For a long time now the Isle of Wight council has been saying that they want One Island – their glossy, give-away magazine written by the council, about the council – to be “cost neutral”, ie it doesn’t cost Island taxpayers anything to produce.
We’ve been trying to research this story since July when we first put our request into the council for a breakdown of the figures (more on this later).
Earlier this week, Isle of Wight Radio gained some information from IWC about the costs of producing One Island.
Finally, after further prompting from VB, the council Communication Department (who not only handle press inquiries, but are also responsible for producing the One Island Magazine) came back to us with some of the detail that we asked for back in July.
Important costs have been left out
The council-provided costs below exclude two important items. Those of editorial time – the role of overseeing what’s going into the magazine; writers to pen the articles; photography; design; layout of the edition – and the cost of sales – how much time or money is spent getting the the sales?
Speaking to people who are in the world of producing magazines, their estimate for the cost of editorial and design was £4,000 – £5,000 per issue.
What is also left out of these figures is the cost of sales – how much does it cost to gather the sales?
The council say …
When we asked for the details of these costs, the Isle of Wight council said, “The editorial content (written/design/photographic/sub-editing etc) is produced by various members of the council’s communications department as part of their overall duties.”
On the photography they said, “Photos are largely sourced from existing photo stocks or taken by members of the communications team.”
County Press
You can find something about the One Island magazine in this week’s County Press – if you happen to get all the way to page 51, that is.
You’ll see that the CP mentions that they distribute One Island, but somehow they didn’t have space to say quite how much they get paid for sticking the glossy in between the pages of the CP.
Breakdown of printing and distribution costs
There’s a breakdown of the Printing and Distribution costs from the last three magazines below – don’t forget that none of the costs of actually producing the content of laying out are not included.
| Issue | Printing and Distribution | Amount (£) |
| May 2010 | Printing – Belmont Press (16 pages) | £4,100.00 |
| Distribution – Isle of Wight County Press | £919.80 | |
| Distribution – Mountjoy | £92.00 | |
| Distribution – Isle of Wight Society for the Blind | £200.00 | |
| Printing & Distribution costs | £5,311.80 | |
| Jul 2010 | Printing – Belmont Press (24 pages) | £5,760.00 |
| Distribution – Isle of Wight County Press | £459.90 | |
| Distribution – Mountjoy | £92.00 | |
| Distribution – Isle of Wight Society for the Blind | £200.00 | |
| Printing & Distribution costs | £6,511.90 | |
| Sep 2010 | Printing – Belmont Press (32 pages) | £7,175.00 |
| Distribution – Isle of Wight County Press | £919.80 | |
| Distribution – Mountjoy | £92.00 | |
| Distribution – Isle of Wight Society for the Blind | £200.00 | |
| Printing & Distribution costs | £8,386.80 |
