Jaunt Media has 5 new custom publishing projects underway

Like many niche publishers, Bobby L’Heureux, owner of Jaunt Media, got into custom publishing almost by accident.

“We’ve been doing it for a while, but we didn’t really focus on it. 

“Three months ago, I started talking about it more. I think I have five custom-published projects coming up in the next six months.”

At the latest NBP roundtable, he shared his strategy for obtaining leads, managing clients, pricing and packaging with lessons learned along the way (click on Custom Publisher Media Kit to download).

Why it’s important 

“We all know how to publish magazines. We all have connections with printers we all have, we have our systems in place, other people don’t,” he said. 

“The revenue coming from it is fantastic because you can make quite a bit of money pretty quickly on a custom-published project.” 

How he got started 

The first custom publishing project almost came to him.

“It was almost an afterthought. A friend of ours runs a Restaurant Week in Boulder, Colorado, and the event was about the kickoff and when COVID happened.” 

The producer brainstormed with L’Huereux about what she could do to support the restaurants and came up with the idea for a cookbook.

“It was more of a philanthropy project,” L’Huereux recalls. 

“And we’re like, oh, great, that’s an awesome idea, but who is going to design it for you? Who is going to print it for you? “

She didn’t know. He just said, “Hey, I’m just throwing this out there. This is what we do for a living, we can easily help you with this project.” 

That was just the first custom publishing project.

Where the leads come from today

L’heureux says the leads typically come from someone the company already knows. “It’s finding those people in your community who are already publishing something and reaching out. ”

When he saw that downtown Grand Junction published a pamphlet, he started asking more questions, “Hey, who does your pamphlet? Would you be willing to entertain a proposal from us?”

In another case,  a friend owned Vanlife Customs, a company that makes bespoke campervan conversions.

“That’s a very niche market,” Leureux said. So, he suggested a B2B magazine that also sells ads to manufacturers.

 “Custom publishing for us started kind of slow, but I’m just starting to mention it, and it’s picking up extremely fast,” he said.

“Everyone wants to publish something whether it’s a book or a scientific journal for a hospital.” 

The process: Asking all the right questions in advance 

“Each project is unique, and that’s the hardest part: knowing how to price it out.”

The basic charge starts at $1000 a month, and everything else is added to that. “Are you going to be writing all the content? Okay, well, that’s an additional charge. Are you just collecting the content? Are you helping them sell ads? So there are multiple layers to it.” 

Take the recent proposal to  Steadman Clinic. 

The list of articles and features in the magazine is fully outlined after a conversation with the client and priced at $11,500.

In addition, L’heureux charges for:

Design Management + Creation including photos layout and proof  – $4,250

Printing project management at Jaunt’s regular printer – $4,000, with the printing billed separately.

The entire project costs $19,750, enough for Leureux to pay contractors he hires when his capacity is at its limit. Add-ons are quoted separately from the standard rates they already charge for digital services.

“The last project we did, I didn’t ask if they had a branding kit. Well, halfway through the magazine design, it turns out they hated their logo. So we had to rebrand everything for them. And that’s something I ask up front now, moving forward.” 

“You’ll learn pretty quickly,  like, wow,  this guy needs a meeting a day, and another person needs a meeting every month, Those are two different price points, right?”

“But I think the hardest part was figuring out how much time it would take and how much money you should charge for each individual project.

“I figured out that you have to ask a million questions up front, and generally, you don’t run into too many surprises.

“It is kind of nice because we have connections with all of these brands that want to custom publish, as long as you have someone who can handle the handholding through the process.”