Captivating Connections.

bring on the tablets!!

The magazine industry is preparing for war when it comes to tablets.

"After letting the Internet slip away from them and watching electronic readers like the Kindle from Amazon develop without their input, publishers are trying again with Apple iPhones and, especially, tablet computers.

Although publishers have not exactly been on the cutting edge of technology, two magazines — Esquire and GQ — have developed iPhone versions, while Wired and Sports Illustrated have made mockups of tablet versions of their print editions, months before any such tablets come to market. Publishers are using the opportunity to fix their business model, too.

'It may help them reassert some, not just control, but reassert themselves and not be in the death spiral that some were in in the last years,' said Ned May, director and lead analyst for the research firm Outsell."

zappos goes real world.

"Zappos.com, the online seller of shoes and other merchandise that was recently acquired by Amazon, is mailing 750,000 copies of a printed catalog to consumers. The catalog, timed for holiday shopping, bears the title Zappos Life and has a fashion and designer focus, offering products like handbags, jewelry, clothing and fragrances in addition to the Zappos.com mainstay, footwear.

Among the brands featured in the fashion catalog are Cole Haan, Guess, Calvin Klein, Lucky, Stila, True Religion and Stuart Weitzman. They can be bought on the Zappos.com Web site or by calling a toll-free telephone number. (The catalog can also be read at zapposlife.com.)

'Different people respond to different media,' said Aaron Magness, director for brand marketing and business development at Zappos.com in Henderson, Nev.

The catalog is the third from Zappos this year; Mr. Magness described the first two as tests. The company is looking at everything from page counts for each issue (48 for this one) to the paper weight.

One lesson is that 'our lapsed customers have responded very well' to the catalogs, Mr. Magness said, referring to shoppers who have not bought much lately on Zappos.com."

an itunes for the print world?

Interesting...

"A consortium of magazine publishers including Time Inc. and Condé Nast plan to jointly build an online newsstand for publications in multiple digital formats, according to people with knowledge of the plans.

The formation of a new company to run the online newsstand — sometimes characterized as an 'iTunes for magazines' — may be announced in early December. Time, Condé Nast, Hearst and Meredith all intend to be equity partners in the new company, although the deals have not yet been signed.

In the face of slumping print circulations for many magazines, the publishing houses are eager to exert some control over digital readership, said people at the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the plans. Some newspaper owners have also expressed interest in the joint venture.

In other media sectors, rivals have already formed joint ventures for the Web. Several television networks are stakeholders in Hulu, an online television and film Web site. Some music labels are partners in Vevo, a music video site powered by YouTube that will make its debut next month."

it's getting nasty at conde nast.

"Conde Nast's ad-page numbers are in for its 2009 issues, helping shed light on why the company made sharp cuts this fall.

The company’s ad pages at monthly magazines have declined by almost a third since last year, with the company losing 8,359 ad pages this year, according to estimates it released Wednesday. Condé Nast began cost-cutting this fall, closing Gourmet, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and Cookie.

The worst-hit magazines for the year were Architectural Digest, where ad pages fell 49.9 percent; W, where ad pages fell 46 percent; and Condé Nast Traveler, where pages fell 41.1 percent. Details and Wired both fell about 39 percent.

Some magazines showed improving numbers in their December issues. Glamour posted an increase in ad pages of 6.6 percent. Traveler dropped only 5.4 percent from last year’s December issue, and Lucky 8.8 percent.

Others were struggling in their December issues, including W (down 49.2 percent) and Details (down 59.2 percent, though there was a holiday issue last December that was not counted this year) ."

bloomberg to buy businessweek.

"Bloomberg is taking another step from the trading floor into the corner office.

The company said Tuesday that it was the winning bidder for BusinessWeek, the troubled 80-year-old title that McGraw-Hill had put on sale this summer.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the price was said to be near $5 million, plus assumption of liabilities, which were $31.9 million as of April.

The magazine will continue to be a weekly print publication, rechristened Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Decisions have not been made about BusinessWeek’s staff of more than 400 people; Bloomberg will select which of those employees it wants by the end of the year, when the deal closes. Those not selected will receive severance from McGraw-Hill, said a BusinessWeek executive."

just how special are 'special issues'?

