ANDY SIVELL — PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

“Andy did a remarkable job on Active Life magazine, transforming it from a fee-based contract magazine to a profitable stand-alone title within six months.”
Peter Barber, CEO, Aspen Specialist Media

In a publishing career spanning nearly two decades, Andrew Sivell (43) has worked across the widest variety of consumer, customer and business-to-business magazines — over 50 titles and 15 separate markets at the last count. And yet it started almost by accident…

Determined to make it as a professional racing driver, Sivell applied for a job selling advertising space for a major publisher of motoring and motor sport magazines, purely as a means of ‘getting in with’ the motor racing press. His career in publishing took off. The career in motor racing didn't.

In 1988, Sivell became a display advertising representative on the DIY magazine Practical Householder. Just five years later he was appointed advertisement sales director of Maxwell Communications Corporation’s entire newsstand division. He was responsible for new business development and advertisement sales across the company’s portfolio of more than 25 consumer magazines. Titles included Practical PC, The Gardener, Vegetarian Living and Health & Fitness, to name but a few.

Sivell then joined Aspen Specialist Media, where he published customer magazines for Singapore Airlines, Post Office Counters and the Midland Bank (now HSBC). The Post Office and Midland Bank titles — Active Life and Meridian respectively — were at the time groundbreaking in that they were both self-funding. Active Life magazine generated an annual income of almost £1m from advertisement sales.

A spell as a management consultant rounded off Sivell’s publishing education. Project work included magazine launches, a management buyout, overseas licensing, research into the viability of new markets, magazine distribution, subscription marketing and database management.

Sivell founded Working Titles Publishing in 1999. The agency name neatly sums up his practical approach to customer publishing. He believes that customer magazines should not only fulfil defined communications objectives, but do so successfully. In other words, they should work.

Sivell has worked for large and small magazine outfits, on his own and as part of a team. He certainly doesn’t balk at rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in. A graphic demonstration of this occurred early on in his career when he was employed to sell advertising space on the then-fledgling car title Fast Ford. Unable to find a desk, he simply set about building his own — out of two planks suspended between bundles of magazines!