Each issue, we chat to some magazine pros about what’s going on in their world. This time we thought we’d have a little fun with it, and got Peter’s granddaughter, Robin – at Grub Street on work experience – to flip it around and give him a good grilling.
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RSH: What things do you think future magazine publishers need to know before joining the industry?
PH: I think the first one is: magazines are not a good way to become wealthy. People made a lot of money in magazines through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. But digital has changed all sorts of things. People don’t have to buy a magazine because they can read stuff for free. Their attention has been fragmented, and there is all sorts of stuff that takes the attention away from reading magazines. Sales have fallen pretty much across the board. My advice: if you want to make a magazine, don’t think of it as a way of making money. Think of it as a way of making a difference, or of bringing together a community. It’s a way to communicate. So if your primary aim is to communicate, go for it. If your primary aim is to get rich, do something else.
RSH: How complicated is the process of starting your own independent magazine?
PH: On one level, it’s not complicated at all. Because so many people that start their own magazine, have been thinking about it for a really long time. So they kinda know exactly what they want to do. They’ve written half the stories in their head, they know who they want the magazine to go to. If it’s a passion project, if it’s something that you really care about, and you really want to do, then I don’t think that part’s complicated. The complicated part, for me, is all the ‘back office’ stuff, the mechanics if you like – the selling, the marketing, the advertising sales, the subscriptions.
RSH: Would you say then that selling is the hardest part of having your own magazine?
PH: 100%. Because if you make a magazine, and you’re the only one reading it, what’s the point? You might get it out of the box, and it looks lovely, and it reads well, and you think, yeah, that’s what I wanted to do. But then you’ve got 1,000 copies of a magazine sitting in boxes in your house.
“If you want to make a magazine, don’t think of it as a way of making money.”
RSH: Do you think all magazines in the future will be digital?
PH: Absolutely, totally not. For a bunch of reasons. So the big one is that eventually people just get fed up with looking at screens. Yes, even you and your generation who never seems to tire of them. During the pandemic, people got so fed up looking at screens, that they started reading magazines again, and subscriptions went crazy. Also, people your age and younger aren’t regularly exposed to print magazines. And – I’ve seen it with you, I’ve watched you do it – you get a magazine and it’s almost like, ‘Wow, this is really different. This is really interesting. I don’t have to keep swiping or scrolling. It doesn’t change all the time and it doesn’t move, so I can find what I was looking for’. Print lets you do different things than digital, and digital does things that print can’t. The other reason is: people trust print. There is so much shite on the internet.
RSH: So what will print magazines be like in the future then?
PH: Will print be as big as it was? No, probably not. Will people publish magazines as frequently as they do now? No, probably not. But I think they’ll make them better. People will start looking at them as a luxury item – not in the sense of a Louis Vuitton handbag, but as a nice little treat. You can sit and read it and no one’s going to interrupt you. People also like just buying a magazine, reading it and putting it on the shelf – there’s an aesthetic there, right? You understand the aesthetic better than I do. That print aesthetic is really important to people who want to think of themselves as more rounded.
RSH: Why should I or any young person want to work in the magazine industry?
PH: It depends whether you care about money. You’ll make more as a train driver than a magazine editor in most places. But for a train driver, their scope of travel is fairly limited, whereas I’ve travelled all over the world in magazine publishing. I’ve met some incredible people from those who sit in the House of Lords to those ones selling magazines in independent shops. Magazines also give you space to be challenged to be the most creative person that you can possibly be. You should work in magazines if you want to make a difference. There’s an LGBTQ+ magazine called Somewhere for Us that helps members of that community feel seen, like they belong to a community. Another way to make a difference could be publishing a magazine that helps people to do their jobs better. Finally, it’s cool as fuck. You get to say, “I actually made that.”
RSH: What do you like about working in magazines?
PH: Terri White, who was the editor-in-chief of Empire magazine for years, used to say that being an editor was like being the leader of a gang. And your job was to keep the gang together, and get them excited about what you do. Your gang carries your magazine on the bus. And that is a huge part of it. It’s pure ego, but in a nice way, because it’s about community. Sometimes you’re at the centre of that community, sometimes you’re at the side, just seeing what’s going on. But you feel part of something. And that is 100 percent why I think working in magazines is the best business in the world.
RSH: And how was it being the person getting interviewed for a change, rather than the one interviewing?
PH: 100 percent awkward. There are two reasons I hate it. One is because I want to ask questions back to the person that’s interviewing me. But the other one is, when I’m interviewed, I feel like I’ve talked too much. I’m listening to myself thinking, ‘Okay Peter, shut up now’. So I’m going to shut up now.