Are your readers in the church - or outside as well?

17 February, 2011 - 12:39 by Sue the editor
I have just won a prize for my magazine in a competition laid on by the Diocese of Rochester. And at the prize-giving event in Rochester, it was great to network with other editors. Some of the editors, like me, have a wide range of readership. It seems a number of churches have magazines going not just to the congregation but also to local households. For us, we have a tiny print run of 300 and about half of that goes to local non-church households. We delivered free copies a few years ago and then called back to see if they wished to subscribe and a number of people did. However, this is nothing compared to other churches. One editor told me that they deliver to all the 1000 homes in their parishes and for free, financed by advertising and by an annual plea for donations. Delivering to 1000 is impressive as it requires resources to deliver the magazines. As we reach both church and non-church, I aim to make our magazine an interesting read in general, so my winning entry had articles about a Harley Davidson bike ride by one of our congregation, a local Archaeological dig in our parish and also an article about the Open Doors charity for persecuted Christians, amongst others. So God definitely got a mention but at the same time hopefully the magazine could be enjoyed by people who are all at different stages on their spiritual journey. When I was asked to take on the job, I said I'd change from every 2 months to 3 months publication, so we produce quarterly which fits nicely with the seasons. So thankfully, I'm probably not under as much pressure as other editors who have to produce more often. But then, I've also launched our website and co-ordinate our seasonal publicity too. I recently managed to get the Vicar to agree to change from paper folders to photographic 6 x 4 flyers to advertise our seasonal services. This is produced as a JPEG file on a computer and then I take it to Boots photolab on a memory stick (like you take your holiday snaps) and then our flyers are printed as glossy 'holiday snaps'. If you order over 200, it's only 5p each.
criticism ›
Submitted by Sam Willing on 1 March, 2011 - 09:15.
Congratulations on winning the prize Sue. We are near you, in Gillingham, and we have recently distributed our monthly magazine to houses in the road adjacent to the church. We also post large print copies to members that are now in residential care, and standard copies to members who have moved to other parts of the country. We ask for a voluntary donation of 30p per copy, and we do not use advertisers. Any shortfall is met from Church funds as this is seen as outreach.
Submitted by Ian Kiddie on 3 March, 2011 - 16:41.
Well done sue, nice one. Our magazine reaches 500+ in our parish and is a free issue and delivery. The one that supprises me is that I place 30 copies in my local newspaper shop, they all go quickley, to whom I have no idea but are obviousley welcome. Finaces being what they are we recently asked if anyone no longer wished to receive a coppy (hoping to save a little money). The responce was amazing, letters praising the 6 issues a year, donations to support its continuance, and definite support that it was a worthwhile project. I include as much information as I can about the church and local activities.
Submitted by Michael D N Page on 21 March, 2011 - 13:39.
Like "Sue the Editor" we produce 300 copies per month, most of which are delivered by a group of volunteers to houses in our 3 local villages - a few copies go by second class post to more remote destinations. The majority of recipeints are not regular church goers. In addition to church news we now include regular reports from our 2 local Parish Councils, and also offer publicity at no cost our two local village halls and to any of the groups/societies in the area. We charge our recipients £5 per year and this just about covers the production expenses; at the moment we seldom carry any advertising for local busnesses. I like the idea of the glossy fliers and will call into Boots soon. Mike the ed.
Submitted by letham10 on 3 April, 2011 - 01:51.
"In the PICTure" magazine started years ago essentially as a Church magazine but we have for some time advertised, freely, local events on a monthly basis. These events are those that are organised by village clubs and groups. We print 1000 copies in greyscale of 4 doubled-sided x A4 each month and a copy is distributed to every home in the villages of Letham and Dunnichen in Angus. We do charge a fee for an annual advert from commercial enterprises. These adverts can be altered on a monthly basis if required. The fees pay for the printing costs. We must be doing something right because there is a waiting list of enterprises hoping to advertise in the magazine. We are restricted to the number of commercial adverts we can use on any given month. I also produce an Easter card in full colour on 300gms silk card. I am an Honourary Editor which means of course that I do not get paid and neither would I like to be. I deem it a pleasure to produce the magazine and as I am retired it gives me a reason to get up in the morning! The Parish is known as Dunnichen Letham and Kirkden although Dunnichen Church will close this coming August and Kirkden has not been in operation for years leaving just Letham Church. How this will impact on our community? We will just have to wait and see. By distributing to every household was hope to entice the curious to worship. I try and keep the contents light and sometimes even funny (!) and by making it entertaining hope to, as said before, encourage people to come and worship with us.
Submitted by Mr Robert Coombs on 5 April, 2011 - 19:00.
I'm always pleased to read of the success of any of the editors of parish magazines (so well done Sue) as I have been one for 13 years now. It's a constant demand on my time as during all those years I have only had the help of my wife in producing the magazine. We produce 200 36 page copies a month and around three quarters of those go to non church goers. (There are also up to 20 pages of advertising outside of the magazine itself.) The cover price is 50p and a year's subscription is £6.00 delivered by hand or £12.00 if posted. We also rely on advertising to cover our costs - £84 for a full A5 page, £42 half page and £21 for a quarter page - this covers 12 monthly copies. We have a new colour cover every month which I print at home and then staple to the commercially photocopied magazine. The magazine costs us £1.00 a copy to produce this way so we are unable to provide it free to subscribers but do provide free copies to the nursing and retirement homes in the area.
Submitted by letham10 on 8 April, 2011 - 10:04.
Sue, my apologies, I forgot to congratulate you on your fine achievement. Well done.
Submitted by roundaboutedito... on 18 April, 2011 - 21:33.
