Mr. Magazine

“One of the things that we’ve learned in 2023 is that many advertisers, while they love digital, they just love it, they’re realizing that it’s harder and harder to stand out from the crowd doing only digital. Some differentiating factors have been running in print magazines and running in traditional media, like television and radio.” Ryan Dohrn…

“What I’m trying to get at to share with you is that this whole idea that digital is the future – well, it can only be the future if we can control the saturation and the messaging. The problem is we’re overly saturated with digital and we’re having difficulty controlling the message. But the only way you can really control the message is through traditional media because we get to control our own voice inside the traditional media mechanism.”

Ryan Dohrn knows how to help publishers generate growth when it comes to all revenue channels: print, digital, sales, audience and events. He is the owner of Niche Media Events and the founder of Brain Swell Media, which is a media sales training firm. He knows every facet of the media world like the back of his hand and has trained over 30,000 ad sales reps in 7 countries.

Ryan sells media every day and has been a part of over half a BILLION dollars in media sales. He is a graduate of the Cornell Executive Leadership Program and his 30-year media sales and marketing career includes leadership roles at Disney/ABC TV, Morris Publishing, PennWell Publishing, and The NY Times Company. He is an Emmy Award winner, multiple business book author and has been featured in USA Today and on Forbes.com.  Ryan currently works monthly with over 50 media companies and their related sales and management teams.

I spoke with Ryan recently and we talked about his companies and the energy and synergy they produce. He has a confidence about him that emanates from his speech and makes a person feel instantly in control of whatever situation that’s facing them. It’s a winning quality and one that Mr. Magazine™ thoroughly enjoyed and took advantage of because you never turn down positivity. In any form.

Toward the end of the interview Ryan told me something that sounded very familiar: When you give somebody what they want they’re happy for a short period of time. When you give somebody what they need, you have a customer for a lifetime.

Sounded very familiar…

And now the inspiring interview with Ryan Dohrn, owner of Niche Media Events and founder of Brain Swell Media.

But first the soundbites:

On a recap of 2023, in terms of sales and advertising: One of the biggest things that we learned in 2023 was that those media organizations that were willing to control the narrative out there and were willing to adjust their sales methodologies not only survived in 2023, but they really thrived in 2023.

On whether he thinks artificial intelligence is helping or hurting: It depends upon the circumstance. In the sales business I don’t believe it is helping, because one of the things they’re trying to do is use artificial intelligence (AI) to replace something. Now if we would use AI to enhance things that we’re already doing instead of replacing that would be different. I don’t believe replacing is the right way to think about it at all, especially in media and in media sales. AI can actually help you and make things better.

On where he sees print growing in the future: In the B to B area. I would say in the business world, in B to B manufacturing, any type of business that includes a visceral experience, they’re almost always going to have a good experience with print media.

On what he thinks about the future of city and regional magazines: City and regional magazines are an important part of their communities, but they will need to fight to relevant to thrive. It’s going to be pretty tough because so much of that happens in real time in a city and regional environment, things are happening so quickly that it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge for the magazine component itself to make sure that it stays relevant because things happen so fast in the city and regional environment.

On whether he’s optimistic or pessimistic about 2024: In my opinion, 2024 is going to be a pretty tough year due to the degree of political and economic uncertainty across the country and around the world. I’m already advising my sales clients that you better do your selling in quarters 1, 2, and 3, because by the time we get to the end of third quarter and we’re staring an election in the face, if a salesperson thinks that they can wait until the 4th quarter to save their year, they’re going to be in trouble.

On whether he has more or less clients in 2024 versus 2023: I will have more clients because when things are not good in the world and people need more help with sales, then they call me. When there is a crisis going on in the world; we’ve got Israel at play, Ukraine, you name it, I get busier because people need a lot more help.

On what he was thinking when he bought the Niche Media Conference three years before: People did think I was crazy. They thought I was crazy to buy this business during the pandemic. My mission, and I really feel like it’s one of the reasons God put me on this earth, was really to help people help themselves and help their families. And the Niche Media Conference is a part of my core mission of helping publishers and salespeople make some great money with their business and make some great decisions.

On where his business health comes from: The reason that we’re seeing some real growth is the high level of relevance of all the different topics and information that we’re presenting. So because every day I am knee deep in the media business, I really do know what it is publishers want and salespeople need. I feel like the reason some of the other groups and events have not survived is because they weren’t exceedingly relevant to the immediate needs of these publishers.

On having the Niche Media Awards: I think it’s a good idea and they did in the past. They were called the Nichee Awards and they went away during COVID because it was hard to gather all of that together. But I think we should probably resurrect them because we do need to make sure that we’re awarding people for their excellence in the magazine business. I do believe that we’ve got quite a few more years of this conference ahead.

On the marketing that he’s doing: Yes, the marketing component piece, which you know is core to my heart, sales and marketing, the marketing is an important piece of the puzzle. How do you market to a publisher and not be so overwhelming that it’s kind of too much in their face? But it’s important to be out there.

On what he would hope to tell someone about 2024 a year from now: It was just a mess. I think I’m going to say 2024 was a mess. And I’m hoping from the depths of my heart and the core of my soul, I’m hoping that won’t be the case. But unfortunately as I look across the landscape of the world, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at publishing conferences abroad, and unfortunately I think we’re going to be standing on New Year’s Eve waiting on 2025 and we’re going to say wow! 2024 was a real mess.

On anything he’d like to add: The biggest change I’ve seen is people doing consultative selling, where they’re guiding people toward what they need to do with us as media companies as opposed to delivering on what they want. When you give somebody what they want they’re happy for a short period of time. When you give somebody what they need, you have a customer for a lifetime.

On what keeps him up at night: As I’m getting closer to the other side of my career, I have to fight every day to be relevant. And one of the things I probably think about the most and what keeps me up at night is what will I do this week to be exceedingly relevant to my clients, to other publishers, to my wife, to my children. What can I do to be relevant, because I feel like the moment I lose relevancy will be the moment I should step aside and let someone else be the voice of revenue for the media business. 

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Ryan Dohrn, owner of Niche Media Events and founder of Brain Swell Media.

Samir Husni: Can you recap 2023 in terms of sales and advertising? What’s your words of wisdom?

Ryan Dohrn: One of the biggest things that we learned in 2023 was that those media organizations that were willing to control the narrative out there and were willing to adjust their sales methodologies not only survived in 2023, but they really thrived in 2023.

