Magazine Death Pool

Letter to the Reaper: Request from FPO Magazine

Dear Grim Reaper,

I was reading Magazine Death Pool this morning, and it spurred me to contact you about our upcoming TIPS issue. 

Here at FPO Magazine, the quarterly publication for magazine creatives, we're working on issue  #4: “Magazines from A to Z,” an issue-length “grazing section.” And we could use your help. Below is a working list of categories we plan to include, and we hope you and your readers will help us fill them. Please post this on your blog so the message gets out to as many people as possible. Every contributor whose tip(s) is published will receive attribution, a link on the FPO website and a “Get Creative” tee (so include your size with your submission!).

Words We Never Want to See Again
Top Ten Typefaces
Top Ten Overused Typefaces
Great Websites
Big Ideas, Small Publishers
Favorite Magazine
New Typefaces
Great Magazine Covers
Grammarcheck (funny faux pas)
Best New (and Old) Books (on writing, editing or design)
Magazine Launches
Other People’s Lists
My Favorite Spreads
Illustrator Spotlight (illustrators you like)
Program Tips (software)
Free Stuff
Type Tips
Design Tips
Editing Tips
Magazine Comebacks
Top 10 Cliché Headlines

Share your tips at www.fpomagazine.com/readertips, or email them directly to me at mckeithen@fpomagazine.com.

Thanks! We look forward to hearing from you!

Nancy

Nancy McKeithen
Associate Editor, FPO Magazine
mckeithen@fpomagazine.com

Letter to the Reaper

I find your website to be of great interest and your insights into the magazine business invaluable.  However, as someone who has always subscribed to too many magazines, I am somewhat put off by your tone.  You often seem to be a little too happy to report on the demise, or more often, the pending demise of one periodical or another.   Did you have a bad experience in the magazine publishing world?

 

I have to admit to being split on the entire subject.   I am amazed and confounded by the number of titles on display at the bookstore - and would not miss 90% of them if they disappeared, except for the simple pleasure of seeing that much variety available.   If all the golf, and travel, and craft, and guns, and wrestling (etc) mags were to disappear, that would be OK with me.   Of course, if the New Yorker or Scientific American (or even EW) died, I would feel badly.   Hell, I still mourn the loss of Saturday Review and Civilization.

 

Of course, you have figured out by now that I am an old timer, who loved the days when every decent sized city had at least two dailies, and the news was not reduced to bloggers quoting each other.    

 

Despite my qualms about celebrating the death of almost anything in print, I do enjoy your posts.   I hope that the difficult environment for print favors the publications of quality.   Of course,  I have little hope that will be the case.   But, then again, didn't you report that US was in trouble.   I had thought that might be the last magazine in print.

Jim M.

Letter to the Reaper: Is American Heritage really trying to increase its circulation?

Dear Reaper:

I was thrilled to hear about the re-launch of American Heritage, a magazine I always loved to read and long wished to write for.

So with a story in the works that would be perfect to pitch, I cruised over to their site and checked out their writer's guidelines...only to find a stiff, tersley worded two-page PDF file that, among other things, asks writers to use footnotes and annotations, like on those papers you had to write in school twenty years ago.

Now I ask you, is a magazine that's editorial policy clings to academic-journal standards really a serious candidate for increased circulation outside of people seeking their master's degree in American studies.

If you are going to re-launch, try re-launching in a way that doesn't look backward.

Dear Reaper, please don't shut Business 2.0

Dear Reaper:

Please don't come and swing that sharp thing in your hands at Business 2.0. Yes, I know you predicted it would be a goner soon because the ads are not coming in and Time Inc. is on the ropes these days.

We've even formed a Facebook group so we can pretend we're the fans of that show "Jericho" and  save our beloved magazine from the ax. 

Search me why readers love this magazine and are so passionate about it and circulation is very respectable and unusually steady, but advertisers are smitten with web campaigns. Reaper, if you have the loyal readers in big numbers, why don't the advertisers just wake up when you've got this kind of committed audience?

So I know you've been looming outside the Time-Life Building lately, but do you think you can take your swing at something else here, like Entertainment Tonight, those guys don't have many ads either, or maybe Cottage Living (who wants to read a magazine about living in a cottage anyway?).

Letters to The Reaper: "Memories" magazine DID catch on

Mr. Reaper--

I take issue with your assertion that Memories magazine, of
 which I was editor, never caught on. On the contrary, our circulation
 growth was extraordinary. After only 13 issues, we had reached 600,000
 paid subscriptions, and we went from six times a year to 12 only a
 month before the French owners of Hachette pulled the plug. Why, then, did
 they kill it? Because Diamandis Communications Incorporated (DCI), the
 magazine company they had purchased a couple of years before, was way
 off its projected revenues, largely because of the recession of 1989,
 which hit DCI's flagship publication, Woman's Day, particularly hard.
 Road and Track and Car and Driver were also hard hit, so much so that
 I was told that Hachette (DCI's new name) had to renegotiate the note with the bank that
 had initially financed the purchase. Though not yet profitable, at the
 time of its death Memories was in fact nearly a million dollars ahead of
 where it was projected to be. But Hachette did not have the estimated
 $5 million needed to get it the rest of the way to profitability. As for
 the syndicated TV series, Memories, to which you allude, it premiered
 a week or two after Hachette announced they were suspending
 publication. By the time it hit the airwaves, Memories was itself a memory.

