The Business of Magazines

[greyeyes]

New magazine Vogue Paris Beauté launches on 26 october 2011




condenastinternational

 

[MON]

Seems like Emmanuelle is really doing her promise to focus more on Beauty

 

[Thefrenchy]

Beauté as in makeup, skincare et al ? They're making a magazine for that?

 

[iluvjeisa]

Beauté as in makeup, skincare et al ? They're making a magazine for that?

...and hair....It sounds like Allure.

 

[tigerrouge]

Given that numerous editions of Vogue produce beauty supplements on a regular basis, beefing them up a bit and trying to sell them as stand-alone magazines isn't that big a step. If the girls are super-gorgeous, and the page design makes the products look irresistable, it might even appeal to a wider audience than the main issue of Vogue Paris ever did. But would have to feel substantial as a magazine in its own right, rather than some flimsy 112 pg extended advertising feature for Lancome that's supposed to extract money from my pocket.

 

[kimair]

Is Print in Vogue, Again?

A year ago at this time, three ex-magazine editors in chief who saw the worst of the print collapse when their titles folded had moved to reinvent themselves in the New Media world.

Pilar Guzman, who lost her Cookie magazine in 2009, was developing a business plan to start a Web site called Momfilter.com; Deborah Needleman, whose Domino was folded by Condé Nast that same year, was developing an e-commerce site with Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer, and Brandon Holley, who was editing Jane when it folded, was a couple of years into a job at Yahoo and bringing in more than 25 million unique visitors a month to her vertical, Shine.

It looked like the future. These three women were going to reinvent themselves as Web stars. It was certainly the trend throughout the media industry. Tina Brown, shortly after starting the Daily Beast in 2008, vowed that she “would never work in print again.”

“I didn’t think I would have a job in 10 years if I stayed in magazines,” said Holley.

But over the last year, a funny thing has happened. Guzman gave up hope that her start-up would become a real business and started a job as editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living on Monday. Needleman lost excitement for her start-up and joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal, launching its new weekend sections and eventually taking over its glossy supplement WSJ. Holley left Yahoo and its robust Web traffic to rejoin Condé Nast as editor in chief of Lucky. And then there’s Brown — her second issue of a relaunched Newsweek hit newsstands this week.

Print, it seemed, didn’t collapse.

So what happened?

It depends on who you ask. Maybe it’s a matter of returning to a line of work you’re used to. Maybe the Web’s ascent and print’s decline is happening a bit more slowly than originally thought. Maybe the only money to be made these days is in print or some tablet-Web-print hybrid. Whatever it is, it appears the old-fashioned print world has a little left in the tank.

“I think people have learned now that print is not a dead business,” said Holley.

“Yes, of course, [print] is where the money is,” said Guzman. “We haven’t weaned ourselves off of that yet, but maybe we shouldn’t. Everyone is like, ‘It’s all digital! It’s all digital!’ but I think it will always be a mix, at least for a while.”

“Yeah, very few people are making money off of editorial content on the Web,” said Needleman.

Guzman said shortly after Cookie folded, there were a few investors who were interested in the idea of turning Cookie — which had a lot of buzz and sort of a cult following — into a Web site. But, she said, they didn’t seem to understand what made a good editorial product. The more she had these meetings, the more she got the heebie-jeebies.

“You know, no one has the answer,” Guzman said. “And so it was sort of, ‘You know what? I can’t. I’m not going to do that.’”

There was also the fact that she was still getting distracted by things that — oh, right! — paid her (“You get sidetracked with projects that are actually paying you”).

Around the same time, Needleman was building her e-commerce site with Lerer, and after having gone through the gut-wrenching experience of watching a magazine that she built from the ground up suddenly shutter, the idea of having full control seemed pretty appealing.

“I did have a sense that I don’t ever want to work that hard again without being an owner,” she said of her time at Domino.

Her start-up was moving along nicely, too. There was a term sheet drawn up with Condé Nast that would allow Needleman to use the Domino name for the site. But then her interest petered out.