What I’m noticing though is that you have to make changes; you have to be willing to make changes. What’s interesting is, because so many people and advertisers have gone to the digital side of the marketing spectrum, if you will, what’s interesting is the saturation level is really high.

So, one of the things that we’ve learned in 2023 is that many advertisers, while they love digital, they just love it, they’re realizing that it’s harder and harder to stand out from the crowd doing only digital. Some differentiating factors have been running in print magazines and running in traditional media, like television and radio.

I guess what I’m trying to get at to share with you is that this whole idea that digital is the future – well, it can only be the future if we can control the saturation and the messaging. The problem is we’re overly saturated with digital and we’re having difficulty controlling the message. But the only way you can really control the message is through traditional media because we get to control our own voice inside the traditional media mechanism.

Samir Husni: Do you think artificial intelligence is helping or hurting?

Ryan Dohrn: It depends upon the circumstance. In the sales business I don’t believe it is helping, because one of the things they’re trying to do is use artificial intelligence (AI) to replace something. Now if we would use AI to enhance things that we’re already doing instead of replacing that would be different. I don’t believe replacing is the right way to think about it at all, especially in media and in media sales. AI can actually help you and make things better.

So if you look at AI as it can help me be better in sales; it can help me potentially be a better writer, rather than let’s use AI to replace salespeople or to replace writers. That in my opinion is the wrong way to look at it.

Samir Husni: I call 2023 the year of the bookazine because we only had 71 new magazines published, with only one monthly. Where do you see print growing in the future? Or do you?

Ryan Dohrn:. Yes, in the B to B area. I would say in the business world, in B to B manufacturing, any type of business that includes a visceral experience, they’re almost always going to have a good experience with print media.

An example might be, if you look at a magazine like Fender Bender magazine, it’s designed to be read by people who are visceral with their hands, people that repair cars, people that repair dents in cars; the collision industry. I find that with folks who are in visceral experience businesses, magazines tend to be a visceral experience and it seems to work really well.

On the consumer side of things, I get a little more concerned, because it’s difficult for us to create content in a magazine that no one is going to find anyplace else because of the internet. So, I think the consumer side of the business is going to struggle a little bit more than the B to B side where I see magazine media continue to be real strong.

Samir Husni: What about the city and regional magazines?

Ryan Dohrn: City and regional magazines are an important part of their communities, but they will need to fight to relevant to thrive.  I deeply enjoy my C&R clients and their passion for serving their communities. It’s going to be pretty tough because so much of that happens in real time in a city and regional environment, things are happening so quickly that it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge for the magazine component itself to make sure that it stays relevant because things happen so fast in the city and regional environment.

Samir Husni: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about 2024?

Ryan Dohrn: In my opinion, 2024 is going to be a pretty tough year due to the degree of political and economic uncertainty across the country and around the world. I’m already advising my sales clients that you better do your selling in quarters 1, 2, and 3, because by the time we get to the end of third quarter and we’re staring an election in the face, if a salesperson thinks that they can wait until the 4^th quarter to save their year, they’re going to be in trouble.

In my opinion, 2024 could potentially be one of the toughest advertising sales years that we’ve seen in quite some time. The reason is because business owners are reluctant to make decisions because they’re concerned about interest rates, the economy, things like that.

We, as media sales professionals, have to control the narrative. If we don’t, as the political cycle season really sets in, and it’s already crazy, it’s going to get even worse. We have to control the narrative and say things like this. Throughout the course of history we have been through economic and political uncertainty before. What we know is that advertisers that consistently advertise through a crisis of any kind almost always come out on the other side of the crisis in better shape. We’ve seen this from the Great Depression all the way through the pandemic.

In the Great Depression we saw Kellogg’s Cereal overtake the giant, Post Cereal Company, and what did they do different, make better cereal? No. They just advertised more effectively. In the pandemic we saw Zoom rise to the top of all communication software for video conferencing as you and I meet here today. What did they do different, have a superior product? Not necessarily. They advertised steadily through the pandemic and now they’re one of the biggest leaders.

So, the secret of this is going to be controlling the narrative and getting people to understand no matter what happens in the world and politically, we have to keep advertising.

Samir Husni: Do you have more or less clients in 2024 than you did in 2023?

Ryan Dohrn: I will have more clients because when things are not good in the world and people need more help with sales, then they call me. When there is a crisis going on in the world; we’ve got Israel at play, Ukraine, you name it, I get busier because people need a lot more help.

What we’re seeing already in 2024, which is something great for you and your customers and listeners, etc., is a lot more marketing summits. I have a lot of clients inviting me and others in to have marketing summits with their advertisers so they can help control this narrative. They bring their advertisers together and say let us show you the latest in marketing trends and technology to help your business and becoming a lot more of a partner with these advertisers. That is a really great idea and I’m seeing a lot of that already in the works for 2024.

Samir Husni: Three years ago you bought Niche Media Conference; were you out of your mind? Conferences are disappearing, what were you thinking?

Ryan Dohrn: People did think I was crazy. They thought I was crazy to buy this business during the pandemic. My mission, and I really feel like it’s one of the reasons God put me on this earth, was really to help people help themselves and help their families. And the Niche Media Conference is a part of my core mission of helping publishers and salespeople make some great money with their business and make some great decisions.

So the reason I bought it is I didn’t want to see it go away. As someone who sells training services to media companies it was the best show of the year for me. I had already been a participant of the event for 18 years, so I decided to buy it and keep it going. Obviously, there’s a need because we’re seeing what used to be 200 people at an event, now we’re at 350 to 400 people, so there’s a big need out there for publishers to gather and to network together. And I think it’s just something important for publishers to be a part of.

Samir Husni: We used to have an abundance of groups like the MPA and Folio, communities such as that. Today we have a noticeable lack of these organizations, they’ve vanished. Where do you get your business health from?

Ryan Dohrn: The reason that we’re seeing some real growth is the high level of relevance of all the different topics and information that we’re presenting. So because every day I am knee deep in the media business, I really do know what it is publishers want and salespeople need. I feel like the reason some of the other groups and events have not survived is because they weren’t exceedingly relevant to the immediate needs of these publishers.

We have a panel of publishers and a panel of advertisers and we make sure that all of the topics are exceedingly relevant to the attendees that are there. The other thing is we work really hard to make it affordable and we also work really hard to only host the event in cities where people can get there in an affordable way. And I call it the Southwest rule: if you can fly Southwest direct, then that’s a good place to have an event. So we try to make it affordable for folks as well.