One of my favorite magazines is the New York Times Magazine supplement that comes out in the Weekend Edition once in a while. Apparently, these special issues may be a boon to magazines, like it was to ESPN:

"ESPN created its Body Issue, on newsstands now, not only to make waves. The topic meant ESPN could call it a special issue, which got advertisers’ attention and money.

Print advertising is in miserable straits right now, but special issues seem to be the one thing attracting ad dollars. At ESPN, for instance, ad pages were down about 24 percent in the first six months of this year from the same period a year earlier, according to Publishers Information Beauro. But the Body Issue is the biggest October issue, in terms of revenue, that ESPN has ever had.

“The analogy is to why you pay a premium to run in the Oscars or the Super Bowl — there are more people, more deeply engaged, it creates a lot more buzz,' said Peter Gardiner, chief media officer for the advertising agency Deutsch, part of the Interpublic Group Of Companies 'Times 'Man Of The Year' is going to be a lot more interesting than the average Time magazine.'

But the success of special issues may have a side effect of making regular issues seem dull. Advertisers want new executions, big promotions and splashy special events when they run an ad, which they do not always get in normal issues. Despite that, Mr. Gardiner said, normal issues are still worthwhile.

'A regular issue, by definition, we think is still valuable from an advertising perspective — you just get a little extra oomph in the special issues,' he said."

r.i.p. gourmet, cookie, modern bride, & elegant bride.

Sad!

"Conde Nast Publications announced this morning that it is shuttering four magazines, following a widely publicized review by McKinsey and Company. Food bible Gourmet will shut down, Brides will increase to monthly publication but Modern Bride and Elegant Bride will close, as will family lifestyle magazine Cookie.

The changes show resolve by Conde Nast to eliminate redundant brands -- an opposite strategy than earlier in the decade, when the company was happy to boast food titles Gourmet and Bon Appetit, men's mags GQ, Details, Cargo, Vitals, and Men's Vogue, home titles House & Garden, Architectural Digest, Domino and occasionally Vogue Living, and numerous women's books including Vogue, Glamour, Self, Jane and Allure. In those days, the company's direction was to block competition and nail down every available ad dollar in a given category.

magazines move towards (digital) mainstream.

We saw yesterday how sales are down for magazines. But what's going on with them in regards to digital?

It seems a lot!

"We have been told for months that digital is the one bright spot in--with few exceptions--an overall dark year for consumer magazines, and our quarterly tracking of year-over-year Web site traffic bears this out. In comparing page views and unique visitor totals from June 2009 versus June 2008 (different from the month-to-month reviews), we find a number of brands making high double-digit and even triple-digit percentage gains. Keep in mind that the overall U.S. Internet population has peaked in the last year and overall usage is leveling. It is safe to say that the year-over-year gains that magazines as a whole are enjoying online reflect a real increase in the media mind-share for these brands. Dare we say even that for many consumers the 'periodical' brands finally are becoming always-on brands in the users’ minds.

magazines have seen better days.

The latest numbers don't exactly flatter magazines...

"So far in 2009, the magazine business looks a lot like the Jon and Kate Gosselin divorce splayed all over the supermarket tabloids: you have to look very hard to find a winner.

With already-dismal ad figures for the first half of 2009, magazine publishers turned in their circulation figures on Monday, showing that newsstand sales plummeted 12.4 percent in the first half of this year. Newsstand sales are thought to be a bellwether for the economy, or at least for how willing consumers are to fork over $5 for an impulse purchase.

The good news was that paid subscriptions actually increased a bit, meaning that over all, circulation fell 1.2 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations report. Newsstand sales were down for all but one of Hearst’s magazines, although only three were down 20 percent or more: SmartMoney (down 35.1 percent), Redbook (down 23.5 percent) and Town & Country (down 20 percent). The Hearst figures exclude Food Network Magazine, which was not measured because it is a new publication."

newsstand sales down.

It's another grim news day for magazines, but it's not all dark clouds:

"Recession and a dispute with magazine wholesalers combined to hammer many titles' newsstand sales in the first half of this year -- much as publishers worried they would. That's based on new numbers from many publishers in the lead-up to a big semi-annual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Happily for the industry, many magazines rely much more on subscriptions, which seemed to hold up better. Reader's Digest saw newsstand sales sink 20% from the first half of 2008, for example, but those single-copy sales represent a sliver of its circulation. Subscriptions, comprising 92% of the pie, fell a much more manageable 3%, so Reader's Digest still exceeded its circulation guarantee to advertisers."