“It was a highly editorialized e-commerce site centered around decorating and the home, which, at the end of the day, no matter how editorialized it is, it’s a commerce business,” she said. “And frankly like retail, distribution, returns, warehousing, margins? I was not waking up passionately thinking about those things. It is not my expertise. It stopped being exciting to me. The editorial stuff is what excites me. Getting super rich would have been exciting, too! But I wasn’t waking up excited waiting to tackle it.”

She told Lerer that she didn’t want to do it, and she took The Wall Street Journal job editing the Off-Duty section and WSJ. magazine shortly thereafter.

Unlike Needleman and Guzman, Holley spent several years on the Web with Yahoo and she adored the no-frills lifestyle of digital life and the incredibly massive audience she was reaching. When she was approached to take over Lucky, she wasn’t thrilled. She said that she did “not want to go back to print.”

“When I started to talk to [Condé Nast editorial director] Tom Wallace, at first I was like, ‘Oh geez, I don’t think I can do that again,’” she said. “But then we just started to talk and it occurred to me this could be amazing.”
She also began to realize that print had some advantages over her channel online.

“There’s nothing like a print magazine to tell you this content is vetted, there’s an army of people behind it and we stand behind it,” she said. “When I joined Lucky and people were like ‘Oh, they’re just going to close the print,’ I was like ‘No! That’s why I took the job.’ If not, I’m just another Name-Your-Women’s Site. It’s because of the print we have this trusted brand thing that’s going to take years and years for the Web to establish.”

It also doesn’t hurt to have a staff.

“The whole print model allows me to have 30 women who trawl the market who find the best espadrilles for spring,” she said.

But what about Brown, who said that she would never go back to print?

“I guess I’ll have to eat my words,” she said.

And what does having Newsweek do to help The Daily Beast business?

“I think what everyone is realizing is that multiplatform, and certainly dual platform, is a greater commercial idea,” she said. “Advertisers like both forms. And they go well together.”

She added later, “It’s immaterial if print magazines are around in five years or not.”

But how is it immaterial? After all, Politico is sustained, in part, by a print business; Condé Nast still derives only about 10 percent of its revenue from digital; The Hollywood Reporter’s Web traffic can increase 868 percent in March, but no one will ever pay the equivalent for an ad on the Web versus what they will in the magazine.

“In general, it seems that ad rates for even the best Web sites still pale in comparison to the kind of money that can be made through a top-notch print product,” e-mailed Hollywood Reporter editorial director Janice Min. “The shift in spending doesn’t nearly equal the shift in consumption. Even with a robust Web presence, it seems every content provider is still looking to find another platform to bring in other revenue.”

Brown agreed. “You go with the times. If it switches to the tablet, that’s great, too. You have to be fluid.”

And that’s a point everyone is sensitive to.

“I’m very interested in the whole puzzle,” said Guzman, now in her new job at Martha Stewart Living. “I like the print, of course. I still think print is fantastic with the right content. I’m interested in parsing what goes where. What is worthy of print? What is worthy of Web? What is worthy of iPad? And seeing how that all works together.”

And they also can have a sense of humor about it. Needleman wondered if there was anything that seemed more “regressive” then abandoning a start-up to go to a newspaper.

“Could it possibly be any more old-school?” said Needleman, talking about her job at the Journal. “It’s practically 19th century. And that’s what was interesting. It was yet another format. Wow, the broadsheet, what can I do with that?”

She went to the Journal because she was very into the idea of building a section from nothing.

But there’s also one other essential truth about these moves: “What we’ve all done here is say yes to a paycheck,” admitted Needleman.

wwd / march 16, 2011

 

[tarsha]

Giovanna Battaglia Moved to New York, Is Styling for W

A rep from W clarified reports on the blog Fashionista about former Vogue Gioiello and Vogue Pelle fashion director Giovanna Battaglia "taking up residency" at the magazine. The rep said Battaglia moved to New York (YES, she's ours) for "personal reasons." The street-style blog favorite worked as a freelance stylist on W's March and April issues, and the magazine will "work more with her in the coming months," though she hasn't signed a contract. This gives you even more of a reason to keep an eye on W — just check out her work on Models.com. And follow her on Twitter, where she's keeping the world up to speed with news on Japan's tsunami aftermath and Dolce & Gabbana's Barbie outfits.

nymag

 

[envogueforever]

Very happy to learn yesterday that great friend and former colleague Alexandra Kotur and I will be working together again! @TandCmag

twitter/williamnorwich

I wonder if this means she'll remain at Vogue and will just become a contributor, or move altogether to Town & Country...

