Here’s how many pages your print magazine should be

One of the questions I get most frequently from newsletter readers is this: How long should our institution’s magazine be?

It’s no surprise that I hear the question all the time!

Printing and mailing a magazine is typically one of the biggest expenses for a communications office. Nobody wants to feel like they’re wasting that money. Could a few extra pages entice a reader into keeping it around a little longer? Does an overly long publication feel too daunting to dig into?

Here’s what I’ve found in my own study of publications.

Excellence comes at every page count…

I’ve talked to more than a dozen Sibley-winning editors, and while there are a lot of similarities in their work, one area where there hasn’t been much convergence is page count. Here’s what I mean:

• In 2021, SF State Magazine won the Sibley, coming in at a trim 28 pages per issue. (See my interview with Steve Hockensmith here.)
• Three years earlier, HBS Bulletin took home the crown. I have its most recent issue, and it clocks in at more than 200 pages, 160 of them (!!) devoted to their version of class notes. (Read my interview with Dan Morrell here.)
• Years before that, when I was working as an editor at the Sibley-winning Carleton Voice, our magazines typically stretched to 64 pages.

In other words, your magazine can be considered among the best of the best no matter how long it is.

…But there are guidelines worth considering

I’ve limited my analysis above to Sibley winners, but I get hundreds of alumni magazines every year, and here’s what I’ve noticed when it comes to my own magazine-reading habits.

First, most magazines that garner a second look from me do have a “thud factor” — a combination of page count, paper quality, weight, and tactile feel that give the publication a sense of substance and importance. It feels, from the moment a reader pulls it from their mailbox, that it’s a piece worth spending time with.

One signal of that “thud factor” is a perfect-bound publication — the telltale spine of thicker magazine, as opposed to the staples of a saddle-stiched magazine.

You may have subconsciously noted it in your own outside magazine reading!

The New Yorker, for example, typically sends out saddle-stitched magazines, but some special issues — the fiction issue, anniversary issue, technology issue, etc. — are perfect bound. That binding is a signal: this issue is important! It’s worth keeping around.

While the requirements for a perfect-bound issue are not hard and fast — it depends on the paper itself, the printer, and other factors — the option is typically is available at around 48 pages.

So whether or not you decide to have a perfect-bound magazine, it is worth keeping that general page count in mind as a good starting point for creating a magazine with a certain level of heft.

How magazine cadence changes the equation

If you would have asked me the page count question before the pandemic, I probably wouldn’t have felt so strongly about the so-called thud factor. But that’s in part because many magazines were published far more frequently than they are today.

If you published quarterly (which was fairly common in 2019), you might have to earn the coffee table for 12 weeks.

Now, a more typical cadence is two or three times a year: 17 or 26 weeks between issues!

If you want to earn space in your readers home for HALF A YEAR, you’ve got to offer something pretty special. I talk more about the “premium vs. primary” approach here, but in summary: your print magazine has likely become a rarer and therefore more special object for your audience.

That reality should be reflected in the production quality of the publication, the work that goes in to each individual story, and yes, the page count. When you can, bump it up!

The answer to your page count question is…

There is no magic page count that you can use to get readers to love your magazine.

Excellent magazines can come at different page counts, and every page count comes with its own challenges. That might be the number of stories you have to leave on the cutting room floor, or the juggling required with larger issues.

Your page count should reflect what you can give to your magazine, and what that magazine can give to your readers: what page count can you realistically commit to? What page count would inspire pride in your readers — and in the administrators who help make sure it’s funded well?

Your magazine “earns the coffee table” in the homes of your readers with a million different signals, small and large, from your covers to your story selection to your art to your deep knowledge of your audience.

Your page count is one of those things — but it is also just one of the details that matters.