclamation mark? Well, most of the time, these comics were printed letterpress on cheap newsprint paper—meaning that fine lines would either blob out or vanish completely. Therefore, an exclamation mark had a better chance of surviving than a full stop. (This printing quality also meant that there was an equal risk of the gaps between letters filling in, which was why two words – FLICK and CLINT – were absolutely forbidden—just in case the “L” and the “I” took on the appearance of the letter “U”.) 
8. Accept something as a means to an end. I suppose Dez Skinn really first came to my attention with the launch of Doctor Who Weekly, which was unusual for Marvel UK at the time given that the majority of its content was original, not American reprints! Now, it has to be said that, during his career, Skinn has had to deal with more than his fair share of reprinted material – from his earliest days with Fleetway/IPC (at a time when management believed comics were only read by children for at most five-to-seven years tops, which meant strips could be easily recycled every five-to-seven years) to the British edition of MAD magazine and Marvel comics which reformatted material originated in America. Reading more about the man, it’s clear that he viewed reprints as a necessary means to an end: specifically, generating the cash to pay for new ideas and new work. 
9. “Many strong characters have survived poor script, or poor art, or both at the same time. If the character’s right, you’re halfway there.” Especially in comics, but arguably equally applicable to any narrative writing, the most important thing you need is a strong character. Obviously, it helps to also have great writing and (in comics) great illustrations, but they’re not – it might surprise you – absolutely vital.
10. “Your first [issue] is your worst.” Oh, blimey, yes. Even if you think it’s brilliant, the more you work on a publication, the better it should become, as you realise what works and what doesn’t, build on the former, and drop the latter. Actually, at the risk of being impertinent, I’d probably adapt Skinn’s comment slightly: personally, I think “Your first [issue] should be your worst.” Because, of course, you should always be aiming to make something better.