Magazine of the year

Last week we asked you which was your favourite magazine of 2013, and today we can reveal the answer. Or, at least, an answer.

The survey was conducted in a thoroughly unscientific manner, and we don’t claim that the following results form a definitive review of independent publishing. For example, Intern racked up far and away the greatest number of votes, but they did so on the back of a social media campaign that showed the same tenacity they displayed earlier this year to fund their launch issue via Kickstarter.

But I hope you’ll find an interesting story within the numbers nonetheless. The y axis shows the number of issues each of the magazines have published, and the size of the circle represents the number of votes each magazine received.

To my eye, the most obvious insight is that there are lots of great independent magazines out there at the moment. They cover a huge number of subjects and interests, and the vast majority of them have published fewer than 10 issues. That’s one of the things that makes independent publishing so exciting – there are always new magazines coming out and catching readers’ attentions within their first one or two issues.

It’s also evidence that independent publishing is an incredibly tough business, and independent magazines do have a habit of dying off. But I hope that when we do this again in another five years, we’ll see a healthy proportion of these names cropping up again, still publishing and still catching readers’ imaginations.

Click the image below for a bigger version.