It was my husband Keith who had the idea of producing an e-magazine in the summer of 2014. He has pro web design experience and I had written all the text for his corporate client websites, so we were used to combining our skills and working together as a team.

We called our publishing brand Ryecorn Digital Publishing, after Ryecorn, the fictional Yorkshire town in my kindle chick- lit novella.
Keith designed all the unique graphics for the chapter headings and he also designed the book cover for me, too. I was really pleased with his design. The free android app version looked great too.

To keep costs down, we set up a free website to help promote it: www.ryecorn.orgfree.com

We had already enjoyed minor success with another online project of ours called ‘A quick read.’ This entailed uploading stories onto our website and onto the accompanying free android app.

We didn’t charge writers a fee for publication, and the website cost around £60 a year. Even though we were overwhelmed with work, as time passed, we couldn’t see how the project could develop, so sadly in 2014, after two years, we decided to close it down.

So – we had published online,on kindle and on the android app format. We both really warmed to the idea of publishing an e-mag on 3 digital platforms.

What could we call our magazine though? We thought of hundreds of names, but the domain names were all taken, so we hit upon the idea of blending our names to create something truly different. We really hoped that the name ‘KISHBOO‘ would stick in people’s memory.

It would be non- profit making project. We’d fund the competition prizes through the competition entry fees, and we now realised that we could use online advertising to help cover the cost of our website.

In August 2014, we were ready to launch the project! However, the actual magazine wasn’t published until October, as we needed stories and articles to fill it.

I began to send press releases out and my network of writer friends helped spread the word  for us via social media. Keith worked hard on search engine optimisation, and I began to tweet for the first time in my life.

I was worried that we would receive no articles at all because at the moment, we are unable to pay writers. However, we can offer them free promotion of their kindle books and blogs within their articles. I wasn’t even sure we would get anyone entering our competition. I needn’t have worried – the comp entries and articles began flooding in!

Back issues are easily available – here’s what the first KISHBOO looked like:

Here’s the cover of the second issue, which was published in January 2015:

We are now very working hard on our third issue, which will be published in April 2015. It’ll be packed with even more features.

Please visit: www.kishboo.co.uk
Find us on facebook: www.facebook.com/kishboo.mag
Follow us on Twitter: @KishbooMag