Welcome to the 21st anniversary of ANTIGRAVITY Magazine. Time is arbitrary and existence is but a dream, but it’s still nice to mark these occasions and meditate on how far this little rag has come since the days of Leo McGovern pushing a wagon full of copies around the French Quarter, way back in the summer of 2004. I’m taking this year’s milestone to answer a question I get a lot, which is some form of: We’d like to start our own magazine. What advice do you have? I’ll answer as best I can, in a way that should fit on a single page.
Start with a Team
A magazine such as your ANTIGRAVITY was built to be something between a curated document and a community bulletin board, reflecting the values and interests of many New Orleanians (though not necessarily all). So unless you’re creating a publication that is specifically meant to be an expression of one unique personality, you need many hands to make light work. You will also need multiple perspectives, because even the most eagle-eyed, intelligent editor has blindspots that others can cover. Having a team also means you share the successes and disasters equally—otherwise the psychic load can be unbearable.
Plan for a Hundred Issues
Let’s get a hard truth out of the way: Most people will not care about your publication for at least a dozen issues. In my two-plus decades of experience, I’ve seen a lot of start-ups come and go, and the cycle is almost always the same. First issue: a total banger, everyone loves it. Second issue is a respectable follow-up and comes out on time. Then, as the slog starts to set in, the third issue comes out late because that initial “New Relationship Energy” has worn off and it has dawned on any remaining staff that this is hard work that never actually ends. Fourth issue: There is no fourth issue. So, when planning that first glorious edition, make sure you envision enough content, bank enough stamina, and plot a release schedule that gets you deep into your catalogue. Looking back on, say, the 100th issue of ANTIGRAVITY (way back in 2012), we still had a looong way to go, not just in growing our audience, but in finding our voice. Truthfully, we’re still working on that, 21 years in.
Set Realistic Expectations
It’s better to start small and manageable and build out from there. Figure out what your focus is, and stick to it. You can always add features and expand, which is much better than starting big and flaming out. Keep the page count reasonable, the copies affordable, the fee structure sustainable, the workload manageable. Figure out what you can do better than anyone else in your market, and double down on that. Your baby’s gotta crawl before it can walk.
Build an Infrastructure
Consistency is key, and you’ll want to develop protocols and a style guide for your publication. This is a perpetual work in progress, and you will learn from mistakes as you go—but start early, and stay organized. And when you fuck something up—and you will, this is inevitable—work on a process for acknowledgement and correction. Again, this makes having a team absolutely essential.
Build Friction into Your Production
If you are interested in putting out something good, you’ll want a multi-stage editing process that any piece of content must go through to make it to the final version. Put a lot of eyes on it, and give it as much time as possible to mature. And when you can, sleep on it. There is hardly a better tool for quality control than a fresh day’s perspective. (And nothing spells disaster like a rush job.)
Be Good at Business and Hone Your Craft
I know this is tough for the free-spirit anarcho-artists among us. But a magazine (or any creative outlet designed for public consumption) is 51% talent, 49% shitwork: computer literacy, formatting, inbox management, networking, logistics. Yes, the internet is a sewer these days but there’s still never been an easier time to teach yourself the skills you need to lay out a magazine or edit images. Learn keyboard shortcuts—sounds like a small thing but this can save you hours of time. Be OK at business. You don’t have to be great at it (Gaia knows I’m not), but you can’t be terrible at it. You need to manage finite resources like time, energy, and literal fuel to keep going. And like it or not, you are operating in a market, and being in the media-entertainment world, you’re selling something that people can choose to ignore too easily, so learn salesmanship as well.
There is No Deadline, Only Deadlines
We like to think of deadlines generally as some singular event. But publishing is a pantheistic religion, where we worship not one but many, many deadline-gods. A deadline for a complete draft turns into a deadline for edits and image commissions, a deadline for final layout draft, a deadline for uploading to the printer, which turns into a deadline for getting the papers to the distro team, and so on, forever and ever—if you’re lucky. And as they’re all linked, one deadline derailment can ripple down the line. Meet your deadlines.
Bend Don’t Break
Know which rules to break and which to keep. Rules are in place either through a system of evolution and logic, or because someone said so once. One of these is more important than the other. In that same vein, be consistent. Readers want to know what they’re getting, and they will respect a dependable routine and format. But also don’t be afraid to mix it up, give the design a facelift, try new things. Let your magazine tell you what it wants and where it wants to go. If that sounds crazy to you, just wait until it happens. You’ll see.
Develop Your Instinct and Trust It
If something is not sitting right, listen to that voice. You may eventually override it, but don’t ignore it. Many a night I have lain awake cursing my own inaction when I knew something wasn’t right and it blew up. And many a night I have taken sweet breaths of relief at what felt like the editorial version of pushing a baby stroller out of oncoming traffic.
Be Half Genius, Half Idiot
Be intelligent and witty, but accessible too. If you’re an editor, do your best to be fluent on the subjects of your content, but also “dumb” enough to see it from the casual, under-informed public point of view. Do your best to experience your publication as a reader. In fact, be the first customer. Are you happy with what you see? Would you pick it up if it were sitting amongst a pile of similar papers on your favorite coffee shop counter?
Of course, there’s lots more, hundreds of best practices, tips, and tricks. Save and back up your work constantly, via multiple formats and devices, for one. (As we were wrapping up this issue, Entergy decided to cut power to 100,000 Louisiana residents and for a brief spell I was editing in the dark, via cell phone hotspot.) But should you take the leap and start cranking out your own magazine, these points feel like a good place to start. —Dan Fox
illustration by Laura Frizzell
June 2025 cover by Ben Claassen III
