Authority Press is a digital publishing house. We run our own magazines, and we help others build theirs.
The case for owning the audience you have already earned.
Write to the FounderMost people who have built something on a social platform reach a moment when the platform reminds them how little of it actually belongs to them. The followers were borrowed. The reach was conditional. The work that took years to make can disappear from a feed in an afternoon.
The realization can come slowly. It can come overnight, when the rules change without notice. The question that follows is the same.
Is there a way to do this work, and keep more of what you build under your own control?
Authority Press is for the people who have started asking. We run our own magazines in markets we already know. We help other people run theirs. The work is the same in either direction, and so is the care.
Posts, stories, reels, and tweets live in feeds owned and monitored by someone else, and they are gone by Tuesday. An article in a magazine sits in search results for years and gets shared by every contributor to every audience they have.
Real bylines. A masthead. Editorial structure that makes the work citable, searchable, and permanent. Advertising and affiliate revenue runs on the page the way it runs in a print issue. The publication becomes a place to land instead of a feed to scroll.
Articles are written by a community of contributors. Each contributor shares the piece with their own audience when it runs. New readers arrive at the publication through the door of someone they already follow. Readership compounds without paid acquisition.
Authority Press is led by Kevin O'Connor, its founder and president. The work falls into two practices that share a team and a method.
Authority Press operates digital magazines in markets where we already know the territory. Some are foundational to our own business. Others extend it. The portfolio is a working argument that the framework does what we say it does. We do not recommend a model we are unwilling to run our own business on.
For individuals and organizations who want a publication of their own, our work covers the questions that come before the build, the case that has to be made for it, and the editorial and growth decisions that come after launch. The first conversation through the years that follow.
Niche, voice, position in the industry, and where the magazine sits in the operator's larger career. The questions a serious publisher answers for himself before he answers them for anyone else.
An honest read on whether the magazine should exist, who would actually read it, and what it could become if it did. Done before anyone signs.
Revenue model, contributor structure, growth assumptions, costs that hold up under scrutiny. A document a partner or an investor (or you yourself) can read and decide on.
Editorial calls, contributor decisions, the small adjustments that keep a magazine sharp once it is running. We stay close as long as it is useful.
Once the magazine is running, the day-to-day takes twenty to sixty minutes. The community does the heavy lifting.
We build the magazine. The publishing infrastructure stands up, the editorial framework is set, monetization runs from day one. You take the editor-in-chief seat.
Your network contributes. Each featured article brings about 2,800 new readers as contributors share the work with their own audiences.
The magazine becomes the spine of a larger media operation: events, awards, chapter networks, sponsorships, partnerships, all under the same name with the publication at the center.
Authority Press works with two kinds of person. Both want a publication of their own; neither wants another marketing channel.
Influencers, athletes, coaches, founders, professionals: anyone with a real audience and the credibility to lead a publication in the space they already know. The magazine becomes the place the work they have been making finally lives.
Real estate firms, healthcare practices, associations, community organizations, professional networks: anyone whose customers, members, or community could become contributors. The magazine becomes the connective tissue of the audience the operator already serves.
Sets strategy and policy for the house. Develops the case for each new title in our own portfolio. Stewards the work for partner publications, from the first conversation through launch and the years that follow. A serial entrepreneur who has founded and run more than a dozen businesses before this one.
Created the user-generated digital magazine framework on which every title in the network runs, and continues to develop it. Has launched ten magazines in the last twelve months across the creator economy, real estate, healthcare, and professional associations. Combined readership exceeds twenty million per month, with nothing acquired through advertising.
If a magazine of your own sounds like the kind of thing you have been thinking about anyway, write to me. I will write back. We will figure out, in the first conversation, whether this is right for what you are building and whether we are the right people to help you build it. If we are not, I will say so.
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