NEW YORK—On a scale of intensity from 1 to 10, in the publishing
business, launching a self-funded magazine in New York is pushing 11.
Despite being told repeatedly that the project is going to be a mission
impossible, Courtenay Hall did it anyway.
Hall is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of BELLA New York Magazine, BELLALAMag.com, and special correspondent for “Celebrity Page TV.” She spoke to Epoch Times about her journey in publishing and how she managed to accomplish her dreams while raising a family.
Unlike other glossy magazines, BELLA, which launched in 2011, speaks
to the average New York woman who aspires to greater things while trying
to balance practical life issues and a budget that may not be in the
ball park of Ivanka Trump.
The idea came to Hall in her living room one day, when she realized
that most of the magazines available to women were very similar in that
they preached an unobtainable beauty and lifestyle that in reality only
speaks to a very limited demographic.
Courtenay
Hall, co-founder and editor-in-chief of BELLA New York Magazine, in
Manhattan on June 15, 2016. (Benjamin Chasteen/Epoch Times)
“I think that the magazines out there are very similar—they are going
after the 0.01 percent, but what about the rest of us? We want to look
and feel beautiful, and I don’t have to be wearing a $3,000 pair of
shoes in order to feel beautiful. So the approach with BELLA was to be
very aspirational but obtainable. And I don’t think that anyone else is
giving that message,” she said.
The day she spoke to Epoch Times she was doubly excited because the
magazine was hours away from a design overhaul—a move which Hall sprang
on her close-knit team just before the July/August issue was due to go
to print. Her enthusiasm is contagious and one gets the feeling that
while she is a hard taskmaster, her energy is more than partly
responsible for her ability to push through the limitations and doubts
that everyone else seemed to have about the magazine succeeding.
“Everyone said, ‘Why are you doing this? It’s going to fail. You’re
going to go up against major magazines,'” she recalls. “I may have been a
bit naive, but I said, ‘Yes, I think that we can.’ So BELLA was born
literally out of our house six years ago.”
Forging the Dream
To be fair, Hall came to the publishing industry with a bachelor’s
degree in communications. Her drive and work ethic subsequently resulted
in a stellar record in advertising sales at luxury shelter magazines
such as Metropolitan Home, Elle Decor, and Better Homes & Gardens,
the latter being where she sold $1 million in advertising in three
months. She was also part of the New York team that launched Rosie
O’Donnell’s national lifestyle magazine ROSIE.
Increasingly, she found herself dreaming of being involved on the other side of the business as well.
“Doing ad sales was great, but that was me making money for somebody
else. I wanted to be on the creative side, I wanted to think of the
content and execute the content and the covers,” she said, also
mentioning that she has always loved writing.
Courtenay
Hall (R) with actress Jaime Pressly at the launch party for Pressly’s
May/June 2016 BELLA New York cover in Los Angeles. (Courtesy of
Courtenay Hall)
Hall truly believes that there is nothing in the New York tri-state
area market (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) like BELLA magazine.
And even though she thought that it might take her and the team between
5 and 20 years to truly succeed, she was willing to take that chance.
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