 

[A.D.C.]

twitter/williamnorwich

I wonder if this means she'll remain at Vogue and will just become a contributor, or move altogether to Town & Country...

She quit Vogue and took the creative director position at Town & Country.

 

[tarsha]

A (very) recent issue of W sold less than 30,000 copies on the newsstand...please, W PR reps, tell us we're wrong!..

dailyfrontrow

 

[blueorchid]

It must be the Rooney Mara issue. I'm not surprised if that's the case.

 

[tarsha]

Click to Buy That Handbag in Vogue as Fashion Magazines Become E-Tailers

Vogue and Elle have long influenced what clothes and handbags image-conscious consumers buy. Now, in a bid to reverse flagging sales and stay relevant, fashion magazines may sell the products they feature in their articles.

As Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad and other mobile devices change the way people stay informed and shop, e-commerce is creeping onto editorial agendas. Fashion magazines that have gone as far as to add links on their websites to online vendors such as Yoox SpA (YOOX), may integrate the reading and buying experience, a move that would transform the likes of Vogue and Elle from just trendsetters into virtual shopkeepers.

“Gone are the days when consumers want to flip through the back of a magazine to find an index,” said Shannon Edwards, European director of online shopping portal ShopStyle. Combining retail and editorial “is natural from an economic standpoint and natural from a consumer standpoint.”

Hearst Magazines, publisher of Cosmopolitan and Esquire, will introduce “a series of e-commerce partnerships” this year, according to David Carey, president of the unit of New York-based Hearst Corp. Vogue, Conde Nast Publications’ flagship fashion title, allied last month with Yoox, the Italian Internet clothing and accessories retailer.

Fashion magazines, grappling with a slide in circulation and advertising revenue, are looking to claw back ground lost to shopping websites such as Asos Plc (ASC) and Net-A-Porter -- owned by Compagnie Financiere Richemont SA -- that are winning sales and influence. Fashion brands are also elbowing their way into the market, introducing digital titles like LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (MC) has done with Nowness.

Fading Fortunes

“Fashion magazines are fighting for their lives,” said Uché Okonkwo, executive director of Luxe Corp., a consulting firm based in Paris.

About $1.57 billion was spent last year on apparel and accessories ads in U.S. magazines -- down from more than $2 billion in 2008 -- as luxury goods companies cut budgets or put funds elsewhere, according to the Association of Magazine Media.

Both Hearst and Conde Nast closed magazines during the global economic crisis. At Time Inc., the publisher of InStyle and Essence, publications’ ad revenue plunged 22 percent in 2009 and rebounded only 3 percent last year. Paris-based Lagardere SCA, which owns Elle, saw a similar weak recovery in 2010 after a 24 percent drop a year earlier.

Fashion magazines’ print circulation is flat or falling as more readers move online. Vogue’s circulation fell 1.5 percent in 2010 to about 1.25 million. Elle’s slid about 0.5 percent to 1.11 million, Audit Bureau of Circulations figures show.

Net-A-Porter

Meanwhile, sites such as Net-A-Porter are gaining ground. Founded in 2000 by former fashion journalist Natalie Massenet, Net-A-Porter was acquired last year by Richemont and features catwalk footage, style tips and designer interviews as well as a catalogue of clothes and accessories.

“It’s a kind of fashion magazine of the future,” said Hearst’s Carey. “We have to find a way to respond to that.”

