Publishing Company
Families Magazine
And now for my next trick – I’m going to run a magazine franchise.
A magazine? Yes, a magazine.
At the tail end of 2025 I bought Families Print ltd in an elaborate way to fill my life with more emails. Families Magazine is a free bimonthly magazine that tells parents of human children what things are going on in their area. It goes out to schools, shops, key community points, you know the sort. The main draw of the magazine is the What’s On guide – I’m not kidding when I say that these things are packed with absolutely anything a parent could need when it comes to keeping their kids busy and not biting through the furniture, or whatever it is that kids do.
Families Magazine’s business model is the most interesting part for me – it’s a franchise. See, every magazine up and down the country is run by a franchisee, quite often mums with an ex-corporate background who have returned to the work force after starting a family. They’ve realised that working in a London skyscraper where people use terms such as “kindly see” and “as per by last email” is actually a pretty rubbish place to work, so they’ve traded high-stress corporation hierarchy for the work-life balance that running a magazine from home allows.
Right but, you’re not an ex-corporate mum?
Well spotted, and good question. Apart from the interesting franchise model, why have I got involved in a magazine for families when I don’t have kids? Well, hit that rewind button and travel back to 2017, where a young clean-shaven and skinny Dan is submitting his dissertation for his BA. My dissertation argued that piracy was a) inevitable and b) culturally good. It wasn’t a good essay, though the research I did was enthralling, and I was heavily inspired by the work of Chris Anderson, who wrote a nice book titled Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
When technology makes something ridiculously cheap to copy and distribute, its price will tend to fall towards zero. What with how AI has royally banana’d up everything I love (and could charge money for), I’ve started to ask a new question. If so much of the creative field is expected to be free – what part is still scarce enough to charge for? The answer is advertising space, hence why Families is able to act as a completely free magazine – it’s advertiser supported – think good schools, family events, and professional services.
Plus, I like that Families knows what it is. It’s not trying to be some LinkedIn/Silicon Valley cosplay. It helps local people. It creates something tangible, and commercial sensible. I like that it sits in the real world, it has to be made, sold, edited, printed and marketed. You remember the real world, right?