Monday, August 7, 2017

Why occult magazines fail (or Why are there not more occult magazines published)

Here is a short laundry list of problems that all occult themed magazines and journals face:  

1) Lack of sales
2) Lack of contributors
3) Baseline operating costs
4) Lack of advertisers
5) Piracy

Basically, an occult themed magazine is a deep money and labor pit which, more times than not, end up costing the publisher far more than what they are getting back. And these problems have been around since at least the 80s small press market. I can't tell you the number of times I had conversations with local zine publishers during my time as an interested observer that boiled down to this laundry list.

Some occult themed small press magazines from the 90s.
Over half of these were published from someone's dining room table.
[Please note that number five only showed up in the last decade, but would have totally existed earlier if the internet would have been a bigger presence in the 80s and 90s.]

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