The Business of Magazines

www.magazine.org is always a great site for industry news.

Here is what the US Vogues circulations are - I would have thought that these are the largest internationally, out of any of the Vogue titles?

If this is correct i find it hard to believe that Paris Vogue only circulates 100,000! Australian Vogue circulates around 70,000 and it is not pushed internationally like Paris Vogue is.

(im such a numbers nerd - sorry for anyone else that thinks this is really dry - i think it is facinating (who is selling what etc))

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Subscription:799,309 61%Verified Subscriptions: 50,0594%Newsstand:452,20735%
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Total Average Paid Circulation:1,301,575100%
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Ratebase:1,200,000
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TOTAL AUDIENCE10,635,000Female / Male88% / 12%Median Age36 yearsMedia Household Income$64,882
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source | nytimes

Double Dutch
THEIR PUBLISHING EMPIRE CONSISTS OF TWO TITLES, AND ONE OF THEM’S CALLED BUTT. HOW GERT JONKERS AND JOP VAN BENNEKOM ARE QUIETLY SAVING MAGAZINES.
BY CATHY HORYN

The story of how Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom, two Dutchmen from the Bible Belt of the Netherlands, came to found a magazine for gays called Butt, followed by a style magazine for anyone called Fantastic Man, is a story of dreams, dreams being really the start of identity. If it weren’t for the fact that Jonkers’s father was a Protestant minister who made his six children read on Sundays — reading was the only activity allowed except church services— would Jonkers have found a way through the boringness of his youth to make a magazine that was essentially about reading? It is an interesting question. And van Bennekom, whose father owned a garage in the same region and whose aunts, uncles and grandparents were all farmers: would van Bennekom, without such humbleness, have quite so clearly identified that the central experience missing in magazines in the early part of the 21st century was a feeling for simplicity and directness?

Of course, there were other influences, as you’d expect from two men pushing 40 and living in Amsterdam. Jonkers is also a fashion critic for De Volkskrant, a Dutch daily newspaper, and van Bennekom freelances for a few fashion labels, though he won’t reveal which ones. But the striking quality about Butt and Fantastic Man is that, though they provide the same distractions as any p*rn or fashion magazine — the same bun shots (although Butt’s are usually less muscular) and designer sandals — that’s not why people go to them. They go to them to learn about people, famous ones like Michael Stipe, Rufus Wainwright and Marc Jacobs, who have appeared in Butt, or Helmut Lang, who gave his first real interview in several years to Fantastic Man. But they also go to find out about obscure ones like the Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel or a New Zealand hand model with a foot fetish named Stuart. At a time when mainstream media have lost readers to the Internet, Butt and Fantastic Man have steadily grown in numbers and influence, despite using the traditional means that many magazines reject, like liberal amounts of text and black-and-white photos. At the same time, however, the magazines are anything but nostalgic. That’s why my mind did a loop when van Bennekom said during our lunch with Jonkers in Paris: "I think traditional things are right now the most interesting. There’s always a chance in five years that Fantastic Man will be the most modern style magazine that there is.”

What makes a magazine modern, I asked him.

"That’s a question we ask ourselves all the time,” van Bennekom said. "I think it’s reading — the whole idea of concentrating and being alone in a room. I think that’s what a magazine has to offer: a reading experience.”

Both Butt and Fantastic Man are audacious in style and content — and for completely different reasons. Butt, printed on 9-by-13-inch pink paper, folded and staple-bound, has retained its homemade look since its debut, 22 issues ago, in 2001. It presumes that its readers, who now number some 24,000, are not only intelligent but also friendly and preoccupied at least part of the time with things other than sex, although nudity and discussions about sex are integral to the magazine and offered as casually as a ham at Christmas. Starting from its title, Butt is also very funny in the silly rather than campy sense. Consider some of its headlines: "Boring Interview With a Random Gay Stranger”; "Embarrassing Interview With a One-Night Stand”; and "Disgusting Interview With a Toilet Cleaner.” Because there is nothing specifically gay about photos of a flaccid fat man poised on a gym ball or a Q. & A. with Gore Vidal that ends with the interviewer (in this case, Jonkers) being neatly dismissed in the Vidal mode, the humor feels inclusive and therefore funnier. As van Bennekom said, describing the magazine’s essence, he and Jonkers got the idea for the title while drinking one night in an old-school leather bar in Amsterdam called De Spijker. "The bar had two TV screens, one with p*rn and the other would be playing cartoons, like ‘Tom & Jerry,’ " van Bennekom said. "I thought it was so funny.”

