Amy: My family and I moved to the Isle of Man in January 2007. We had moved here because we wanted to get away from the "hell" of London bustle – and we wanted to have a calmer, new life. We had been trying to leave for a few years – but when we decided to move to the island, everything, literally, fell into place and we sold our London flat (within 5 days), got a job for Dermot and never looked back.

Amy: At first, sorting out the distribution and then selling the advertising was really hard. It still is to a certain extent. I don't think it was the idea that this gentleman felt wouldn't work; he just felt that with the big boys of publishing and the reliance that folk on the island have of word–of–mouth – the magazine would not be taken up. He said that others had tried a similar thing – but had fallen by the wayside after a very short period of time.

To be honest – I didn't listen to him because I knew that, in the right circumstances, this magazine could work. I had done my research; talking to parents at my music groups; talking to mums at my son's school; talking to nurseries about distributing it and so on and making sure that the ad spaces I was selling and so on were not too expensive. The magazine was going to be full colour; the articles were going to be from contributors who were local and the magazine was going to be, essentially, Manx!

Strangely enough – a magazine company from Lancashire (called Family Magazine) tried to start up over here almost 4 months after I had started. Theirs was to be a glossy affair with 64 pages. They were rather conceited towards me; perhaps a little over confident with their words to me but their magazine faltered at the first hurdle because it tried to turn the Isle of Man into a region for its editing and content purposes and it went down very badly.

ExpatWomen: What have been some of your biggest obstacles in setting up Family Manx magazine and overseeing the last eighteen months of production?

Amy: I think the biggest obstacle was one of cost, at first. Initially I was determined to produce the magazine locally. I approached a lot of firms both for the printing and the design but the fees that were being quoted at that time were just too much for me, and so, reluctantly, I had everything produced in the UK. However, when, in recent months, it was suggested to me that I re–approach a local firm again – I did so and they matched the price I had with the English printers. I leapt at the chance to use a local firm and Bridson & Horrox now print the magazine – which is wonderful!

Other, initial, obstacles were mainly the fact that something like this had never been done successfully before on the island and getting, not only, contributors in terms of advertisers and "writers" but also distributors – was quite hard. Once I had been up and running though – with an initial 6,500 magazines – we slowly but surely started getting more and more companies involved. The first magazine had 13 ads; we now have over 75 regular advertisers (not all in every issue) but who regularly feature in the magazine and the list of contributors is enormous – with bookings for articles running into 2011.