The Business of Magazines

[caioherrero]

Philipp Vlasov is the new esitor in chief of Vogue Ukraine and his first issue is the March and comes with a redesign

 

[Deleted member 45369]

Is Anna still the “most powerful woman in fashion” though? Her empire is crumbling all around her and with street fashion taking over the runways, she seems a bit old guard. Their was an aura of authority to her 10-20 years ago. Hanging out with Kylie Jenner and ASAP Rocky hasn’t really done anything for it.

 

[8eight]

Grazia UK have Maria Grazia Chiuri on the cover, with her daughter. They haven't put her name on the cover so i'm not sure the general Grazia reader will know who she is.
Odd.

 

[Benn98]

Vogue Paris Magazine Sales for 2018 so far:

February - Kaia Gerber - 100,003
March - Grace Elizabeth - 93,492
April - Alma Jodorowsky - 101,893
May - Anna Ewers - 88,522
June/July - Edie Campbell - 136,421

August - Iselin Steiro - 114,886
September - Kate Moss/Naomi Campbell/Chisty Turlington - 123,898
October - Kaia Gerber - 100,232
November - Natasha Poly - 99,989
December/January - Jane Birkin/Charlotte Gainsbourg/Lou Doillon - 122,662

 

[MON]

Imagine, people bought Iselin’s tragic cover over Anna Ewers’ and Natasha’s?

No wonder this year’s February cover had the same vibe as the August one. People must’ve liked the aesthetic.

Choices people. Choices.

Thanks Benn!

 

[Benn98]

Imagine, people bought Iselin’s tragic cover over Anna Ewers’ and Natasha’s?

No wonder this year’s February cover had the same vibe as the August one. People must’ve liked the aesthetic.

Choices people. Choices.

Thanks Benn!

Only a pleasure. I'm more shocked that so many people bought that October Joker cover, which resulted in roughly the same sales as Kaia's February one.
And I expected Kate/Naomi/Christy to turn way more than 123K. Also, Birkin and her girls tanked? A bit embarrassing considering they're such icons.

 

[Morgane07]

Only a pleasure. I'm more shocked that so many people bought that October Joker cover, which resulted in roughly the same sales as Kaia's February one.
And I expected Kate/Naomi/Christy to turn way more than 123K. Also, Birkin and her girls tanked? A bit embarrassing considering they're such icons.

The Birkin clan Vogue cover looked depressing, I found it quite uninviting. Although I was in France over Christmas I didn't even buy it even though I really like Jane. It was an odd decision. Had it looked a little more uplifting I'd have bought it.

 

[Hafyiez wafa]

August - Iselin Steiro - 114,886
September - Kate Moss/Naomi Campbell/Chisty Turlington - 123,898
October - Kaia Gerber - 100,232
November - Natasha Poly - 99,989
December/January - Jane Birkin/Charlotte Gainsbourg/Lou Doillon - 122,662

where do you get this list? what website?

 

[JPineapple]

 

[Miss Dalloway]

And I expected Kate/Naomi/Christy to turn way more than 123K. Also, Birkin and her girls tanked? A bit embarrassing considering they're such icons.

Those are actually pretty good numbers for them, though. That is how they sell on average for good months, a bit over 120K. VP is a bigger brand than business, always has been. Same for VI. I am shocked such a boring (Birkin) cover even sold 120K!

Wow at Edie though, that is Gisele level of good sales. Surprised Anna, and that Poly cover didn't do better.

 

[caioherrero]

August - Iselin Steiro - 114,886
September - Kate Moss/Naomi Campbell/Chisty Turlington - 123,898
October - Kaia Gerber - 100,232
November - Natasha Poly - 99,989
December/January - Jane Birkin/Charlotte Gainsbourg/Lou Doillon - 122,662

Iselin was the best...

 

[Faith Akiyama]

I think Edie's cover sales is partially due to it being on the newsstands for two months instead of one!

 

[Benn98]

I think Edie's cover sales is partially due to it being on the newsstands for two months instead of one!

True about the two months, but dual issues are not really supposed to generate double the amount of average sales. That's the reason why it got combined in the first place - to make the sales more substantial and trim production costs. June issues are weak sellers across the board, just like January. That some magazine still publish June and January issues is a miracle.

What makes Edie's number so remarkable is the fact that Gisele covered the same months in 2017 and raked in 145k. So Edie's number is quite close for the type of model who doesn't rely on a brand.

Miss Dalloway, I checked and you're right. In fact, the September Supers cover is actually a spike for VP! The magazine had 109k in 2016, and 114k in 2017, so that's a huge jump to 123k. Especially with the fraught state of newsstand sales in mind. I just expected it to reach 140k at least. Considering the covers had three of the most liked models.

@Hafyiez wafa .... Vogue Paris - ACPM

 

[axiomatic]

Loooong profile of Radhika Jones and VF

Can Vanity Fair’s Radhika Jones keep the party going?

 

[axiomatic]

I don't think this was posted.

