There are so many things you have to consider before choosing a WordPress theme but unfortunately, a lot of young bloggers don't know what is involved. For starters, here are some things to consider before choosing a blog theme:
1. SEO: Not all themes are created the same and some are better equipped for SEO than others. By SEO, you must take responsiveness, speed and fluidity into account. As simple as blogs are, some themes make it compulsory that you install and activate up to 15 plugins before you can get the full form of the plugin. I personally would recommend that you avoid such themes. Also some of these themes are not exactly responsive and fast enough and they will make your blogging experience a nightmare if you add advertising networks such as AdSense or others to your blog as it will further slow down your website. And finally, some of them have schema integration already, meaning you would not have to install an extra plugin. For this, I will recommend Newspaper by tagdiv, JNews, Soledad, Voice by Meks.
2. AdSense: Owing to the responsive rate of these blogs, some blogs can make you get AdSense faster than others and you have to be sure about those ones that are well equipped, light weight and crawler-friendly. The more crawler-friendly they are, the higher your approval rate. Newspaper by tagdiv, JNews, Soledad, Voice by Meks and Publisher.
3. Update: You must choose a theme that is constantly updated, else you will have yourself to blame as your blog will become very attractive to hackers since they will always find loopholes within your blog's theme.
PS: Publisher is quite a heavy theme. It uses so many plugins and I would not recommend it for a new blogger.