Seth Godin’s blog post, “The High Road and the Low Road,” is particularly relevant to book and magazine publishers.

If you’re starting up a new magazine, or a new book publishing company, and your only motive is profit, you’re almost certainly going to fail.

Yes, you’ll need to make money, but what you REALLY need to do to make money is enthrall both your readers and your advertisers with your product. And that goal has to be at the core of your business.

A good example of this would be Michael Brooke’s four line business plan:

One rider at a time
One reader at a time
One subscriber at a time
A magazine so good you’ll want to put it in your will

You need to be passionate about the topic you’re publishing. You need to care about the quality of the information you’re sending out. You want to put your reputation on the line with every issue. A bad product is a personal affront to you.

Because, as Seth Godin so accurately writes:

The reason manipulative media doesn’t work as well as you might expect is that people have a choice. Sure, on a per thousand basis, the manipulative tricks you might decide to use seem to work, but people don’t have to show up in the first place. Generally, the people who do show up for these low road attempts at manipulation aren’t the right people to begin with.