Are magazines dying?

Meg Weaver

Meg Weaver of Wooden Horse Publishing analyzes magazine markets and trends, and provides this perspective on the state of magazines today:

Gourmet, Southern Accents, Vibe, Nickelodeon, Today’s Christian Woman, Portfolio, Pink, Spirit of Aloha, Hallmark, Memory Makers, Canadian Home & Country, Best Life, Western Interiors & Design, Blender, Pink – all magazines gone just this year!

What is going on?  Are we seeing the end of the American magazine?

No – and yes.  Many million-and-more circulation mass market magazines are, or will soon be, gone.  Interesting, well-edited magazines, which give us a “good read,” will survive.  Humans have always been suckers for a good story.  Some publishers have already figured this out.  National Geographic, The Economist, Consumers Reports, Smithsonian, Cook’s Illustrated, and others – to some degree even People magazine – have found that great content, targeted at smaller audiences of really interested people, make money.

Others are thrashing about for something – ANYTHING!  – to bring in money.  They’re desperate to stop the bleeding and are closing magazines while manically squeezing their remaining publications, loading them up with even more marketing partnerships, product line extensions, variations on charging for Internet content (which they trained readers to demand for free) or projects like MagHound, MagCloud, and the yet unnamed “Hulu-like service for magazines.”

If you’re not familiar with these last three, here’s a quick overview: 

MagHound (www.maghound.com) is a subscription service with a twist: The customer can switch between magazines – even in the middle of a subscription period.  MagCloud, at www.magcloud.com, allows anyone to publish a print magazine in a matter of days and have the company take care of the printing, binding and distribution.  The “Hulu for magazines” will be a joint venture between as many magazine publishers as Time Inc can sign up, and will offer subscriptions for digital magazines to be read on any e-reader, whether it’s an Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Blackberry or Apple’s rumored tablet.  More e-readers in development abound, including those from Time Inc and Barnes & Noble.  The first two are already available and the “Hulu-like” service is estimated to be ready in 2010.

Will it work?  If the publishers are lucky, it may work for a while.  But innovations in subscriptions or reading methods don’t address the need readers have for a good story.

But smart publishers will eventually figure it out – and we will experience another golden age of American magazines and darned happy to have all those inventions to help us acquire and read them.

But today we are in a Never-Never-Land of uncertainty.  How do PR professionals navigate these tumultuous times?  How do you get your client, or client’s product, into successful magazines?  Here’s how:

1) Search out magazines focusing on great content.  They’re out there and their numbers are growing.  One by one, publishers will begin to discover what made magazines successful in the first place.

2) Discover the story behind your product and use it in your pitch. 

3) Break the habit of using “spray-and-pray” distribution methods and work with magazines one-on-one.  Why?  See point 4.

4) Know each magazine’s editorial positioning.  When magazines stop using cookie-cutter content (“lose 5 lbs in 5 minutes!!”), you need to know how they plan to be different than their competitors.  Only pitches supporting this positioning will be considered.

No, we’re not in the dying days of magazines; this is just a course correction.  Good words – even if not necessarily on paper – will always hold a fascination for people.

You can reach Meg at mweaver@woodenhorsepub.com and sign up for her e-newsletter at www.woodenhorsepub.com.