Turning into e-tailers may be challenging for magazines. In addition to logistical and technological hurdles, magazines may have to contend with an erosion of editorial independence. Fully integrating shopping into editorial content would mean allowing readers to jump from a handbag or shoe in a photo spread to a page offering it for sale in a single click, rather than forwarding them elsewhere for purchases.

That “may be breaking the rules a little bit,” if advertisers are directly involved, said Jonathan Reynolds, a professor at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Retail Management.

‘Substantial Challenge’

Adding content to e-commerce is easier than adding e- commerce to content, according to Okonkwo. EBay Inc. (EBAY) hired a former editor at Conde Nast’s Lucky and Heart’s Harper’s Bazaar magazines as creative director for its fashion portal. Building the logistics and technology required for e-commerce would be “a substantial challenge” for Vogue, Okonkwo said. “Vogue isn’t built to sell products,” she said.

That partly explains why magazines haven’t done more than add links to fashion brands’ e-commerce websites.

Harper’s Bazaar partnered with Net-A-Porter last fall to pick out bags, shoes and clothing available from the shopping site with a single click. Vogue Italia and Yoox followed last month, focusing on products by young designers that could be bought from Yoox’s multibrand shopping site thecorner.com. It’s not clear how revenue from the online transactions will be divided between the partners.

Maurie Perl, a spokeswoman for Conde Nast, declined to comment, while Michael Volpatt, a spokesman for Hearst’s digital operations, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Monetizing Trust

Because readers trust recommendations by magazines, “we have to find the proper ways to monetize that,” Hearst’s Carey said. Yoox’s alliance with Vogue Italia “wasn’t a one-off,” said Federico Marchetti, chief executive officer of Yoox, declining to comment further.

Yoox will benefit from increasing e-commerce and luxury demand growth because of rising global wealth, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research wrote in a report dated March 29.

Determining who gets control of or access to user information -- credit-card details, addresses, and surfing and shopping histories that can be used to target advertising and offers -- may represent a major hurdle.

Retaining data “from a significant number of people means you’re in business for anything you want to sell,” said Alex Wisch, a Standard & Poor’s Equity Research analyst in London.

Consumers will take time to adjust to the change, according to Jean-Michel Noir, CEO of Redcats, the online fashion and home-furnishings retailer owned by PPR (PP) SA. Redcats operates two sites for its Vertbaudet brand, one of which is content-based and the other which sells products.

“We haven’t merged them,” Noir said. “I’m not saying this is the way we will look at things forever but it’s not that easy to do everything on one site.”

Still, sliding ad revenue may force fashion magazines to do just that, Oxford’s Reynolds said.

“I think magazines are looking at the ad revenue shortfall, and saying, ‘we need to do more.’”

bloomberg.com

 

[candlebougie]

^ That makes a lof of sense, as long as it's not too intrusive to the reading experience.

 

[duynk88]

Harper's BAZAAR Vietnamese Edition June 2011

Sunflower Media announced today on the Tiếp Thị & Gia Đình weekly:
"Phong Cách - Style" magazine will be Harper's BAZAAR (Vietnamese Edition) and launch in this June.
Sunflower Media also the publisher of Cosmopolitan in Vietnam.

Phong Cách magazine / Source: Sunflower Media

The announcement on Tiếp Thị & Gia Đình weekly.

 

[kimair]

2011 National Magazine Awards Finalists

Sid Holt, Chief Executive of the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), today announced the finalists for the 2011 National Magazine Awards. Known as the Ellies—for the Alexander Calder stabile “Elephant,” a reproduction of which is given to each award winner—the National Magazine Awards will be presented on Monday, May 9, in New York City.

“This was an extraordinary year for magazines,” said Mr. Holt. “The 2011 finalists include Michael Hastings’ ‘The Runaway General,’ which led to the resignation of Stanley McChrystal, and Jane Mayer’s ‘Covert Operations,’ on the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch—stories that made news while covering the news. With pieces on the health-care crisis, the failure of the criminal justice system, the impact of autism and conflicts around the globe, all of this year’s nominees underscore the power of magazine journalism.”

The 2011 National Magazine Award finalists include 54 titles. Twenty magazines received multiple nominations—led by The New Yorker with 9—and 6 magazines were nominated for the first time.

