‘We are a magazine for LGBT people, not an LGBT magazine—there is a difference.’ This was the phrase, from Uwern Jong of luxury travel mag OutThere, that stuck with me more than anything at Magazine Street 2025. Not the talk of AI, or the print revival, or the best way to engage your audience; not even the question of whether £20 is anywhere near a justifiable amount of money for me to spend on a magazine. Riveting though those questions are, they didn’t have quite the same effect on me.

           I admit that at first the statement irked me slightly. I wasn’t sure if I wholly agreed and felt like this sort of differentiation was unhelpful, and maybe even down-playing the queer element of the magazine. Publishing and diversity aren’t necessarily the fondest of bed fellows and a whole host of hurdles remain in the way of queer people, and other marginalised groups, from even getting a foot in the door (Fanning, 2025). Publishers are not prone to go after something they perceive as risky, meaning that progress can feel insecure or temporary, especially in a time of changing political and social attitudes towards the queer community. What’s more, gender-critical group Sex Matters recently released a ‘report’ that aims to pressure publishers to roll back diversity-related policies and commissioning decisions (Gosling, 2025). This may lead to nothing, but it is still a development to be concerned about.

OutThere

            However, living in eternal gloom about the future of queer voices in publishing is neither helpful nor healthy. There are positive developments to turn to: the almost comical overrepresentation of bi people in the publishing workforce (Publishers Association, 2024); efforts by publishers to improve their queer output (Fanning, 2025); the commercial, critical and viral success of queer books (Call, 2025; Tivnan, 2022), indicating that queer stories and issues have an appeal beyond the community itself. In fact, Uwern noted that almost half OutThere‘s audience are not queer—it has a strong following amongst solo female travellers as well as disabled travellers.

            I suppose what I learned at Magazine Street, beyond the fact that there is a magazine for just about anything (and there is also someone who will pay for it), is that it can be easy, and even tempting, to jump to conclusions. The conclusion that print was ever actually dying—it never was (Media Voices, 2025)—the conclusion that digital marketing will always yield better results—print has a better ROI (Wray Schertler, 2025)—or even the conclusion that having a glass-half-full attitude in the face of famously competitive and risk-averse industry on top of changes in social and political attitudes is something to scoff at. The electricity and enthusiasm of the attendees, with so many different people from around the world, with so much talent and so much love for magazines, was really quite energising. Yes, there are struggles in publishing, both internal and external, but there are people in the industry, such as the team at OutThere, pushing forwards in spite of these challenges. They are making change happen by putting their thoughts and ideas into practice.

Bibliography

  • Call, A. 2025. Pay for gay? The bestselling LGBTQ+ books of the past year [online]. Available at: https://www.thebookseller.com/bestsellers/pay-for-gay-the-bestselling-lgbtq-books-of-the-past-year [Accessed 6th October 2025]
  • Fanning, M. (2025). Why the UK publishing industry fails marginalised LGBTQ voices—and how we can fix it [online]. Available at: https://mofanning.co.uk/lgbtq-publishing-uk/ [Accessed 9th October 2025]
  • Gosling, M. (2025). Everyday cancellation in publishing. London
  • Jong, U. (2025). How to get OutThere… . 2nd October, Magazine Street, Glasgow
  • Media Voices (2025). Inside the Print Revival. Glasgow
  • Publishers Association (2024). UK Publishing Workforce: Diversity, inclusion and belonging in 2024. London
  • Wray Schertler, M. (2025). Advertisers want to leverage your brand loyalty, not your circulation. 2nd October, Magazine Street, Glasgow