I met today with Shi Jian (史建), writer and critic, and knowledgeable person all around. Of course, I showed him UNIT to hear his thoughts.

Basically he was positive. But he said it takes from 2 to 3 years to make a deep impression in China, so patience and stamina are critical.

But more important, he provided a lot of precious info on publishing a magazine in China. For anyone who’s thinking about doing a project like this, it’s good to keep this in mind:

The government stopped releasing new magazine publication licenses several years ago. There’s no hope in trying to get a new one for UNIT.

That leaves three possible strategies for releasing a new mag:

1. Find a small, struggling magazine and buy them out
You can then change the name, but continue to use their publication number. This is what most big publishers do when they want to start a new venture. He mentioned <<时尚>>/Trendsmag as one that uses this strategy.
The problems: First you have to find the magazine yourself - there’s no waiting list or anything like that. Second, there’s a money required to buy the mag out. Third, it is customary to pay an annual fee of about 100,000 RMB to the purchased company as a kind of maintenance.

2. Register in Hong Kong
It’s free to register a magazine in Hong Kong. But you can’t sell it on the mainland. You can only offer subscriptions to “members” - then ship them to China. You can sell the mag at newsstands in Hong Kong. Apparently, this is the strategy that DOMUS-China is now using - offering subscriptions at discount rates to establish itself in mainland China.

3. Register as a book
It’s easier to get a publishing license for a book. This is the strategy A+U uses in China. The main drawbacks are that you generally can’t sell books at newsstands and book distributors tend to focus on bookstores - and not alternative locations like cafes, clubs, etc. The other major difficulty is getting advertising. In order to include ads in a book, you need to get approval from the Bureau of Industry and Commerce (工商局). Shi Jian wasn’t completely sure how difficult the approval process is. One final drawback of the book number is that you can’t offer subscriptions.

For more info, check out this post on Danwei, a great resource on media in China.

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