500 real-life lessons - U.S. magazines - Editorial

The statistics on the country's largest magazines tell 500 unique stories--some upbeat and some tragic.

What does this year's FOLIO: 500 say about the state of our industry?

One inescapable conclusion is that while computer magazines may be maturing, they are still hot properties. While the demise of Corporate Computing and PC Sources (number 104) suggests that opportunities are not limitless, the computer titles nonetheless set lots of FOLIO: 500 records this year. Of the 100 largest magazines by revenue, 12 are computer titles, the most of any subject category; of the top 10, the only specialty book is PC Magazine; and the largest trade magazine (at number 36) is PC Week. For sheer volume of advertising pages, the computer books also blew away the other titles: All the top five are computer magazines. Annual revenue growth for the computer magazines was 23 percent--especially impressive when you consider that the overall industry revenue growth rate was less than 4 percent, according to Publishers Information Bureau.

That computer magazines are lucrative isn't really news--more surprising are some of the individual success stories that the numbers tell. Take a look, for example, at Hachette Filipacchi's Boating (sailing up to number 169 from 189 the previous year). For an all-paid consumer title, Boating has the best possible stats: double-digit gains on both the circulation and ad-page counts. That's extraordinary for a magazine devoted to a product category that, unlike computers, has seen sales sink.

Boating's secret? Sorry to disappoint, but there's no single easy answer. In 1991, Boating absorbed Boat, but that doesn't fully explain the 26 percent circulation growth. A significant portion of the 1992 gains was made on the newsstand, where strong coverlines and excellent editorial content attracted buyers. Editor John Owens deserves a FOLIO-vation for his determined, ongoing campaign against drunken boating and for startling investigative pieces like this May's undercover look at marine surveyors. On the ad side, publisher Richard Amman gets good word-of-mouth in the industry for his aggressive selling style.

Likewise number 276, Eating Well, from Canadian publisher Telemedia: While no threat yet to number 161 Cooking Light (also a winner with an 8 percent circulation gain and 16 percent growth in ad pages), the three-year-old Eating Well grew 30 percent in circulation and 28 percent in ad pages. What does it have in common with Boating? Lots of enticing coverlines and well-crafted skylines. And a critical eye toward its subject matter that is a shared trait among the successful magazines of the nineties. Eating Well's most recent issue tackles bioengineered victuals ("Frankenfoods") and pesticide residues. Kudos to founding editor Barry Estabrook, current editor Scott Mowbray, and publisher Francois de Gaspe Beaubien.

Of course, there's a cautionary tale in the FOLIO: 500, too. Look for the little |dagger~ after certain names and draw your own conclusions about what those unfortunate titles did to deserve their fate. (Here's a case where the numbers don't necessarily tell the whole story, since you'll find one defunct publication even before you get out of the top 100. However, a clue may be found in the penultimate column of numbers: "percent of change in ad pages since 1991.")

Besides saluting the statistical stars, I'd also like to cite those who crunched the numbers: the accounting firm Leslie Sufrin, and, in particular, Jim O'Hara. On the FOLIO: side, Paul McDougall did a masterful job editing the project as well as coordinating the efforts of our indispensable interns, Alison Gray Johnson and Barbara Newman. Thanks to all for making the FOLIO: 500 possible!

COPYRIGHT 1993 Copyright by Media Central Inc., A PRIMEDIA Company. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group