To the extent that Butt’s playfulness and lack of snob appeal is about undressing, Fantastic Man, first published in 2005, is about dressing up.

Printed on matte light-gray paper at the standard size, Fantastic Man projects a dashing smartness that makes it look not only more mature than glossy style magazines but also more genuinely interested in sartorial points. The latest issue, autumn/winter 2007-8, contains an eight-page spread on classic haircuts by Guido Palau, shot in the portrait style of a barbershop magazine, followed by an article on hosiery, complete with details about fiber content. Yet despite such fastidiousness and an arched tone, there is no homosexual subtext; and in contrast to Butt, Fantastic Man does not show nudity or expect its subjects to discuss their sex lives, though they might.

Yves Saint Laurent’s Stefano Pilati, a 2006 cover, said, "It’s one of the first male magazines that I really considered male.” He added: "It has an appreciation for people and what they’re doing with their lives. You feel quite relieved in a sense to let yourself go and say what you want. You feel a dialogue with the magazine that you don’t have with many others.” Given the flexible range of topics — from profiles of artists and musicians to a piece about the joys of lake swimming — and the magazine’s tailored design and refreshing distance from consumer trends and credits, it’s easy to imagine almost anyone as a Fantastic Man.

I asked Jonkers and van Bennekom who they thought qualified. "Morrissey,” van Bennekom replied quickly.

"I think Steve Jobs is a Fantastic Man,” Jonkers said. "This may sound surprising to some Americans, but I think Bill Clinton is a Fantastic Man. The mayor of Berlin would be good for the magazine.”

What is remarkable about both Butt and Fantastic Man, perhaps more so with Butt, is that they are political but not in an obvious way. They tapped into a constituency that was going unrepresented in both the gay and mainstream media: people not so much interested in being sexually explicit as sexually honest. Jonkers and van Bennekom, who met in the ’90s while working on separate publications, produced the first Butt for about $2,000.

They asked Wolfgang Tillmans to shoot the designer Bernhard Willhelm, a rather daunting gambit since Tillmans had recently won the Turner Prize and they didn’t know him; but as van Bennekom put it mildly, "Who else?”

Tillmans did photograph Willhelm in a series of revealing poses, and is now sort of the conscience of Butt. But while Tillmans is always encouraging the men to move in a more political direction, they say it has done enough by recognizing a community, one that now stretches from the Netherlands to China and Peru and that has produced several pinkish clones. When Butt started, van Bennekom said, the emancipation of gays in Europe was more or less over. "Gay marriage had come through, not only in the Netherlands but also in countries like Spain,” he said. "The whole political movement was bankrupt intellectually.” He added: "Nothing felt underground or funny. I mean, where did the humor go? Did the humor really end with [the artists] Pierre and Gilles and that kind of camp? Do we all have to aim at one type of body?” (They started a publication for lesbians — its title unprintable here — but it soon died. Apparently lesbians don’t have the same sense of humor.)

Butt makes a small profit, and Jonkers and van Bennekom recently moved into a tiny office in a modern building overlooking a square. But while the magazines are influential (it’s hard not to credit them for a new appreciation in fashion ads for mature-looking men), they are precise about what they want. It’s the Dutch in them. As van Bennekom said, "there’s an undeniable magic and integrity in reality,” and as Jonkers added, "We found out we can do things that we ourselves like.”
 
Conde Nast To Mags: Fine, Run Your Own Web Sites
by Michael Learmonth, March 21, 2008
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/would_conde_nast_be_better_off_without_condenet_

Is Conde Nast ready to overhaul its famously complicated Internet strategy? No. But it is about to give its magazine a bit of what they're clamoring for -- a chance to run their own Web sites.

Conde Nast's Web structure is byzantine at best. Some of the publisher's magazines, like Bon Appetit and Vogue, don't really have Web sites at all, but simply point to sites run by CondeNet, which manages Web-only brands like Epicurious, Concierge.com and Style.com. But CondeNet does manage other magazine titles, like Wired.com. Still other Conde Web titles, like Vanity Fair, work within a different Conde group. And Portfolio.com, launched last year, runs on its own.

Confused? So are Conde's editors and publishers: Once dismissive of the Web, they're now intently interested, and think they can do better left to their own devices. The new ammunition for their argument is Portfolio, which after a slow start seems to have the makings of a successful Web site, an accomplishment it pulled off by itself.

In part to diffuse the rancor, Conde Nast says it will let each magazine handle its own Web site -- eventually. W got its own site last year; Gourmet.com went up in January; Bon Appettit will get one in April. Even the venerable Vogue is getting its own site, but it will have to wait until 2009.

