As far as inflection points go, this is a good one. In a Reuters story, the Financial Times Group says it's expecting content revenues (subscription and single copy sales) to at least equal, and possibly overtake, print advertising revenue for the first time this year.

During the London portion of the Reuters Global Media Summit, FT CEO John Ridding acknowledged the rough advertising climate, which has put extra pressure on digital to perform. The FT's online operation, says the report, now accounts for 30 percent of its revenues.

In the first half of this year, the group More...

If you're in the business of creating, recreating, designing or, God forbid, rescuing magazines on life support, you need to know what the state of the art is at this point.

You don't have to look very far. The dozen or so titles that define the latest details in packaging are on your newsstand.

Some sell well and some very well. And some very well for the past few decades. Examining them amounts to a master's degree in magazine crafts from how to construct a great cover to what's sexy with fashion photography and trendy typography thrown in.

1. Typography
If you want to l More...

Free samples, whether from a grocery store, makeup counter or a newsstand, are largely welcomed by consumers. Give people a chance to sample great products without putting down a dollar and watch the line of waiting customers curve around the block. Aside from the free good itself, consumers will often experience a warm feeling for the manufacturer supplying it, “They really do care!” Companies (retailers, publishers, etc.) know this, and maintain the freebie as an act of goodwill, opposed to what it really is: a bite to inspire consumers to buy the entire package.

Today, The Wall Street Journal opens the gates of its paid wall, allowing viewers to access ever More...

The theme of this year’s American Business Media Executive Forum was paid content, and vets from every facet of the b-to-b industry were on hand to offer guidance and lessons from the field. Beyond the paywall debates, marketing services and analytics discussions was the business brands are built on: the content. David Berlind, UBM Techweb’s editor-in-chief/CCO, John Gallant, CCO with IDG Enterprise and SourceMedia EVP/CCO David Longobardi shared how they are encouraging and prepping editorial staff for the future.

In the Forum’s keynote presentation, president of The Marketing Democracy Judy Franks reinforced the difference between social networks a More...

What’s the difference between Garden & Gun and Portfolio, two award-winning magazines that were both launched in 2007?

Other than the obvious response—Portfolio is out of business while Garden & Gun thrives—for Sid Evans, the difference comes down to one word: Soul.

Evans, the group editor of Time Inc.’s Lifestyle Division and founding editor of Garden & Gun, says being “soulful” makes all the difference between magazine success and failure, and it’s something Southern magazines can teach the world. More...

Let's face it: b-to-b publishing is considered the weak sister to consumer publishing by many in the industry. So why do so many consumer side vets struggle when they make a go at b-to-b?

Richard Beckman brought a lot of attitude as CEO of Prometheus Global Media, promising to revamp the media/entertainment brands (including Adweek and The Hollywood Reporter) that the company had purchased from Nielsen Business Media with a consumer-mag edge.

That attitude was shared by Beckman's big name editorial hires Janice Min ("I guess it shakes the system out here that a so-called trade would dare to break news that wasn't spoon fed. More...

HP and Condé Nast are partnering in an on-demand, digital-to-print pilot program that will allow readers to, via a desktop printer widget, download selected content and print it from home.

At this point, says a Condé Nast spokesperson, the publisher is determining the kinds of content that would be appropriate for this delivery mechanism. Recipes from Epicurious, for example, might make sense, but the publisher is still trying to figure out how content from, say, Glamour might work in this setting.

In announcing the program, HP says Allure, Details, Epicurious, Glamour, Golf Digest, Self and Wired will participate in the pilot.

HP is trying to More...

When is five consecutive quarters of growth not enough? Right now in magazine publishing. To see real, sustained growth, there are three things every magazine publisher should do to keep readers and advertisers engaged.

1. Create Franchise Issues

Like most, at ASI we questioned every expense during the past recession, but there’s one thing we did not do: cut editorial staff. For Advantages, which is targeted toward salespeople, I asked our editors to really put themselves in our readers’ places. As a result, we upgraded our content, offering meatier stories with case studies on how industry salespeople were winning new business and getting clients to open up their wallets. We added a “salesperson of More...

As several hundred magazine executives gathered at MPA’s 2011 American Magazine Conference in New York to hear speakers dissect social media, tablets and e-commerce, Scott Galloway, New York University Professor of marketing and founder of L2 Digital Think Tank—authors of the Digital IQ Index—struck a nerve with his frank dressing down of publishers’ social media strategies.

“About 19 percent of our budgets are now going to digital,� More...

In its quarterly survey, Mediafinder.com reports 200 magazines launched in the first nine months of 2011. This number is an upshot from the same period in 2010, in which 176 magazines debuted.

Leading the launch list is the food category (with 25 new titles) and regional interest (which introduced 18 titles); new regional pubs include Bitayavon, O. Henry Magazine and Brooklyn Magazine. 944 Media (which shuttered its luxe magazine offerings in June) debuts a new regional offering with Vegas/Rated, under parent company Sandow Media’s partnership with WENDOH Media.

At the 2011 Fulfillment Management Association [FMA] Day, keynote speaker Bob Sacks, who has held multiple roles within the publishing industry, told the industry professionals in attendance that the present is one of the best times in history to be a publisher.

“I believe we’re heading into the golden age of publishing and it will be fun and lucrative,” he said. “The publishing industry used to be about seeing distinct, finite finished magazines going out the door on a regular basis. Now there’s the new paradigm of a continuous array of news that may never be finished. What we do now is not what we did.”

Sacks says that p More...

Here are some ruminations on trends, courtesy of my annual trip to the U.S. Open with three good friends, Ted Bahr, CEO of BZ Media, Steve Davis, president of SRDS, and Michael Forgash, an account executive at SRDS.

We've been doing this outing for years, the four of us, and over that span, as a result of my exposure to the accumulated wisdom of my three industry colleagues, I've come up with countless terrific stories for FOLIO: and our other brands. And I've often changed the way I look at the business as a result of the conversations we have.

This year, we discussed some especially timely things. One was an observation that a More...