Relevancy and affordability are the real key components. And then also not overloading the show with sponsors. It can’t be a sales environment; it has to be a learning environment. And that’s an important piece as well.

Samir Husni: Have you considered starting the Niche Media Awards?

Ryan Dohrn: I think it’s a good idea and they did in the past. They were called the Nichee Awards and they went away during COVID because it was hard to gather all of that together. But I think we should probably resurrect them because we do need to make sure that we’re awarding people for their excellence in the magazine business. I do believe that we’ve got quite a few more years of this conference ahead.

Now we are doing a lot more digital-focused tracks and things like that. But are publisher’s track is solely focused on the print media business. And helping those groups not only survive, but thrive. And that really is a core mission of ours.

Samir Husni: It reminds me of a presentation I gave at the Niche Conference, ‘Survive Today To Thrive Tomorrow.’

Ryan Dohrn: Exactly. What’s interesting is you will learn more from your fellow publishers than you will from almost any other conference you attend. So one of the things that we do is a lot of roundtables, people sitting around and talking together. That’s where you really learn a lot.

The other thing that we did that’s different is that we invested heavily in very high end speakers. A lot of conferences you kind of take who you can get – well we actually spend money to bring in top-shelf, name brand speakers because I feel like if someone is going to spend $800 or a $1,000 to attend an event, they should walk away with some really tangible-type information. So we’ve kind of upped that a little bit as well. And then the fun factor; we always want to have a lot of fun at these events. We always try to do a lot of networking and have  a lot of fun.

Samir Husni: I noticed you’re doing a lot of marketing, besides LinkedIn.

Ryan Dohrn: Yes, the marketing component piece, which you know is core to my heart, sales and marketing, the marketing is an important piece of the puzzle. How do you market to a publisher and not be so overwhelming that it’s kind of too much in their face? But it’s important to be out there.

What’s interesting is, all the marketing tools that we use to get publishers to the Niche Media Conference are all the same tools that they should be using to get people to their events and to subscribe to their magazine. What I’ll try to do is stand in front of the group and say: one of the reasons you all are here is because of our marketing efforts, let me tell you how we got you here and how you can use those strategies to get people to your events and to subscribe to your magazine.

We also do something different that others don’t do, we focus on marketing and subscription development. And I believe the heart and soul of this business is subscription development. And not a lot of people talk about it. And so we have an entire track dedicated to marketing and subscription development. That subscription development is core, critical to success. When you look at big city and regional magazines like Our State North Carolina, one of the most profitable in the city and regional space, they are a subscription-based publication. And if they can do it, and they do it well, why can’t others? It’s a great model that they’ve put in place.

Samir Husni: And almost all the CEO’s that I’ve interviewed in the last few weeks are seeing a return to direct marketing and subscription, and they’re seeing a good response to that direct marketing too.

Ryan Dohrn: Yes, I agree. And people tend to subscribe. We are living in a world of subscribers; we subscribe to everything. So why would our media be any different? As you’ve preached for years, if you have the right content people will pay for it. But if you have content that anybody has, most people won’t. And I agree with that and applaud your efforts over the years for trying to make people understand that you can have a very robust subscription business if you have content that people will actually pay for.

Samir Husni: If you and I are talking a year from now, what would you hope to tell me you had accomplished in 2024?

Ryan Dohrn: It was just a mess. I think I’m going to say 2024 was a mess. And I’m hoping from the depths of my heart and the core of my soul, I’m hoping that won’t be the case. But unfortunately as I look across the landscape of the world, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at publishing conferences abroad, and unfortunately I think we’re going to be standing on New Year’s Eve waiting on 2025 and we’re going to say wow! 2024 was a real mess.

But my hope and my prayer going forward is that we will figure out some way to talk together and unite together and work together, because I do think we all have common needs, goals, and desires. If we can focus on those I think that we can have a better society. That and follow the 10 Commandments. That would be good too.

Samir Husni: Is there anything you’d like to add?

Ryan Dohrn: The one thing that has changed dramatically in the ad sales business is that we’ve really changed the way that we sell. From going out and saying Mr. or Ms. Advertiser, what do you want from us and finding out that delivering back is what they want.

The biggest change I’ve seen is people doing consultative selling, where they’re guiding people toward what they need to do with us as media companies as opposed to delivering on what they want. When you give somebody what they want they’re happy for a short period of time. When you give somebody what they need, you have a customer for a lifetime.

And that was the biggest change that I tried to push forward. And I saw it happen in 2023, from fulfilling people’s wants to guiding them toward their needs. And when you can make that subtle change, you’ll have a better and more robust media company and you’ll have advertiser that are happier longer.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Ryan Dohrn: As I’m getting closer to the other side of my career, I have to fight every day to be relevant. And one of the things I probably think about the most and what keeps me up at night is what will I do this week to be exceedingly relevant to my clients, to other publishers, to my wife, to my children. What can I do to be relevant, because I feel like the moment I lose relevancy will be the moment I should step aside and let someone else be the voice of revenue for the media business.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“Print is a foundation. Individually, everything we publish in print is profitable. And it’s part of our brand, position, platform, legitimacy, authenticity, all those things. You can get it, but it’s hard to get just in a digital form because there are so many people producing content all day every day.” Andy Clurman…

“We’re managing print as part of the portfolio and we’re doing it happily as long as it continues to contribute. I’ve seen a little bit of growth in print and subscription revenues in 2023, which was gratifying, particularly after the pandemic finally eased up.” Andy Clurman…

If you’re an enthusiast, AIM Media has a magazine for you. One of the world’s largest enthusiast media companies, Active Interest Media (aimmedia.com) produces leading consumer and trade events, websites, magazines, and films and TV shows that reach millions of readers, fans, and attendees in 85 countries. From Fine Homebuilding to Writer’s Digest, AIM has an eclectic mix of titles to entertain you and feed your enthusiasm.

Andy Clurman is president and CEO of the company and firmly behind AIM’s M&A (Merger & Acquisition) strategies, such as the acquisition of The Taunton Press in 2023, a respected consumer media and book business, based in Newtown, Connecticut. I spoke with Andy recently and we talked about the acquisition and how it would expand AIM’s ever-growing enthusiast audience even more. It was an insightful discussion that offered knowledge and interesting concepts. And one that I hope you enjoy.

So now, here’s the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Andy Clurman, president & CEO, Active Interest Media (AIM) Please enjoy…

But first the soundbites:

On how he would evaluate 2023: I say that 2024 is a lot more promising than 2023 was. We didn’t set out a path to make a big acquisition in 2023, but as we got into the year and we saw the results of the increases in cost and the challenges of growing without investing, we thought ok, we need to change the model here. How do you do that?