Carey Winfrey
Smithsonian Magazine
Washington, DC

More "Museum of Dead Magazines" Suggestions

My new "Museum of Dead Magazines" sparked some suggestions of collection additions. You know, it's tough to remember all these titles when your head is full of cobwebs! So I promise to be adding to the collection this week.

Here are two letter excerpts:

"Suede  - although it supposedly has new interested investors.
Unlimited  - Marlboro's beautiful oversized magazine.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's magazine
Radar  -  was it ever really alive?
Teen Beat  - 'nuff said."

"How about the late great Linguafranca?... surely the multiple National Magazine Award-winning Linguafranca bears mention. I'd also vote for Taxi and Egg."

And a faithful fan writes in her wise suggestion of a magazine that definitely bears watching:

"Hello -   

For years, I subscribed to "Movieline" magazine. Then, they overhauled it, changed the name to "Movieline's Hollywood Life", and totally screwed it up, changing it from a movie lover's magazine to just another fluffy, stupid, fashion & celebrities magazine. I loathed it, and immediately cancelled my subscription.

 

Is there good news? Is "Movieline's Hollywood Life" floundering?

 

Thank you for a very interesting, cool site!"

"The Mass Market Is A Very Tough Slog...."

Dear Reaper,

love the site...pithy, slightly scathing and sadly, very much based on
reality.

I am a publisher/editor/sales/chief bottle washer...of a fairly small
mag...it has a pretty hard core following - I cover skateboarding...but 
not the rails and ledges you see in Transworld...we cover slalom, 
transition, pools, ditches, longboarding and show all ages and even female skaters. 
Yes, there is a market for this.

The reality is that the mass market is a very tough slog and the mass 
market titles that litter your site are in for a very rough ride.

The very small folks (like me - circ is at 20,000) will survive if we 
nuture a very strong relationship with our readers. As the numbers are small, 
I can afford to call subscribers and return emails within 30 seconds.

One rider at a time, one reader at a time, one subscriber at time is my
motto... but that is very expensive for the big guys.

Print ain't dead... people still want to relax with a mag... they want 
(in the case of my mag) a nice memory of a skateboarding event (we are heavy on
photos) and hopefully, they want to be affiliated with something truly
special.

There are enormous challenges ahead, but the payoff is when a subscriber 
tells me that Concrete Wave brought them back into skateboarding or got 
them interested in longboarding.

cheers
Michael Brooke
Publisher

Concrete Wave
1054 Center Street
Suite 293
Thornhill ONTARIO
L4J 8E5
concretewavemagazine.com

"Where's Action Sports?" "Fly Canadian" "God Likes Giant"

As the Eagles used to sing, "Oh well, it's been a good day in hell." The e-mail letter box was full of people commenting on the site, because of a kindly mention at Crains NY Business, a link from IWantMedia.com, and a link from Sacklunch.com.

So let me take a break from hanging around and reply to these letters:

1) Sacklunch.com asks: "So where's the action sports category?" Good question. Well, it is true that Transworld Skating is having a rough time since its readers have moved on to grown up things like, oh, a real job, wife and kids. Transworld Snowboarding has been roughed up and even that warhorse Thrasher is rumored to be giving away ads for freebies. I don't sense anything on life support yet, but this is definitely a category that bears watching since Transworld is no longer an Adweek Hot List regular and they've had to merge a few things to stay afloat.

2) One reader says: "Check out Atmosphere magazine – it the new in-flight magazine  for Air Transat – Canada’s #1 charter airline  All those poor trees." You mean you really want the Grim Reaper to book a flight on this airline and read the in-flight magazine? Will they let me take my scythe as a carry-on?

3) A note from God, who seemed to disagree with my odds for Giant magazine: "I think that I'll hang on to these guys for a while, Reaper. Now f**k off." God, you've got to put Your money where Your mouth is because one deity can't pump up a magazine's sell through at the newsstand. Perhaps you can start a holy newsstand promotion if you really want to increase Giant's odds of survival. How's this: "Buy one copy of Giant, get a mitzvah free!" That should move a few copies.

Well, no rest for the wicked. I'm going to kick back and read a copy of P.O.V. magazine, former Adweek "Launch Of The Year" winner in 1997, passed to the other side in February 2000. That Randall Lane, he sure seems to like launching those River Styx Specials.