Mr. Magazine

Quick&Simple, Good Housekeeping’s women’s weekly was launched two years ago to be only the second women’s service weekly magazine on the market place and to compete directly with Bauer’s Woman’s World, the first women’s weekly that started the Bauer empire in the United States back in 1980. Compared to the magazine field worldwide, the American market has the least number of women’s service weekly magazines. In fact Bauer ruled that field (and continues to rule it) for more than 25 years without any competition. Bauer is also credited by revitalizing the newsstands through paying complete attention to the newsstands and introducing different promotional gimmicks like the In Touch Weekly “thank you issue for 25 cents”, and the introduction of additional weekly titles such as Life&Style Weekly and the soon to be published Cocktail Weekly. Hearst, Quick&Simple’s publisher took a page from Bauer by first, launching Quick&Simple to compete with Woman’s World, second Hearst is doing the same with the magazine’s cover prices strategy. They charged 25 cents for the first issue of Quick&Simple, then they priced the magazine at $1.49, same as Woman’s World current cover price, and later they increased it to $1.59, and this week Hearst dropped the price to 25 cents for its Easter (April 10) issue. Didn’t someone once said that imitation is the best form of flattery! The six million dollar question now is whether Hearst will ever think of launching a celebrity weekly to compete with the rest of the Bauer lines of weeklies? Let us wait and see.

The Week magazine is going green… for one week only. It is not the first magazine to publish a green issue, many others have done that before (Fortune, Vanity Fair, Creative Review, etc.). However it is the first magazine to really practice what it will be preaching on April 20, well at least for one week. The Week is not skipping a printed issue and publishing it only on the web in digital format, but rather adding a digital only issue to the subscribers. “This digital green issue will be an extra bonus issue for THE WEEK’s subscribers during a week when they are not printing a print issue, ” says the press release for the magazine. It adds, “By publishing its first-ever digital issue, THE WEEK is adding an extra issue for its readers but delivering it in a format that has a reduced impact on the environment. The digital issue will include all of THE WEEK’s regular editorial features with selected ones focusing on the environment or related issues.” Well, I have two questions about the wisdom of doing such a noble thing, the first is what about the newsstand buyers, no matter how small the numbers are; and two if we really believe that we are in the “dead trees” business as my friend Bob Sacks often refers to the magazine industry, why not publish digital all the time? Is it enough to save the environment one week a year and forget about the rest of the year…that is if our business is really the business of “dead trees?”

No matter what, Life seems to continue appearing on the newsstands in one shape or form. This time, it is back as a mook or what is now referred to as “book-a-zine” format. Of course, the weekly Life is not dead yet (two more weeks on its lease of life as a weekly). This week the second Picture Puzzle mook from Life appears on the newsstands with two more issues planned for this year. Life’s first picture puzzle mook was launched in Nov. 2006 and “went to press five times to fulfill consumer demands” according to a press release from Time Inc. It should be noted that the $10.99 mook was launched after the huge and positive response the picture puzzle last page of the weekly Life newspaper supplement received from its readers. As mentioned earlier on this blog, Time Inc. has pulled the plug on the weekly Life, but I do not think any one will ever be able to pull the plug on the brand. Long live Life.

For years it used to be the TV Guide turf: Collectible covers of television series (including 35 different covers on Star Trek’s 35th anniversary), movies, NASCAR, etc. This week, it is Entertainment Weekly turn with multiple covers. Throughout its history, the magazine has done few multiple covers before, but this week’s showcasing of three “very young stars” of the new Harry Potter movie is yet another sign of “technology gone wild.” The mere fact that we can have multiple covers at a very low cost is no reason to start creating collectibles from non-collectibles. Every time I look at my real valuable collectible magazines, I can never see the word collectible on the cover. It should be a good give-away sign to readers that any magazine that screams collectible on the cover is definitely NOT. But just in case you want to prove me wrong and want to collect all three covers of this week’s issue of EW you can either search the newsstands like I did, or just call EW at 1-800-828-6882. One, two or three covers, EW remains one of the best over-all entertainment guides out there. It is worth every penny of the $3.50 cover price. Multiply that by three, well…that is a different story.

“Be one of the first 5,000 people to have a customized issue of Wired delivered to your home in July,” says the flyer attached to my sub copy of the April issue of Wired. Few years ago Reason magazine did something similar to this promotion. However, in the case of Reason the subscribers had no input in the choice of the covers, the magazine at that time published a satellite image of each subscriber’s home on the cover. This time Wired wants you to design the cover, write the cover lines, chose the colors and to top it all put your own picture on it … It is amazing what can be done today when we put the technology to the right use. Complement rather than compete. If you want to be one of the 5,000 people to have your own Wired cover, click here. Just a quick warning, when uploading your picture, be sure that the picture file is small.

That may be the wrong math, but that’s what I got from looking and buying all four copies of the recent issue of Bomb magazine. I know for sure that they did not do that as April’s fool day to trick people into buying four issues of the same magazine, yet I kept asking myself why four covers, what is the difference, how can people see all these differences in the two and half seconds people are willing to give us on the newsstands… a lot of questions, but no answers came to mind. It reminded me of the advice I always give my clients, “any cover line or art that you need to explain means one thing only: do not use.” I would have given the same advice to Bomb if they’ve asked me.

To have cover lines or not to have cover lines is not the story here…the story with Redbook is that LOVE always turns to SEX on the newsstand editions. Every issue of Redbook arrives promoting love for subscribers, but once you step out of your house it is sex on the newsstands. I can’t understand the logic behind making the L word the S word on the newsstands. Years ago we used to say Sex Sells, but now-a-days sex is everywhere and no longer a big seller on the nation’s newsstands. In fact we have less sex magazines published now than we had ten years ago. Celebrities are our sex of the decade. Sex magazines were the only category of magazines that witnessed a decline in term of number of new titles introduced in the last few years on the nation’s stands. So why then Redbook is doing that… it seems to me pure hypocrisy, nothing less nothing more. Sorry folks, but a three-letter word is never equal to a four-letter word.

Here are few more examples on the debate between designing different covers of the same magazine for the newsstands and for subscribers… Meredith publications Better Homes and Gardens , Ladies Home Journal, Country Home and
Family Circle all try to scream with cover lines on the newsstands and whisper or tone down the cover lines in your mail box. Take a look and judge for yourself? Do we really need spilt covers and what is the use? I hope to provide you with some answers in the coming days… Enjoy the journey