On the revenue mix of AIM’s digital and print collectible events: We are now about 52% in terms of print revenue and of that it’s about 60/40 consumer revenue to advertising revenue. The remainder is made up of digital revenue from digital products, digital memberships, online education and learning, digital events, which we do a lot of digital events, and then live events. So we still have a good portfolio of in-person events and we’re growing more of those.

On his favorite brand among AIM’s many: It depends on who’s making the most money at any given moment. It’s just like I have three kids and I might tell any one of them, you’re my favorite today. (Laughs) Some are more evolved than others. Where our woodworking business has got 10 different dimensions to it and it’s really incredible to see what’s been built there over the years, some are more one dimensional. It’s fun to have them learn from each other.

On whether they will merge any of the magazines they just acquired, such as Fine Woodworking and Popular Woodworking: We kept them separate and they have thrived in that way. Likewise, with Horticulture and Fine Gardening which are great brands and have big audiences, our belief is that if it is a consumer driven business and consumers have made a choice to be part of a brand and a community, forcing them to join another doesn’t always work out the way you thought it might.

On whether he feels there’s still a future for print: I think there’s a future for print. It’s one of the oldest forms of communication.  And we know from neurological studies that it has a different impact on people when it comes to consuming information. The tactile experience. The ability to curate and surprise people with things they weren’t expecting. And I think the fundamental demand for print is still there; the channels to get it into people’s hands is very challenged, especially from the newsstand standpoint.

On whether he thinks you can trust print more than digital: It’s funny at how print is held at such a different standard than digital, which is a good thing. You can do outrageous things on digital networks and social media networks and suffer no consequences, where if you betray your audience in print, do that at your peril.

On where Writer’s Digest fits in with all of the other titles: There are things that I personally have an affinity for, that goes with my own hobbies and interests. But as a business, where there’s a strong community of people with enough critical mass and high information needs you can build a great business around them;  Writer’s Digest has been doing this for over 100 years.

On what he would hope to tell someone that he had accomplished a year from now: With the combined energy and experience of the AIM and Taunton brands and people, I’d love to be looking back this time next year and say we have achieved some growth in our major lines of business. We don’t need to grow 20% but if we can stay ahead of inflation and  continue to evolve our brands and business we will secure the future. I’ll consider that a good day’s work.

On what keeps him up at night: We have a lot of people relying on us in our company for their welfare and prosperity.  As I tell them that even though we’re not a public company, I consider them shareholders because they’re investing their time, money and career. For us, it’s making sure that we can provide them with a good outcome and a fair return on their investment

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Andy Clurman, president & CEO, Active Interest Media.

Samir Husni: Congratulations on acquiring The Taunton Press.

Andy Clurman: Thank you.

Samir Husni: It’s one of the few merger/acquisitions of 2023 that took place in the industry. That being said, how would you evaluate 2023?

Andy Clurman: It was a tough year in terms of managing cost and inflation, all while trying to grow simultaneously. And also trying to unlock some investment dollars while you’re attempting to satisfy everyone’s demands for price increases and more money, which was part of our impetus for the acquisition after spinning off AIM.

I don’t know if I’ve talked to you since this happened, but AIM is now a private company. And that’s great; it’s still a pretty good size. But it occurred to me, in the industry, with the companies that are our relative size, there are a lot of platforms and portfolios that used to be a lot healthier. But now because costs have risen, revenue hasn’t grown and I think they are finding themselves in what I call the ‘subscale zone.’ And that means that you’re big enough that you need to have all of the services and people and platforms to manage a company that’s $25 to $50 million, but with the cost pressures you’re not able to free up enough money to invest in your growth. And if you’re not investing in your growth, then you’re probably standing still.

And standing still is really going backward because everyone wants a raise. The landlord wants a raise; the paper company wants a raise; their staff wants a raise. Somebody told me once that if you’re not growing your revenue, you’re going out of business slowly and that’s absolutely true.

Despite having phenomenal products and people and a lot of innovation, being stuck in that subscale box puts a lot of a pressure on a company. So this acquisition is a great antidote to that. It gets us out of that zone and puts us in a higher revenue tax bracket in terms of the size of the company. It gave us a ton of new, super-talented people that are a lot like our A people coming over from Taunton and they’re super innovative. With limited resources they’re laying a lot of good foundations to grow the business, which we can now do together.

So I say that 2024 is a lot more promising than 2023 was. We didn’t set out a path to make a big acquisition in 2023, but as we got into the year and we saw the results of the increases in cost and the challenges of growing without investing, we thought ok, we need to change the model here. How do you do that? It’s certainly always risky and fraught with lots of other unintended consequences, but we’ve been M&A (Merger & Acquisition)  driven for 20 years and had a lot of great success doing that. The only difference is this one is on my back and my partner’s completely to make it work. We don’t have any outside investors or banks, so we’re operating without a net.  

Samir Husni: But on one hand, I’m sure it’s a relief. The only people you have to congratulate or blame would be you or your partner.

Andy Clurman: It’s a really fun position to be in. And then on the other hand, I’m still very involved with our equine business, which is backed by some great private equity partners and we’ve been going great guns there with the Equine Network. It’s somewhat of a parallel universe, but a little different business model.

Samir Husni: You’re strong on events, digital and print, what’s the end collectibles? And what’s the revenue mix?

Andy Clurman: We are now about 52% in terms of print revenue and of that it’s about 60/40 consumer revenue to advertising revenue. The remainder is made up of digital revenue from digital products, digital memberships, online education and learning, digital events, which we do a lot of digital events, and then live events. So we still have a good portfolio of in-person events and we’re growing more of those.

We’re doing curated gardening tours internationally and domestically, which have been booming. We’re relaunching a woodworking in-person event series. We still have in-person writing events for novelists and screenwriters. We still have some boutique home shows and traditional building conferences.

So I look at the business as we have 36 revenue lines in our P&L’s, not all in equal size and magnitude, and they certainly benefit from each other, but they don’t operate in box step. We look at where the things are that we can grow and put time and investment into those.

Samir Husni: I know it’s not a fair question to ask you, but do you have a crown jewel? Do you have a favorite child among your many?

