Onwards and upwards with magazines

Some people outside the magazine industry seem surprised and puzzled by the number of launches in the March issue of Masthead magazine and its Tally 2004 cover story. It detailed 124 new magazines of all types and styles, consumer and trade.

The generally accepted myths of the marketplace are that magazines don't make money, that magazines and print generally are sunset industries, that young people don't read, and so on.

Yet there has been a steady, solid increase in interest over the past few years, with an amazingly diverse group of people, younger and older, taking courses, looking for opportunity and starting magazines. Howcum? A number of reasons:

• There is a growing, highly media-literate population out there -- university- and college-educated young people who are receptive and full of ideas.
  
• They want to make a living in something that excites them and gives outlets for their creativity. This is something that is very important to them.
  
• They want into businesses which they consider creative and fun, either as employees or as entrepreneurs.
  
• Magazines are "cool" or "hot", depending on your perspective, because they are approachable, understandable technology with a relatively low threshold for entry.
• Technology, particularly in desktop publishing and database management has become very inexpensive, readily available and extremely powerful. One less barrier to entry.
• The newsstand has increased its titles by about 400% in the last 10 -15 years; a huge variety of magazines are just more available and visible as inspiration.
  
• Controlled circulation allows startups to avoid the labrynthine coils of Canada Post. It's interesting to note that 70% of the startups that Masthead identified went this route.
  
• Younger readers are nationalistic, much more so than their parents, and like to see their own views reflected in their own magazines.
  
• The trend towards "niche" or "vertical" publications is unstoppable -- people are understanding that it's not print and paper but specific audience and savvy branding that drives success.
  
• There are lots of gaps remaining to be filled, in consumer and trade and particularly in areas where younger people invest their interest: health and wellness, alternative therapies, entertainment and lifestyle, adventure travel and extreme sports.
• There continues to be a proportion of the population -- maybe 15 - 20% -- who have a strong appetite for art, design, fine writing and the clash of ideas. This appetite must be fed.
• And there is a climate out there for "finding your passion" (watch "Oprah" some time) that many people find can be satisfied by producing beautiful, tightly focussed publications.
  

Whether it is a hyper-specialist magazine like Chasing Plastic (for Ultimate Frisbee players) or a reader-written book like Our Canada (which grew to 200,000 paid in one year) or a long-form-journalism outlet like The Walrus or Saturday Night, there seems to be no end of audiences ready to support magazines of quality that speak to them in a voice they recognize and value.

The only question is how the advertising industry, which pays 60 or 70% of the freight on consumer magazines and 90% on trade, will respond to this boom.

Will they see this as an opportunity and make a bigger investment, or simply carve up the pie differently? The adshare of magazines seems to have been growing. Tim Hughes of MindShare told a group of magazine people the other day that, often, agencies don't even know that these new magazines exist; so it shouldn't be assumed that they don't want to work with them. His firm has had great success (for instance, Absolut Vodka) targetting hard-to-reach small, specialized audiences through small, specialized magazines.

There is a potent combination of ambition, entrepreneurial spirit and youthful energy out there and it's creating a very interesting outlook for the industry.