THE WOODEN HORSE PUBLISHING NEWS ALERT
Aug. 16, 2001

By
Meg Weaver, Editor, mweaver@woodenhorsepub.com
Petra Lattmann, Contributing Editor

Hi everybody,

It's getting positively gloomy reading the media reports lately. Ad rates at well-known magazine after well-known magazine are hitting the floor - and now, even newsstand sales are heading south.

Except Oprah.

O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE is now at a whopping 2.7 million copies for each issue and has shot past the NATIONAL ENQUIRER (2 million) and even MARTHA STEWART LIVING (2.4 million). Soon she'll catch up with PLAYBOY (3.2 million)!

Newsstand sales are often used to really measure a magazine's financial health since it shows the publication's ability to attract new readers.

Oprah is, unfortunately, only one magazine and her spectacular success is not enough to balance out problems like these:

TALK newsstand is down 28%; US WEEKLY down 12%; NEWSWEEK down; US NEWS & WORLD REPORT down; MADEMOISELLE down 21%; JANE down 19%; GLAMOUR down 11%; VOGUE down 11%; MONEY down 25%; SMARTMONEY down 30%; WORTH down 40%; BUSINESS WEEK down 11%.

I did find a few additional glimmers of hope: PEOPLE WEEKLY newsstand is up 6%; INSTYLE up 5%; TIME up 14%; MARIE CLAIRE up 3%.

However, check out REAL SIMPLE. It had a rocky start (Martha called it a "disaster"), but it's doing better lately ("Some of it seemed dopey back then," said a veteran editor of women's magazines who's currently at a noncompeting title. "It seems less dopey now.") But now, it's blowing the socks off more venerable titles with its astonishing sell-through of 40%, versus the industry average of 35%.

"Sell-through" is an interesting phenomenon. Simply put, it's a measure of how many magazines are sold from a newsstand against how many were delivered there. Let's say a magazine distributor delivers 100 Reader's Digests to your local supermarket. 35 copies sell. You then have a sell-through of 35%. Now, here's the really interesting part: Next month the distributor - being a smart fellow and trying to save some trees from being chopped down - only delivers 50 copies to your supermarket. Why bring more if he's only going to sell 35? But alas, this time he only sells 17 copies - roughly the same 35% sell-through!

"I get it now", our intrepid distributor exclaims. "I am going to sell 35% of whatever amount I deliver." So the next time he brings 200 magazines. But sell-through is not that easy. This time he only sells 50 copies, or a sell-through of 25%.

However, he's sold more magazines, you say. Unfortunately, any profits from the additional sales are probably offset by the increased fees he has to pay the supermarket for delivering those extra copies. Not to mention larger fees for shredding all those additional unsold magazines.

These well-documented but not-so-well-understood occurrences is what confounds the professional lives of magazine circulation managers.

Speaking about Reader's Digest, they are also in deep trouble. "Ugly," was CEO and chairman Tom Ryder's answer when he was asked about the magazine's fourth quarter numbers. "Just ugly." The magazine division had just lost $7 million.

But as you can see below, hope springs eternal even in the hearts of publishers. There are still lots of magazines being started.

These are stories we have just posted or are working on:

TRAVELAGE WEST, TRAVEL WEEKLY and MEETINGS & CONVENTIONS have a new owner.
OFFICE TECHNOLOGY is new.
BTA SOLUTIONS will merge with COPIER MARKETPLACE.
COSMOGIRL! is doing good.
TECHWEB has a new executive editor.
POULTRY MAGAZINE has a new executive editor.
GLUE is gone.
CALIFORNIA JOURNAL has a new editor.
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING has fired seven employees.
TALK has a new executive editor.
ELLEGIRL is coming.
COUNTRY LIVING laid off five staffers.
LATINOS ON WHEELS is rolling out in October.
THE DAILY JOURNAL will debut in New York with news for African-Americans.
READER'S DIGEST has a new US editor-in-chief.
SPIN has a new editorial fashion director.
REAL SIMPLE is growing.
FHM (UK) has a new editor.
LIVINGROOM is being planned by Meredith.
CRUNCH launches in December.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE is growing.
GAMENOW is coming in November.
BOLD is becoming, well.bolder. But not about paying freelancers, it seems.

The details are on the Home, Fast News, and Content Watch pages of the site at http://www.woodenhorsepub.com.

JUST IN - a bunch of editorial changes:

SUNSET, the monthly west coast publication about food, travel, gardening and good living, has a new editor, Katie Tamony, previously editorial director. The publication features stories on travel, gardening, home, and food, but all with a West Coast slant. Suggestions go to Ms. Tamony at Sunset, 80 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, (800) 227-7346.

At WIRED Bob Cohn and Thomas Goetz have recently joined the editorial staff. Cohn will be executive editor, reporting to Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief, and Goetz will be articles editor. Wired's circulation has reached 500,000 and features stories about the people, companies, technologies, and ideas that transform our lives. Editors look for innovative, trend setting ideas and information within this area. Releases should be sent to them at 520 Third Street, 3rd floor, San Francisco, CA 94107-1815, (415) 276-5000, fax: (415) 276-5150, e-mail: editpress@wiredmag.com.

At NEW YORK TIMES Phillip Taubman, assistant editorial page editor, has been named deputy editorial page editor effective March 2002. He succeeds Philip M. Boffey, who retires in March.

At SPIN Daniela Jung has returned to the magazine as the editorial fashion director. She had been at the magazine until June 2000 and after that continued to contribute cover shoots and fashion and style stories. She is reached at 205 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016, (212) 231-7400.

CHILD magazine has made Topaz LeTourneau its new photo editor. (Had to include this item because of the delicious name.Topaz LeTourneau!)

FROMMERS.COM, the travel website and newsletter, does not want freelance submissions. The editor, Pauline Frommer, writes: "We simply do not have the budget here to hire anyone, unfortunately."

Just so you know: We migrate all these facts into the Wooden Horse database if you need them later (http://www.woodenhorsepub.com/search.asp).

BRIEFS:

Thomson Financial - which includes FIRST CALL, TRADERS MAGAZINE and CREDIT UNION JOURNAL - is for sale. This may prove difficult as projected profits seem to have disappeared.

If you're owed writing fees from folding CONSUMER'S DIGEST or YOUR MONEY, hit them up now. They just sold their subscribers to Time Inc's MONEY and MUTUAL FUNDS magazines. Of course, no one asked the subscribers if they wanted their money back instead.

G+J USA restructured last week to lop excess costs off its overhead. After naming a new marketing VP, this.ahem.., cost-cutting, includes a new planning VP, who will "lead a team to study each [magazine's] expenditures".

Rising Tide Studios, publisher of SILICON ALLEY REPORTER, is rumored to be in money trouble. They've already closed the print magazine DIGITAL COAST REPORTER and e-newsletter Digital Music Weekly.

Well, I can't take more of this gloom. I think I'll drive down the canyon to get my caffe latte and watch the apples ripen.

Continue to have a good summer,

Meg

To subscribe to the News Alerts or unsubscribe, just e-mail Meg at mweaver@woodenhorsepub.com.

Copyright (c) 2001 Wooden Horse Publishing. Please feel free to forward this News Alert but only in its entirety.