"Over the years there have been very passionate feelings about this," acknowledges CondeNet boss Sarah Chubb. The newish plan, she says, is to have CondeNet run the non-magazine Web sites but sell ads for all of the Conde properties. The one exception: She's going to hang on to a piece of Wired.com, which has also taken off recently.

The decision to keep Wired.com within CondeNet was made by Steve Newhouse, heir apparent the Advance Publications empire. It's now being run as a hybrid between Chubb and Group Publisher David Carey, who also runs Portfolio, as well as Portfolio's Web site.

As we said, Conde's Web strategy is... complicated. And that's not going to change anytime soon.
 
Conde Nast snags Interview veterans for Vanity Fair
Mon Mar 17
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080317/media_nm/vanityfair_dc

CondeNast said on Monday it has hired two veteran executives from Interview magazine to help run the European editions of Vanity Fair, one of the publishing empire's fastest-growing businesses.

Ingrid Sischy and Sandy Brant will be the international editors for the Italian and German editions of Vanity Fair, as well as a Spanish edition of the magazine set for launch in September.

From 1990 until a few weeks ago, Sischy was the editor of Interview magazine, which was founded and run by late pop art superstar Andy Warhol. Sischy also writes for Vanity Fair's U.S. edition.

Brant served as chief executive, president and publisher of Interview's parent company, Brant Publications, for 23 years.

"They've been on the scene a long time... in the front row of every fashion show. They have close personal ties to Hollywood, to the art world," Conde Nast International Chairman Jonathan Newhouse said in an interview. "They are people with ideas who move through the worlds of intelligentsia, art and fashion."

Sischy and Brant will be in charge of the privately held Conde Nast's growing European presence. Unlike the U.S. Vanity Fair, the Italian and German editions are weeklies.

The Italian version, which launched in September 2003, has a paid circulation of 263,000 and had more than 6,300 ad pages last year. The German edition, which launched in February 2007, has a paid circulation of 188,000 copies.

Conde Nast International publishes 103 magazines in 22 countries. Its parent company publishes magazines such as Conde Nast Portfolio and Wired.
 
New Woman magazine closes
March 28, 2008 08:04am
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23444785-1702,00.html

AUSTRALIAN magazine New Woman will close after 20 years' publication.

ACP Magazines announced yesterday that the last issue of the monthly title would go on sale in early April.

The magazine began production in 1988 under Murdoch Magazines, which was later bought out by Emap.

ACP began publishing New Woman late last year when it took over Emap.

The Australian version was the only one left in the world, after the UK closed down its own edition in February.

ACP said the decision came because the magazine had been struggling to sell over the past 18 months, with circulation down 40 per cent in that time.

ACP Magazines chief executive Scott Lorson said ACP had made the decision to close down the magazine "sooner rather than later".

"The title has enjoyed some success in the past, but has struggled to establish a unique and sustainable position in the highly competitive women's lifestyle category," Mr Lorson said.

"When we purchased the Emap business, we were aware of the significant challenges facing New Woman."

ACP Magazines group publisher of women's lifestyle titles Pat Ingram thanked the staff for all their work, and said the company would look to employ them on other titles.
 
This might be the wrong place to ask this ,but does anyone know where I can find the nearest magazine distributor phone number that sends magazines to borders and other stores?
 
This might be the wrong place to ask this ,but does anyone know where I can find the nearest magazine distributor phone number that sends magazines to borders and other stores?

May I ask why? You can usually ask your local Borders to stock magazines you want to buy if that is what you're looking for. ^_^
 
It's basically cause I know that once a magazine has reached its selling cut off they simply take them ,ship them back to the distributor ,tear off the cover with the bar code,and throw the rest of the magazine away.I was thinking that I might be able to weasel my way into getting some discarded fashion mags ,but it's doubtful.
 
In February 2008, the ABCs (independently audited circulation figures) for UK magazines were published, here are some of the findings, as printed in Media Guardian online:

Vogue recorded its 12th consecutive ABC rise to 220,325. But the rise was marginal, at just 0.6% year on year.

Vanity Fair and Tatler were steady at 99,402 and 90,590 respectively.

Harpers Bazaar recorded its 10th consecutive circulation increase, up 3.1% year on year to sell 109,033.

Elle was up slightly on the first half of 2007 to 203,435 but down 2.7% year on year.