Graydon Carter Joins the Newsletter Brigade

Graydon Carter Joins the Newsletter Brigade

By Alex Williams

• Feb. 1, 2019

Graydon Carter, the former editor of Vanity Fair, is starting Air Mail, an all-digital international news platform intended for worldly cosmopolitans, with Alessandra Stanley, who was a longtime critic and reporter for The New York Times.

Beginning this summer, Air Mail will be packaged as a weekly newsletter, featuring magazine-length original articles sent to subscribers on Saturday at 6 a.m. Stories and original podcasts will also be available on a website: AirMail.news.

According to Mr. Carter, the idea is to keep well-heeled globalists up to speed on the latest fads, fashions, arts, riots, scandals, and political upheavals in Europe and Asia. Think of it a bit like The Economist with attitude, or maybe “the weekend edition of a nonexistent international daily,” he said, slouching in an office chair in his garden-level West Village office on a recent, chilly Monday. He was wearing gray flannel trousers, a blue fleece vest and his trademark curvilinear hairstyle.

Mr. Carter also suggested the new venture might be like the weekend edition of the Financial Times, which he loves, but “is hard to get — you’ve got to be in the metropolitan city, it’s $7, or at least it is where I spend the weekends in the country, you’ve got to get out of your pajamas to get it.”

He and Ms. Stanley plan to start out with a small team of editors, many of them young, hoping to reach members of the Snapchat generation as well as people old enough to share Mr. Carter’s romantic associations with those old-school Air Mail envelopes with the red and blue borders, which he still uses for bookmarks.

They want the readership of creative professionals who travel business class to know the latest vegan currywurst hot spots in Berlin, and crave more gravitas from foreign dispatches than, say, is in Monocle’s earnest short profiles on sustainability-minded Danish design executives.

“The marketing executive in Soho House with the shaved head — that’s the Monocle reader,” said Mr. Carter, 69. “I don’t know what ours is yet, but I just have a rough idea. They’ll be a sophisticated person. They’re not backpackers, and they’re not in Las Vegas, drinking Champagne and sitting around in their heart-shaped bathtub.”

Air Mail will steer clear of Washington politics. The newsletter, Mr. Carter said, is “designed to live in a Trump-free world” (he has been an antagonist of the president since the 1980s, when Spy magazine, which Mr. Carter co-founded, branded Mr. Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian”).

In his office at Vanity Fair, Mr. Carter lined one wall with framed copies of the 49 tweets that Mr. Trump had directed at him. (“I always used to say, ‘This is the only wall he’s built,’” Mr. Carter said.)

With yellow-vest protests roiling France, Italian populists threatening an “Italexit” from the European Union, and a Chinese economic slowdown threatening the world economy, he and Ms. Stanley, 63, believe that American readers that are more interested than ever in matters abroad. “Trump has gone so inward, so nationalistic, that readers are rebelling by going more global,” she said by telephone.

Brexit is an obvious example. “To most Americans, Brexit is both an important but confusing story, that unfolds in a different direction every single week,” Mr. Carter said. That is why the duo has commissioned Francis Wheen, from Private Eye, the satirical British news publication, to write a humorous column called This Week in Brexit.

But Air Mail does not seek to compete with, say, Foreign Affairs, the international-relations journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations. “This is not homework,” Ms. Stanley said.

Rather, it should feel like “a calm read for a weekend, where you may stay in bed for two hours,” reading about food, film and football, which is “bigger than Norad and NATO and the United Nations,” Mr. Carter said.

One might fairly expect any publication of his to contain at least a smattering of aristocrats-behaving-badly stories, like the ones Mr. Carter used to find in foreign newspapers to pursue for Vanity Fair. But “there’s not much in the way of high-end scandal in America right now,” he said. “We’re going through a drought of rich people knifing each other, or shooting each other, or cheating each other.”

What about the British royal family? “Unless Meghan Markle starts strangling Prince Philip or something,” he said, “I have no interest in them.”

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And while Air Mail will sample articles culled from European and Asian publications, it will not be a globetrotter's Axios, boiling down the latest headlines into easy-to-digest morsels.

“These are fully formed narratives,” Mr. Carter said. “Vanity Fair was in the excellence business, and I want to stay in the excellence business. We’re not after clickbait.”

Media models have undergone scrutiny lately after layoffs at Buzzfeed and HuffPost.

The subscription rate is still under discussion, but will be reasonable, and will, in theory, help Air Mail avoid the revenue shortfalls of media companies that depend solely upon advertising. “You know, if Howard Schultz gave away coffee for free, Starbucks would be the most popular food organization on Earth — for about two weeks,” Mr. Carter said.

Each issue is intended to have a single sponsor, ideally a luxury advertiser drawn to an upscale readership. Air Mail has also secured backing from TPG Growth, the private equity powerhouse that has a stake in Creative Artists Agency and Vice; James Coulter, a billionaire investor who is one of the firm’s two chief executives, is a friend of Mr. Carter’s.