Andy Clurman: It depends on who’s making the most money at any given moment. It’s just like I have three kids and I might tell any one of them, you’re my favorite today. (Laughs) Some are more evolved than others. Where our woodworking business has got 10 different dimensions to it and it’s really credible to see what’s been built there over the years, some are more one dimensional. It’s fun to have them learn from each other.

But there’s not a template boiler plate for every brand in every market. So what works in wood working wouldn’t necessarily work in super yachts. The strength of the company is in the diversity of the markets, the brands, and the people we have. Unfortunately, I spend most of my time on fixing problems or pushing the envelope on new frontiers, so I probably don’t spend enough time appreciating when the brands are going great and our crown jewels.

Samir Husni: Are you going to merge any of the magazines you just acquired, such as Fine Woodworking and Popular Woodworking? Are they going to be combined or continue as separate entities?

Andy Clurman: It’s interesting, historically I’ve worked for companies like Times Mirror when they owned Ski Magazine and Field & Stream, then bought Skiing Magazine and Outdoor Life. So I’ve worked in companies where you had multiple brands within one category. When those brands were ad businesses and ad driven, then they easily cannibalized each other with the advertisers.

When they’re consumer driven…for example, when we bought Popular Woodworking and Horticulture out of the F+W bankruptcy and we already had Woodsmith and Garden Gate, we thought that we were just going to combine them. But as we got into it and did some research, we found out they both had unique consumer franchises. And you know well, in the magazine world one plus one equals one typically in magazines and magazine brand audiences.

So we kept them separate and they have thrived in that way. Likewise, with Fine Woodworking and Fine Gardening which are great brands and have big audiences, our belief is that if it is a consumer driven business and consumers have made a choice to be part of a brand and a community, forcing them to join another doesn’t always work out the way you thought it might.

We’re going to look at lots of ways to cross-promote, cross-sell, up-sell, and take products that exist in one but not the other. But for now, unless proven otherwise, we think we’re going to keep the brands and manage them independently.

Samir Husni: Are they going to stay in Connecticut or are you moving everything to Colorado?

Andy Clurman: We have both in Colorado and Connecticut. Our official headquarters is Des Moines, Iowa now. After we sold our Healthy Living and Outdoor group to Outside, we don’t really have a critical mass of people in Colorado anymore. Taunton has also been working remotely since the pandemic, so they only had a few people going onto their campus in Newtown. And we’ve been wildly successful working remotely.

We still have offices in Des Moines and we have our woodshop and TV studio there and office space. We’re going to keep the woodshop and office space in Newtown, Connecticut where Taunton is, for the folks who work out of there. A lot of them are producing video, producing television, and doing the hands-on woodworking projects. So we’ve leased that building going forward.

Samir Husni: I call 2023 the year of the bookazines. We’ve seen more than 1,000 SIPs come to the marketplace. A360 put 525 on the shelves.

Andy Clurman: You can thank my friend Doug Olson for that.

Samir Husni: (Laughs) Do you think there’s still a future for print or do you feel it’s changing?

Andy Clurman: I think there’s a future for print. It’s one of the oldest forms of communication.  And we know from neurological studies that it has a different impact on people when it comes to consuming information. The tactile experience. The ability to curate and surprise people with things they weren’t expecting. And I think the fundamental demand for print is still there; the channels to get it into people’s hands is very challenged, especially from the newsstand standpoint.

As much as we still produce a lot of newsstand products and we’re on the newsstand and we produce a lot of print subscription products, we’re trying to evolve the business where we’re not going to be beholden to Google and Facebook, newsstand distribution and the retail system, which I think right now would be algorithmic changes.

I’m hearing from friends of mine who run digital only companies that are seeing these massive audience drops, they’re telling me whatever Google is up to now. And that is consuming their every waking thought. I don’t want to be beholden to one big advertiser or one big platform.

Print is a foundation. Individually, everything we publish in print is profitable. And it’s part of our brand, position, platform, legitimacy, authenticity, all those things. You can get it, but it’s hard to get just in a digital form because there are so many people producing content all day every day.

Samir Husni: Let’s talk about the trust factor; can you trust print more than digital? Because once you print something you can’t change it.

Andy Clurman: Is that a rhetorical question? It’s funny at how print is held at such a different standard than digital, which is a good thing. You can do outrageous things on digital networks and social media networks and suffer no consequences, where if you betray your audience in print, do that at your peril.

I think the things that have a very strong affinity with the audience make people take ownership of a magazine. They say things like don’t do that to my magazine. I know that our editors feel the same way. The people at Fine Homebuilding or Woodsmith or Power & Motoryacht, the editors and designers all feel that responsibility from the audience.

I’m not sentimental about print, however. My first magazine job was at Skiing Magazine in New York City and I’m the one who discontinued it in print a bunch of years ago when the business didn’t work anymore.

So we’re managing print as part of the portfolio and we’re doing it happily as long as it continues to contribute. I’ve seen a little bit of growth in print and subscription revenues in 2023, which was gratifying, particularly after the pandemic finally eased up.

It’s not a line of business that private equity is going to get excited about or Wall Street gets excited about, but it’s a great business as an owner-operated private company where you’re not subject to the expectations and pressures of those kind of investors.

Samir Husni: You have all of these specialized titles with the marine brand, the hallmark, homebuilding brand and others. And you also have Writer’s Digest. Where does it fit in this group of titles that you have?

Andy Clurman: There are things that I personally have an affinity for, that goes with my own hobbies and interests. But as a business, where there’s a great, strong community of people, like my new people, with enough critical mass and information, with community wants and needs, there’s your reason. And not everything works for everyone, but we have the abilities in the people in the company to manage events, to produce online education, to produce all kinds of digital products.

So you can substitute woodworking for writing or car collecting for gardening, but our mentality and strategies are roughly the same across the whole waterfront.

Samir Husni: And it’s your oldest title at over 100-years-old?

Andy Clurman: Writer’s Digest and Horticulture are both well over 100-years-old.

Samir Husni: I wonder if we’ll ever celebrate 100 years with any digital entity?

Andy Clurman: (Laughs) Well, we always hear that Meet The Press is the longest running television show on television. I’m on the board of Yankee Publishing. And compared to Meet The Press, Yankee is the longest, continuously published periodical in America dating back, I think, 275 years. And they still sell over a million copies a year.

Samir Husni: So if you and I were talking a year from now, what would you hope to tell me you had accomplished in 2024?

Andy Clurman: We are expecting, projecting, counting on reigniting some growth in our business after spending last year fighting inflation and figuring out a transformative way to get out of that box I was describing.