Despite a 6.5% year on year fall, Condé Nast's handbag-sized Glamour maintained its leading position in the women's glossy sector, selling 550,066 copies a month.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/14/abcs.pressandpublishing5
 
As for UK men's magazines (same source as before:(

Natmags' Esquire, which has been relaunched under former Wallpaper editor Jeremy Langmead, saw its circulation rise to 59,800, up 11.7% on the previous six months and 14% year on year.

There were more losses for Bauer Consumer Media's Arena, which saw sales crash 18.3% on the previous six months and 27% year on year, to 25,232.

Conde Nast's GQ is in seventh place ... GQ sold a monthly average of 129,520 in the second half of last year, up 1.3% on the previous six months and 1.6% year on year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/14/abcs.pressandpublishing4

I can't believe Arena sells so few copies and still remains alive.
 
In February 2008, the ABCs (independently audited circulation figures) for UK magazines were published, here are some of the findings, as printed in Media Guardian online:

Vogue recorded its 12th consecutive ABC rise to 220,325. But the rise was marginal, at just 0.6% year on year.

Thanks tigerrouge!:flower: I find these numbers interesting. I'm assuming this figure to be monthly, and based on February. Do you happen to know if this is a consolidated number of both subscription and newstand? I'm no expert on magazine circulation but the number is lower that I would have ever expected.
 
I was always under the impression that ABCs are a monthly average, taken over the previous six months backdated from the month the figures come out, and would indeed be combined subscription/newsstand sales. But that's my presumption.

What annoys me about the ABCs is that these days, there seems to be no free online access to the direct data, you have to buy it from the Audit Bureau (back when I worked in an office, I instead used the ABC supplement whenever it came with industry publications like Mediaweek).

Vogue, I'd classify it as almost a niche publication in the overall UK market. When people think of the UK, often the overwhelming image is of London, when that's only one city and not representative of the greater whole of the nation. While magazines are aspirational, the readership has to share the focus of the content, and I don't think a lot of the UK actually does find Vogue speaks to them in any way.
 
http://www.minonline.com/mb_topstory.htm
"W's" Beckham/Posh "Corner Kick," But Ugly Betty Gets Low Ratings.

W%20art%20small.JPG
That David Beckham and wife Victoria ("Posh Spice") wowed W newsstand buyers last August was the result of perfect timing by editorial director Patrick McCarthy, because the cover broke just as "Becks" was making his U.S. soccer debut with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Five years ago, Posh was the better known of the two--as proved by Beckham being Men's Journal's worst-selling cover in 2003--because the British "music invasion" was and is far more successful than that of soccer.
W%20May%202007%20worst(1).jpg

America Ferrara is, per the May W cover line, Hot because of the success of Ugly Betty. But the series name is a newsstand turnoff, as shown here and in Entertainment Weekly's March 16, 2007 worst-seller (min, March 10, 2008). There, Ferrara was in character, and though beautiful (her real character) in W, perhaps it will be difficult for her to shake the UB typecast. Her new bilingual movie, Under the Same Moon, may shake things up for the better.


"Esquire" And "GQ," It's Where The Girls Are--And The Men Aren't.

Esquire%20July%202007%20best.jpg
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We would doubt that Esquire editor-in-chief (since June 1997) David Granger and his Gentlemen's Quarterly counterpart (since June 2003) Jim Nelson were surprised by last year's newsstand results, where attraction to beautiful women continued a male homo sapien tradition dating back to the Garden of Eden. Angelina Jolie (July 2007) was the "woman Esquire loved" and Esquire readers love, as proven by her being the Hearst monthly's best-seller. (November 2007 Sexiest Woman Alive Charlize Theron doubtlessly sold very well, too.) And, at GQ, readers "took a close look" at best-seller Jessica Biel (July), who was Esquire's 2005 Sexiest..., and runner-up Jessica Alba (June).
Gqworst.gif
Esquire%20August%202007%20worst.jpg

Showcasing beauteous and smart women is great p.r. for both magazines. That sexagenarian Robert DeNiro sold worst for GQ (January) and unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was Esquire's poorest (August) is not bad p.r. As respected and honored as DeNiro is, he is old for GQ's circa 30-year-old audience, and Edwards not getting the "votes" of Esquire buyers was subsequently reflected in the early-2008 primaries, which resulted in his dropping out.
 
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Thinking gnerally, UK Glamour quite rightly outsells everything else around it. It has universal appeal - it lacks high fashion editorials, but it does well with its high street coverage, and with its beauty features and editorials. It might not be enough to satisfy us - I never keep my copies - but for the average reader wanting ten minutes of entertainment and fashion tips, it's got everything they need.
 

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