Mr. Magazine

Are you looking for the “100 Best New Tech Toys for Men?” Well look no further than the December issue of Men’s Health. The magazine’s sky line invites you to flip over the magazine to look at those toys on the back cover. To my surprise, the back cover shows no toys, but instead the star of Heroes Dania Ramirez holding a camera in her hand with an added cover line “100 Sexy New Gadgets That Will Change Your Life.” I am not saying I was disappointed but rather surprised. One more action and the toys are revealed…the back cover opens to a gate-fold that shows some of the toys. The picture below is for the back cover opened…Toys or no toys, it is the season to be thankful, so many thanks to all the Mr. Magazine blog readers, and to all the friends and peers in the magazine world. Happy Thanksgiving and all the best from me and the entire staff of www.mrmagazine.com

I met Dave Eggers for the first time in 1994 right after he published Might magazine which I have selected in that year as one of the most notable launches of 1994. I was so impressed (and still is) by the magazine that folded after a year or so for lack of funding. Dave tried his best to secure funding for the magazine, including sending a letter to John Mack Carter at Hearst (who was publishing my Guide at that year) asking for Hearst to be involved with Might. The response from John was negative and Dave, in a very smart move, published the letter from John in Might.
Well, times have changed and as fate will have it, Dave’s odds in book and magazine publishing have changed and he is in no need to write letters to big companies asking for help in funding his great magazine ideas. He can do it on his own (or with his wife) and in a completely different way. In the November 2007 issue of The Progressive Dave is interviewed in depth about his books, organizations and magazines. One paragraph caught my attention from that interview. It was the one dealing with Might, McSweeney’s and The Believer. Nina Siegal asked him whether he fears the corrupting influence of the mass market. Here is part of his answer (which works also as a great response to all the naysayers who continue to spread the word that no one can start a magazine in this day and age):

“With Might, we did it the dumb way. We thought we had to do 100,000 circulation and we had to have all this advertising, and it was never going to happen and no one got paid, we were all perpetually disappointed, and it folded. We found out that wasn’t the way to do it.
With McSweeny’s and The Believer we decided to do the math better, to depend on the readers, not on advertisers or anyone else. If the readers think it’s good, it will keep growing. That way, there’s no compromise. The Believer ahs a circulation of 17,000 to 20,000 and I don’t know if it will ever surpass that. And get this: Because of reader support, McSweeney’s, the literary quarterly, is able to subsidize some of the more eccentric projects we take on. It’s bizarre but it can work if you depend on the wisdom of your readers.

In The Rainbow Room and on the 64th floor of Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan the fourth annual Custom Publishing Council’s Pearl Awards were presented to several magazines, on line websites and annual reports. This is my second year in co-presenting the Pearl awards to well deserving custom publications and websites. My co-presenter Laurel Touby, CEO and Founder of mediabistro.com and I presented the awards to the winners from a field of more than 550 entries. Since I try not to talk or write about events that I am involved in, here is a link to Joe Pulizzi’s blog where he reported on the event. Check his blog and check the list of all the great outlets that won the gold, silver and bronze awards for 2007. On a side-note, the Custom Publishing Council is sponsoring a Custom Content Conference to be held next year on March 9 – 11 in the city of New Orleans, LA. For more info on the conference click here.

The other day as I was ready to open what I thought was my usual monthly subscriber’s “black plastic wrapped Playboy magazine,” I had one of the biggest surprises waiting for me inside that black plastic wrap. It was not Playboy magazine but rather Islamica magazine. The black plastic wrap revealed the new issue of Islamica magazine inside it and not Playboy. The black plastic wrap is where all similarities between the two magazines end. Islamica’s cover story is on Media Wars and the Aljazeera effect, while Playboy’s cover story is on Hollywood’s newest sex star. What a surprise! I understand the reasons behind Playboy hiding its cover under black plastic wrap, but I do not understand why Islamica magazine has to use the same technique. Are we really reaching the stage where we have to protect subscribers of Islamica magazine the same way we protect Playboy subscribers from the watchful eye of the post office? Judge for yourself. Above is the before and below is the after.