Having done that, I hope to follow through with all the plans we have around that. And one of those is, we are in the late stages of building out a much more sophisticated consumer data platform and automated marketing stack, which we built a big organization around to manage that. Then we can launch a whole bunch of even nichier products because even within the audience of writers there’s people who are science fiction writers, screen writers, murder-mystery writers and more..

So we think we can identify new groups of people or smaller groups of people and have an ability to serve more tailored content and services and products of interest to them. In Power & Motoryacht you’ve got people who are center console, offshore fishing people, you’ve got people who are Great Lakes bass boat fishing people.

So even though were already very niche, we still have a pretty big tent within these markets. So being able to serve them efficiently and at a relative scale, and also do a much better job of marketing to people rather than just everybody being the same. And  to have a system set up where you’re speaking more specifically to people’s interests and serving them with a whole array of products around that.

We think that’s a growth path for us. So with the combined energy, people and experience, I’d love to be looking back this time next year and say we have all of the major lines of business growing at some rate. We don’t need to grow 20% if we can stay ahead of inflation instead of going out of business slowly. Instead, securing the future. Then I’ll consider that a good day’s work.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Andy Clurman: We have a lot of people relying on us in our company for their welfare and prosperity, even though I tell them that I consider them shareholders because they’re investing their time, money and career. For us, it’s making sure that we can provide them with a good outcome. I don’t think that we’re living on the ragged edge, but we’re risk takers and we’re doing things that are hopefully for all of our benefit.

I feel like the promises have been made and the expectations have been set so that everybody is gratified to be part of this. And is proud of what they’re doing.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“We really believe that in the end you need to give your customers a choice of how they want to find you. And many of them want print. Our customers want the print product and we offer them four different versions of that.”

“As it gets harder and harder, we have to understand that we’re in this together. And that each of us has a responsibility of making sure we deliver the products to our readers. When we make it accessible to our readers, when we make it plain to them why magazines are important, I think the readers respond really well.”

The Old Farmer’s Almanac has been around for 232 years. It has been present in most of our lives forever. We have come to depend on it and to look for it every year. And it’s still as relevant and significant as it was when it first began.

Sherin Pierce is publisher of the magazine and has been for over 25 years. According to the magazine’s website Sherin leads a team responsible for the long-term strategic planning of the Almanac brand, including new product development, oversight of editorial, and management of the book’s finances and ancillary businesses. She also oversees the Almanac’s robust promotional and marketing activities, including the Almanac’s expansive social media channels. 

In Mr. Magazine’s mind, she puts the magazine out there and meets people where they are, be that on digital or in print, or any other way they want to find it. Something she believes in strongly.

So please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Sherin Pierce, vice president and publisher, The Old Farmer’s Almanac. 

But first the sound bites:

On how The Old Farmer’s Almanac has survived almost two and a half centuries: I like to say how it’s thrived all these years is simply because I think when the Almanac started, it started with a very clear and simple premise: to always be useful with a pleasant degree of humor. 

On how important it is for a magazine publisher to stay true to the magazine’s concept and not change with the wind: I think being authentic, being real, and understanding what your mission is and what people expect from you year after year, is absolutely the North Star for us. There are times, especially when people are faced with a pandemic such as COVID or faced with recession or inflation, they turn to things that are simpler and things that will help them in their daily lives.

On the competitors of The Old Farmer’s Almanac: In every publication we do with the name The Old Farmer’s Almanac, we pay so much attention and care to what we are putting out there for our readers. They get the experience of the Almanac in various forms, through calendars, through our gardening books, they get that whole experience, which is what our competitors haven’t been able to do.

On the circulation of The Old Farmer’s Almanac: We distribute 2.5 million copies. We have four different editions: a mass market edition, newsstand edition and two bookstore editions, with a hardcover as well. And why we’ve done this is because we want to make sure that all the different editions serve our multiple channels of distribution.

On having a minute number of editors over the last 232 years: We’ve had 13 editors and our 13th editor is retiring after close to 23 years. We’ve just hired the 14th editor in our Almanac’s history. It really builds the consistency of the product and the voice. People have time to hone what the message should be. We don’t have a revolving door. But to that point, there’s been 13 editors, but 23 publishers. The publishers always get fired. (Laughs)

On whether her job as publisher has been a walk in a rose garden: Oh no, not at all. It’s a walk in the field; it’s a walk in the woods; it’s a walk in deer-filled gardens and vegetable gardens, in shrubs and fruit trees. I think we would have been remiss if years ago we had said we’re going to just stick to print and not bother with the other mediums. But the group publisher in 1996 said we had to go on the Internet. 

On some of the major challenges they’ve had: One of the biggest challenges we’ve had has been in retail. In one part of our retail presence we have our bookstore edition, which has been doing tremendously well, both in stores and on Amazon. We have our own direct distribution to Tractor Supply and to Ace and to the nontraditional bookstore accounts. Again the Almanac, being the type of product that can transfer different types of retail has done very well there.

On whether The Old Farmer’s Almanac is mostly older readers: No, it’s been surprising what readers have come to us for. I think the younger generation, many folks grew up without getting advice on most basic things in life. Look up at the sky, look at the planets. what are the signs of nature? How do you start a little garden? How do you do a container garden?

On 250,000 of the Veggie Garden Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook going into print: Yes, and for a gardening book  that’s a lot. We printed six times. It’s a gardening book, but it came out at the time when COVID stuck in people at home, and they wanted something.

On anything she’d like to add: I think the Almanac is always a surprise. And when people read it, they always say they grew up with it, they always saw it in their grandparents house, or on the farm of a relative or something. And I always urge people to pick it up again for the first time. Remember. McCall’s ad campaign, read it again for the first time, it’s the same thing.

On what keeps her up at night: I think what keeps me up is that I would hope our distribution channels realize that it’s really a partnership. And that all of us have a responsibility of making sure that our publications reach our audience.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Sherin Pierce, vice president and publisher, The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Samir Husni: Recently you were featured on Jeopardy and they asked about the little 

yellow magazine that has a punch hole in the corner. Your magazine, The Old Farmer’s Almanac is almost two and a half centuries old. Tell me what’s going on; how does it survive all of these years?

Sherin Pierce: Well, I like to say how it’s thrived all these years is simply because I think when the Almanac started, it started with a very clear and simple premise: to always be useful with a pleasant degree of humor.

