I'm starting a monthly magazine for our area. The magazine cost will be covered by paid advertisements.

Some people have told me to prepare Issue 0 and in this issue to offer free advertisements. Then in Issue 1 there will be paid advertisements.

But would I write Issue 0 on the cover, or is this just a 'publishing term' ? If the ads are free in the first issue should I just approach local companies and offer them a free ad with no committments for future issues?

Many thanks.

I don't know about writing issue 0 or not. May "trial issue" or something.

However I do think that you want to approach the regular advertisers too because it would be easier to sell the next half year to them if they feel they got good exposure in the trial issue. You don't want to have to go out and sell the whole thing again for the next magazine since you are pretty much printing the next issue when the first one comes out.

I would call a local magazine in some other area and see if you can ask a few questions about how they did it.

Thanks for the reply and very good advice.