Publisher of the Month: Happiful Magazine

To kick off the New Year we’re happy to introduce our January 2019 Publisher of the Month, Happiful Magazine. A publication dedicated to mental health and wellbeing, Happiful is filled with content to help you live a happier and healthier New Year. Check out their latest issue below and follow along on social as we share exclusive Happiful Magazine content all month long.

Tell us about Happiful Magazine.

Happiful is the UK’s first lifestyle magazine devoted entirely to mental health and wellbeing. Each issue features true stories from everyday people with lived experience of mental illness, actionable advices pieces, deep-dive features, expert tips and celebrity interviews – each one written with our goal to tackle stigma and promote a happier, healthier society in mind.

Accessibility is at the heart of what we do, so our magazine is available to read for free online. Or you can pick up a print copy from most major supermarkets and order individual copies and subscriptions from our online shop. And if that’s not enough, we also share daily mental health news and trends on our site, Happiful.com, and across all our social media platforms.

How did Happiful Magazine get started? What’s the inspiration behind it?

Our mission has always been to help people find the help they need. And our journey to achieving that all started with two sisters, Aimi and Emma.

Both Aimi and Emma experienced anxiety and depression when they were at school and university. But back in 2005, help was hard to come by, and stigma – which is something many of us are still fighting today – was keeping many of us from speaking out and getting the support we needed.

Aimi and Emma didn’t want to talk to their parents; they didn’t want to talk to their family doctor and they didn’t even want to talk to each other about their worries. And so they used their lived-experience, and understanding of what people need, to create a network of professional therapists around the UK, counselling-directory.org.uk which has, to-date, has connected over 1 million people to counsellors.

Since then, we have grown to four more wellness directories: life coaching, hypnotherapy, nutrition and complementary therapies. Happiful Magazine was the next step in our mission to bringing together a community of people with a shared goal of reaching out to one another and sharing the knowledge that help and support can always be found when you need it.

Each issue of Happiful features new wellness tips, recipes and inspiration, any advice on how to create fresh and exciting content for every issue?

From the very beginning, our readers have been informing the content we publish. We understand that mental health is both a shared and deeply personal experience, which is why it’s so important that when people get in touch to tell us what they want and need from our magazine, we listen.

As a whole, our magazine is very person-focused. One of the most important sections of our magazine, our True Stories, is made up of reader-submitted stories. But even when we feature celebrities and public figures, our interviews are always about the person behind the persona, and we are proud that people choose our magazine to tell their – often difficult, but always inspiring – stories.

That people continue to chose to us to share some of their most intimate experiences, is incredibly humbling. It’s what spurs us on day-in and day-out.

What are some challenges you face as a publisher? How do you conquer them?

Print advertising has been in decline for a number of years, and so we decided that we would prioritise print subscriptions as our main source of income. The advantage of this model is that we can build a magazine with very few adverts, which our readers really appreciate, and focus on producing content that people love.

We are fortunate that we can be supported by our directory sites, which also means we can give away the digital edition for free and offer our readers the best possible content on our own terms.

Do you think publishing digitally has helped Happiful Magazine?

Absolutely! First and foremost, we needed to make Happiful accessible to as many people as possible, and publishing digitally (for free!) does just that. We don’t want to put a barrier between us and our readers, and we are constantly thinking of ways we can give back more and make it even easier to access Happiful (watch this space for the Happiful app!).

What is the best part of running a magazine?

Our readers, and watching our community grow, is what makes our work so special. Whenever we see a particularly lovely or supportive comment we share it so that everyone in the Happiful office can see. It’s a constant reminder that what we are doing is needed and helping people is a truly wonderful feeling.

We’re really proud to do what we do, and so we now have a testimonial page where we share some of our favourite messages. You can read some of them here.

Does Happiful Magazine have any resolutions for the New Year?

It’s funny you should ask that, we actually have our end of year meeting later today to talk about the last year, the next year and what we want to achieve in the near future (over a much needed Wagamama).

We’ve got a few personal resolutions: learn sign language, better-prioritised self-care and re-assessing social media habits. But for Happiful our goal is to keep up the momentum that has got us so far in just under two years, and continue reaching more people.

What are you currently working on over at Happiful Magazine? What can we expect next?

We’re currently in the final stages of testing our app, which will give our readers a new way to experience the magazine. By intergrating the app with all our other directories, we’ll also be able to help readers connect with counsellors, hypnotherapist, nutritionist, life coaches and many more professional therapists as a when they’re needed.

As for the mag, we’ve got lots of exciting things in the pipeline including themed issues, trail-blazing cover stars, and more of the inspirational stories, interviews and expert advice that our readers love so much.

We’re looking forward to seeing what we can achieve in 2019, and are excited for you all to join us on this journey.