So it started with that premise, to always be useful with a pleasant degree of humor. And I think the one thing that we’ve always tried to deliver ever since the first publication, the first issue in 1792 is to give people the information they need for their daily lives, which was very simple when it first started. The nation was an agrarian nation, and so it talked about the seasons, the calendar, the heavens, any other information that was pertinent, the holidays, the coach roots, everything that was important to people at that time. 

And that’s what the Almanac has continued to do through the centuries, 232 years of continuous publication. It has always looked to see what do people need within the purview of what the almanac provides. We’re very clear about what we provide to our readers. We don’t stray in different directions, we talk about astronomy, the weather, gardening and other things such as food, home remedies, things that are useful to people’s lives. 

We talk about the sunrise and the sunset; how to read the planets, things that yes, are available in many other mediums or in many other ways, but we put them together; we curate them; we fact check; we make sure that we fulfill what our readers expect from us year after year and also give them a little more. The expectations and the surprises are what keep the Almanac front and center and beloved because it fulfills its mission, hopefully, every single year.

Samir Husni: With all the changes that are taking place in society, somehow the Old Farmer’s Almanac has stayed true to its focus. It did not cover COVID: it did not cover the pandemic at all; it didn’t cover any civil war either. So tell me how important is it for a magazine publisher to stay true to the concept and not change with the wind?

Sherin Pierce: I think being authentic, being real, and understanding what your mission is and what people expect from you year after year, is absolutely the North Star for us. There are times, especially when people are faced with a pandemic such as COVID or faced with recession or inflation, they turn to things that are simpler and things that will help them in their daily lives. 

Gardening was huge during COVID. And for us, people came to the magazine wanting to know how to garden. They wanted the most basic advice about how to grow vegetables; how to understand what they should do to fulfill this urge and need to garden and to understand that. 

I think authenticity, building your credibility, and building people’s trust is very important, because that’s how they come back to you year after year in print, and in any way they can access the Almanac. They come back to you because you are curating the best advice and giving that to people. Trust and credibility you have to earn, it’s not something you demand, you earn it. 

Samir Husni: Through the years you’ve had so many competitors, but you’ve managed to grow and grow. How big is this small publication?

Sherin Pierce: Well, first of all, the Old Farmer’s Almanac is our trademark name, as opposed to Farmer’s Almanac, which is a generic term for any farmer’s almanac. And there have been plenty of people who, when you’re the number one in the field, you have a lot of imitators. 

And they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but only if the imitators are good.

I think people have been distracted and picked up and imitated. Again, it goes back to the quality of the information. The care and the quality of what we are gathering together for our readers is really important. And once you see what ours is, as opposed to what the other farmer’s almanacs have been trying to offer, I think people realize that you can’t rest on your laurels and say, well, I’m the oldest, therefore, I’m the best. The competition is fierce and you have to prove it year after year. You go back every single year and prove it. 

And not just the Almanac itself. In every publication we do with the name The Old Farmer’s Almanac, we pay so much attention and care to what we are putting out there for our readers. They get the experience of the Almanac in various forms, through calendars, through our gardening books, they get that whole experience, which is what our competitors haven’t been able to do. 

So as long as we’re able to keep the Mother publication, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, really vibrant and robust, useful and forward-looking, we’re good. We want backward-looking only with respect to the tradition. We want to be in the present and in the future, forward-looking because that’s how we want to take our readers with us to give them the best advice along this journey. Forward.

Samir Husni: And in a day and age where we are seeing circulations shrinking. what’s the circulation of The Old Farmer’s Almanac?

Sherin Pierce: We distribute 2.5 million copies. We have four different editions: a mass market edition, newsstand edition and two bookstore editions, with a hardcover as well. And why we’ve done this is because we want to make sure that all the different editions serve our multiple channels of distribution. 

We also want to make sure that it’s not just retail distribution that we have all our focus on. We have subscription programs as well with the hardcover edition and reprints of the 100 and 200th anniversary edition. As a publication that has an archive that you can pull on and draw on, you can offer these special type of programs within The Old Farmer’s Almanac. We also have the Almanacs in a gardening club and an almanac club. So we’ve tried to find different ways of producing the Almanac. In total, with all the different editions, we’re 2.5 million copies.

Samir Husni: I think one of the reasons for your success and longevity is that consistency in the mission and in the concept. You don’t have a revolving door for editors. You don’t change editors every month. For the last 232 years, you have had twelve editors?

Sherin Pierce: We’ve had 13 editors and our 13^th editor is retiring after close to 23 years. We’ve just hired the 14th editor in our Almanac’s history. It really builds the consistency of the product and the voice. People have time to hone what the message should be. We don’t have a revolving door. But to that point, there’s been 13 editors, but 23 publishers. The publishers always get fired. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: Is your job as publisher of The Old Farmer’s Almanac a walk in a rose garden?

Sherin Pierce: Oh no, not at all. It’s a walk in the field; it’s a walk in the woods; it’s a walk in deer-filled gardens and vegetable gardens, in shrubs and fruit trees. I think we would have been remiss if years ago we had said we’re going to just stick to print and not bother with the other mediums. But the group publisher in 1996 said we had to go on the Internet. We had to have our own website: almanac.com. We started that in 1996 and it really taught us a lot. We didn’t take the whole Almanac and put it on the website. Almanac.com gave us an opportunity, 24/7, to talk about all the various elements in the Almanac that you can’t cover in print and update because it’s an annual publication. 

We could update that personally. We could give you your weather forecast based on your zip code. And we could do a lot of other things that you can’t do in print. So we found ways to pull people into The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The website sent people to print and print also promoted the website. They worked together, hand in glove, in tandem. Really enhancing one another. 

Also on the website and through our email newsletters, we could talk to our customers and readers every single day. So that became important again because they had ways to reach out to us and to talk to us through feedback. 

Social media just accelerated that or accentuated that more through Facebook. We have close to 1.7 million social media followers, Instagram and Pinterest too of course. What we do is make sure that people have access to us online in social media. But we also bring them back to our print products. 

So everything we do, whether it’s our Veggie Gardener’s Handbook, which is a bestseller and Amazon’s number one vegetable gardening handbook,  everything we do we’re able to cross promote and cross pollinate the information so that in our world all boats rise when you talk about everything. It’s not just we’re going to abandon print because print is dead as they said 15 years ago. Everything’s going to be on EPUB. When we have the Almanac as a Kindle publication or an iPad or Nook, we have that for people who want to access us that way. 

But we really believe that in the end you need to give your customers a choice of how they want to find you. And many of them want print. Our customers want the print product and we offer them four different versions of that. 