Aside from The New Yorker, magazines receiving multiple nominations this year are The Atlantic (4 nominations), Esquire (3), GQ (5), Harper’s Magazine (2), Los Angeles (3), Martha Stewart Living (2), Men’s Journal (2), National Geographic (4), New York (6), The New York Times Magazine (6), The Paris Review (2), Real Simple (3), Scientific American (2), Texas Monthly (2), TIME (2), Vanity Fair (2), Virginia Quarterly Review (6), W (3) and Wired (3). The 6 never-before-nominated titles are Cooking Light, House Beautiful, Lapham’s Quarterly, OnEarth, The Sun and Women’s Health.

Group publishers with multiple nominations include Bloomberg L.P. (2 for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Markets); Conde Nast (25 for Conde Nast Traveler, Golf Digest, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, W and Wired); Emmis Communications (5 for Los Angeles and Texas Monthly); Hearst Magazines (8 for Esquire; Good Housekeeping; House Beautiful; Marie Claire; O, The Oprah Magazine and Popular Mechanics); Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (2 for Martha Stewart Living); National Geographic Society (4 for National Geographic); Rodale (3 for Men’s Health, Runner’s World and Women’s Health); Time Inc. (9 for Cooking Light, Essence, Fortune, People, Real Simple and TIME); and Wenner Media (3 for Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone).

Fashion, Service and Lifestyle MagazinesHonors women's magazines, including health and fitness magazines and family-centric publications
Essence
For July, September, November Issues
Real Simple
For October, November, December Issues
Vogue
For March, August, September Issues
W
For September, November, December Issues
Women’s Health
For January-February, July-August, October Issues

PHOTOGRAPHY PRINT
Honors overall excellence in magazine photography
GQ
For August, November, December Issues
Martha Stewart Living
For August, October, November Issues
National Geographic
For February, April, December Issues
The New York Times Magazine
For February 7, March 21, December 12 Issue
W
For September, October, November Issues

complete list of nominees here

 

[michelabella]

Harper's Bazaar Brasil -

There it comes the Brazilian version of the Harper's Bazaar.
Now that the strategy of communication of the publishing company allows, RG can reverberate good the news that raised the spirits here in the Publishing Letter… Therefore it is, as many already know, we go to roll up sleeves and to publish the Brazilian edition of the Harper's Bazaar, the most traditional magazine of fashion of the planet. First publication of American fashion, the Bazaar was launched in 1867 (). For its pages they had passed extraordinary talentos as the photographers Man Ray and Richard Avedon; nowadays, the excellency follows in the people lenses as Peter Lindbergh and Sølve Sundsbø. In 33 countries, the Bazaar is authority fashionable. The bible.

siterg.ig.com.br

 

[tarsha]

Dasha Zhukova Rumored to Be Launching a New Magazine

Now, rumors are circulating that Zhukova plans to return to print. The Imagist reports: "Have you caught that whisper of a hiss that suggests that post-POP, the world's most glamorous art maven, Dasha Zhukova, is summoning her very own culture mag ? . . . We heard the suspected name, which makes perfect branding sense...But who's designing? Who's shooting for? London based? Paris? Moscow? Art driven or is [it] a fashion frenzy?"

fashionologie

 

[blueorchid]

Oh god. I am not looking forward to see that magazine, if it ever happens.

 

[tarsha]

Rumor — Dasha Zhukova's New Magazine Hitting Newsstands In June

Word has been circulating that Dasha Zhukova is quietly working on a new magazine, and although no news on the name or the primarily content — whether fashion or arts and culture — has surfaced, the rumor is not going away. Today, Grazia's editor-at-large Melanie Rickey Tweeted: "Just heard first issue of Dasha Zhukova's magazine is published next month — a June edition. No idea of its name yet. Anyone know it?"

fashionologie

 

[tarsha]

^ Dasha will be guest-editor of Vogue Russia's June issue. There's possibility this rumor is about it and she isn't launching own magazine, at least in June.