And if none of those elites end up subscribing to Air Mail, he does not seem like he will be crushed. He recently spent a year in Provence (where he considered buying an English-language bookshop and settling full-time with his wife Anna), completed one chapter of a still-untitled memoir, and is resolute about being done with office towers.

“I never want to have a swipe card again,” he said.

 

[axiomatic]

Really embarrassing for VF

N.Y. Times Reporter Disinvited to Vanity Fair Oscar Party Following Coverage

N.Y. Times Reporter Disinvited to Vanity Fair Oscar Party Following Coverage

"It Was the Hottest Oscar Night Party. What Happened?"

That was the title of a New York Times story published Thursday. Beneath those bold letters were more than 2200 words written by reporters Katherine Rosman and Brooks Barnes detailing a buzzy narrative about the inner workings of Vanity Fair's iconic Oscar party, an A-list packed affair held every year during and following the Academy Awards. The story said that while the party has increased its partnership arrangements with brands like L’Oréal Paris, Giorgio Armani Beauty, Johnnie Walker, Hennessy X.O., and Verizon, it has, according to sources, lost its luster as the most exclusive stop on the Oscars party circuit.

The reporting has now cost the New York Times an invite to Sunday's Vanity Fair party.

Choire Sicha, editor of the New York Times Styles section, was the first to reveal the news via tweet posted Friday afternoon. Per the tweet: "Just got word that Vanity Fair has disinvited The New York Times from covering their annual Oscars party. They said it 'feels like the Times has already run their coverage of the VF party this year,' they said. I guess we did!"

Rosman also responded to the RSVP renege on Twitter: "My apologies to the New York Times reporter who has been disinvited from the Vanity Fair Oscar party because of my and [Brooks Barnes] reporting. You’re welcome to come to my apartment to watch with me & my kids. Not a single brand exec will be there!"

Reached by The Hollywood Reporter Friday afternoon, New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha confirmed the tweets. "Yes, I can confirm that a reporter and photographer were disinvited from covering the event."

It is unclear who the reporter and photographer are who have been banned from attending, though THR has confirmed that it is neither Barnes nor Rosman who were assigned to cover. THR has reached out to a rep for Vanity Fair for comment.

The news isn't sitting well with media insiders.

Dylan Byers, senior media reporter for MSNBC and NBC News, said that he won't be attending the party after today's news. "I have decided not to attend this year’s Vanity Fair Oscars party in light of their decision to ban the @NYTimes on account of their very legitimate reporting. The decision to ban the Times because of critical reporting is incongruous with journalistic values VF claims to uphold."

New York Times media reporter Edmund Lee also raised concerns about retaliation from a brand known for investigative reporting. "After great reporting by @katierosman @brooksbarnesNYT on @VanityFair Oscars party, Conde Nast saw fit to ban Times reporters from covering the event. This, from a publication that touts journalism," Lee said on Twitter.

It's also a publication that has been the subject of several stories this week. Today, the Los Angeles Times published a story titled "Can Vanity Fair's Radhika Jones Keep the Party Going?" The story, like the Times article, mentioned how Jones took over the top job — and party hosting duties — from longtime chief Graydon Carter. Since assuming host duties, Jones has faced steep competition on the party circuit from people like Madonna and Beyoncé and Jay-Z, though their parties are late-night affairs and are where stars make their final stop after spending a chunk of the night at Vanity Fair.

 

[Morgane07]

I think Edie's cover sales is partially due to it being on the newsstands for two months instead of one!

Also they sometimes sell it at a reduced price in the summer, or for the second month, they sell it together with Glamour, Vogue Hommes or other as a package deal.

 

[KateIsGr8]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I wonder, since everyone says print is dying, does everyone think there will be a day where even US Vogue is digital only? And if so, around what time frame would someone guess something like that would happen? (year-wise)
I ask because currently I’m combing through eBay buying all the issues I wanted years ago and couldn’t find or couldn’t afford from various magazines and a lot of them are extremely cheap now. Do people generally just not care about having the printed version of magazines in their hands anymore? Even if I’ve seen every editorial on this forum from an issue, nothing feels the same as flipping the pages and seeing it for yourself, the way it’s intended to be seen.

 

[MON]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I wonder, since everyone says print is dying, does everyone think there will be a day where even US Vogue is digital only?

Good question. In all honesty, I don’t see it happening. The Big 4 will never cease publication moreso go digital. US Vogue, is the flagship edition. Condé Nast will do everything in its powers for it not to cease publication or go exclusively digital. Also, Condé Nast might cease to exist, but some other company will snatch Vogue right away. Its a brand in itself.

What I see possibly happening though is ALL OTHER Condé Nast magazines going digital or ceasing publication. Magazines that drain the funds will be shelved just to save Vogue. I see W going first, then Allure/AD, then GQ, then Vanity Fair.

 

[tigerrouge]

I don't know how Allure is still alive in print form. Much as I love the magazine it used to be (in the 90s under Linda Wells), more deserving magazines have been consigned to history while it limps on at the newsstand.