So we’ve had to listen and adapt and continually change some error to be a relevant part of the marketplace. And that’s what we’ve had to do as a small company with our limited resources, we’ve had to really be flexible and nimble and keep adapting.

Samir Husni: Being flexible is one issue you’re dealing with, but what are some of the major challenges you’re facing today?

Sherin Pierce: One of the biggest challenges we’ve had has been in retail. In one part of our retail presence we have our bookstore edition, which has been doing tremendously well, both in stores and on Amazon. We have our own direct distribution to Tractor Supply and to Ace and to the nontraditional bookstore accounts. Again the Almanac, being the type of product that can transfer different types of retail has done very well there. 

And I’m really thankful for that because the newsstand as you know, of which we’ve always been a huge supporter and part of, has really presented a lot of challenges and a lot of increased expenses in terms of distribution costs, which every publisher is facing, every publisher. And we’ve all had to in the face of the supply issues. distribution cost, distribution to the store’s cost, and then the wholesaler distribution cost. Being constantly asked about increasing a discount.  All these things, we’ve had to face all of that and figure out how do we fit in this newsstand marketplace where these huge wholesaler groups that are controlling our destiny.

For us, it’s been a huge curve over the last year that’s been the challenge that everybody’s facing. We’ve had to really review all our print orders and floor display programs. We don’t sell a single display for the Almanac without another product being in it. There’s always going to be an Almanac for kids or a calendar to help us offset and increase our sales so we can face some of these increased expenses. We’ve had to make those changes as well and push back and say no, this is as much as we’re going to be able to do. and this is the type of configuration we’re going to sell And that’s been our challenge. 

And despite the merchandising problems that everybody experienced last year, the Almanac sales on the newsstand have been down 4 percent. But without those merchandising problems 

we would have equaled or exceeded our 2022 numbers. So I’m really hopeful about 2024. Merchandising should hold. These are things beyond our purview, but last year that was a double whammy, the logistics fees and the merchandising problems. But we are able to still make our way through. We don’t want a repeat of that, at least the merchandising problems. And that’s the challenge. 

So my advice always is make sure you have diverse channels of distribution so you’re not dependent on anyone for your success in distribution. That’s really important. And that’s really helped us.

Samir Husni: People keep on saying that only old people now care for print or look for print. Yet you have The Old Farmer’s Almanac for kids. Are all your readers mostly older? 

Sherin Pierce: No, it’s been surprising what readers have come to us for. I think the younger generation, many folks grew up without getting advice on most basic things in life. Look up at the sky, look at the planets. what are the signs of nature? How do you start a little garden? How do you do a container garden? 

All these most basic things have not been passed down recently. It’s like saying, well my grandfather taught me this.  Everyone’s been so busy. And life has been so challenging and evolving, constantly on the move. 

People haven’t had time to really master the basics and some of the basics that we can teach really well, they come to us for through online, through social media. People have come back to print. Proof is in the pudding. The veggie gardener’s handbook, which is a book, is now in its 6th printing. Over three years we’ve printed 250,000 copies and when you read the comments of people who are buying it, so many are like I was looking for basic information to teach and guide me as to how to do something. And this explains everything so clearly. I can follow it and it gives me confidence to do what I need to do. 

And that’s what has been amazing. It’s young families, people starting out. They care about the environment. They care about sustainability. They want to know what kind of food they’re feeding their families. You have something within your control. You can do that. We can help you do that. 

Reading, now that you get feedback very quickly through your social media, on almanac.com. I read the comments on Amazon all the time to see what people are saying when they’re reviewing the books. There’s so many ways people get back to. You know that the demographic that’s reading The Old Farmer’s Almanac is far younger than one would imagine it to be. And we are guiding another generation and saying, there are ways to do things. You don’t always have to have the biggest and the best. Sometimes you start small, you have success and you grow.

Your first little success grows into something bigger. But it’s a confidence in the advice and the truth. What people are looking for.

Samir Husni: And you said 250,000, right? 250,000 of the Veggie Garden Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook has been in print?

Sherin Pierce: Yes, and for a gardening book  that’s a lot. We printed six times. It’s a gardening book, but it came out at the time when COVID stuck in people at home, and they wanted something. 

So we’ve already licensed the Veggie Gardener’s Handbook to a publisher in New Zealand. And that’s our first foreign license. And now I got an inquiry to license it to a publisher in Italy as well. It’s just a common theme: how to grow vegetables? What are the pests? What are the things about the soil?  You start with soil. That’s the most important thing. We have places where you can make notes and you can journal in the book. So it becomes a very interactive book in print. People have a level of comfort. How do you do companion planting; it’s all  there. 

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical last question, is there anything else you would like to add?

Sherin Pierce: I think the Almanac is always a surprise. And when people read it, they always say they grew up with it, they always saw it in their grandparents house, or on the farm of a relative or something. And I always urge people to pick it up again for the first time. Remember. McCall’s ad campaign, read it again for the first time, it’s the same thing. 

People think they know it, but when they actually settle down with it and can read it in small chunks, they don’t have to read it in this one big binge, they’ll find that it is always so useful. It’s going to guide you in your life. It’s going to tell you; it’s going to give you that reassurance that every year, every day, the sun is going to rise, and the sun is going to set. And you’re  going to know that every single day. 

The seasons, you’re going to have four seasons. And no matter what happens, there’s a certain continuity to life. And that’s what the Almanac gives you. It gives you that optimism and that hope that you can get through anything. And I hope in each of our publications, our voice, and how we present the product, good value is what you’ll see running through each of the publications.

Samir Husni: My typical last question, what keeps you up at night? 

Sherin Pierce: I think what keeps me up is that I would hope our distribution channels realize that it’s really a partnership. And that all of us have a responsibility of making sure that our publications reach our audience. 

As it gets harder and harder, we have to understand that we’re in this together. And that each of us has a responsibility of making sure we deliver the products to our readers. When we make it accessible to our readers, when we make it plain to them why magazines are important, I think the readers respond really well. 

But in these times when there’s a lot of trouble, when everyone’s faced with all the challenges, we need for everyone to understand that we have to work together. And it’s not a combative thing. It’s like understanding all the pressures that all of us have. But we have to work together to ensure that magazines stay a relevant and significant part of people’s lives. 

That’s what worries me, but that’s why on the Almanac we found different ways of making sure that people find that little Yellow Book. (Laughs) That they can find it and can look at it and refer to it throughout the year.

Samir Husni: Thank you.