Well done on your prize. The magazine I look after does 8 parishes, delivered for free to all 6,000 households via a network of volunteers. It is always well received by the church and non church parts of the community. I think we all do a very valuable job, well done everyone.
Submitted by Edwin Mitchell on 27 April, 2011 - 14:50.
Well done Sue, your magazine sounds great. I took over the editorship of my magazine about 18 months ago. I try to get my readers to submit stories etc but in 18 months 2 articles and 2 jokes, 1 of which I couldn't use! My circulation is only 143 copies, we levy £4.80 a year for 12 issues. I have 4 pages of adverts and the rest is church stuff, public information, clubs, events etc.
Submitted by Werburga on 19 May, 2011 - 10:27.
Congratulations Sue. We have a monthly circulation of just over 800, delivered to 5 villages by a small army of volunteers, and some sent by post to far flung corners of the Country. We cover all the church news, but also include reports from WIs, schools, parish councils and local social and sports clubs, all of these sent in by their various representatives. We have 64 pages, 30 of which are adverts, and charge £3.50 for 12 copies. I fill any gaps with the superb articles provided by Parish Pump - sometimes I wish I had more space so that I could include more of them.
Submitted by monogran on 19 May, 2011 - 13:00.
Congratulations all of you. I am filled with admiration and awe at your achievements. I recently joined a small village chapel that seems never to have had a newsletter or magazine before. I decided to start one, but as I have never edited before we are all on a steep learning curve,(a thousand blessings on you Parish Pump for being there.) We have started very modestly by producing just 60 copies a month which covers the congregation and a few extra for anyone who shows an interest. The congregation are very enthusiastic and are pretty good at giving me contributions, albeit of mixed acceptability. So far the church has paid for the photocopying but as I am wanting to print more colour and this will add to the cost we are thinking of asking for donations towards the expense. I would like to branch out into advertising but with such a small readership there probably wouldn't be too much interest. I like the idea of putting free copies in the Village Shop and starting to distribute it around the houses, perhaps starting with just the roads around the church. Thanks for those ideas. Our magazine is fairly light and funny but also thought provoking and with a message for those who wish to see it. It takes me all my time to produce 16 pages each month. The mere thought of producing 36 pages as some of you do, makes me feel thoroughly inadequate. I'm just off to lie down in a darkened room!
Submitted by Sockburn on 11 October, 2012 - 10:17.
Belated congratulations, Sue! We produce 1600 copies a month, varying between 3 and 4 sheets of A4, folded to A5 by our team of 'folders'. They are then hand-delivered to every household in our three villages. The limited abilities of our venerable printer restrict us to monochrome only and photos or very detailed drawings do not reproduce well, so it's often a long search for suitable clip-art for illustrations - or I draw them myself, outlining with fine black pen. Our newsletter is the most important outreach tool that we have, getting in to places where the Rector cannot reach! We have to find a balance between spreading the Good News to the unchurched and giving regular churchgoers what they need, i.e. details of service times. We are currently looking at taking the services off the front page, where they have been since time immemorial, and putting them on an inside page. I feel very strongly that if we are to speak to those who do not come to us, we have to persuade them to read what we say: if the newsletter lands on the doormat with the services on the front page, non-churchgoes might pick it up, think 'Oh, that's just church stuff, nothing interesting in there' and bin it. If wse can get them to open it, they might find articles that are more interesting than they would have expected! Parish Pump is a great source of useful material, especially the children's pages which we use every single month. Keep up the good work!
Submitted by Vivian Jenkins on 1 November, 2012 - 22:24.
We used to have the church details near the front following on from the Rector’s letter (when he organised it and I merely typed it up as laid out by him) but during an interregnum in 1994/5 I was left as muggins, solely responsible for the magazine. I moved the church organisations rearwards and the service times/calendar but still left the Rector’s letter (churchwarden’s piece during the interregnum) on page 3, there are adverts on page 2. This put more general interest items to the front to grab attention, there’s an ‘On Other Pages’ panel at the foot of page 3. The new Rector seemed, indeed still seems, to be happy with this arrangement; and no one else has complained. We also list the Methodist and RC services and events toward the rear. I’d go for moving the church bits, those in the church will look for them while those not in the church may well get there unconsciously via the other articles.
Submitted by John Hincks on 27 October, 2012 - 14:47.
It is fascinating reading all of the above ideas of how to produce and distribute parish magazines. I have been producing The Grapevine in Broadway (in the Cotswolds) for 10 years now and over this time technology has enabled the magazine to improve tremendously. (in my view at least!). When I started we had 3 editors and the adverts were cut out and pasted manually onto the paper. I soon found that using 'Serif PagePlus', an easy to use desktop program, I could set the adverts into a professional looking way from the advertisers copy and then they could be carried forward until needing to be changed. Copy is mainly received via email so only needs to be copied and pasted into the text boxes on the pages. Articles, puzzles, cartoon and jokes from Parish Pump are perfect to fill any spaces. We reduced the size of our adverts a year ago to 12 per A5 page or multiples of this, so saving massive amounts of paper and no advertiser objected or left. We have now settled on 6 sheets of A4 folded to a magazine of 24 pages with the services always on the back cover. We distribute 500 copies a month except January when we are all too busy with Christmas. Last year we delivered 2000 of our Christmas issue but this year we will revert to 500 plus an A6 Christmas card for the non-subscribers. We await the response. Getting interesting articles is always a challenge as I find most people need to be chivvied a few times to put pen to paper, except of course for the traders who are usually only too delighted to have the free publicity of an 'advertorial'. We rent our own 'risograph' photo copier which works out no more expensive than paying commercial rates and we are just about to purchase a stapling and folding machine to save our arthritic wrists. I would love to be able to print in colour on glossy pages which one day will be a real possibility PS I also started the church website: www.stmichaelsbroadway.org