Flipping hell. Have we got it all wrong?

So the woman's husband hands her a copy of Nuvo magazine and selects a copy of Maclean's for himself, off the waiting room pile. Then both start to thumb through the magazines. They both started from the back and flip-flip-flipped forward, pausing from time to time to point out this or that.

On closer attention every one of the magazine-reading people in the waiting room were all flip-flip-flipping from the inside back page forward. And the thought occurred: what if we have been doing this all wrong all these years? What if people want a magazine they can read from the back and we simply haven't twigged to it yet? Do magazine architecture and design conventions matter as much as we thought or is it a load of tosh? Consider what this quite unscientific waiting room observation* means.

• The last page, facing the inside back cover, becomes one of the most important pages in the magazine, setting the tone for all that flipping to follow.
• The standard structure of most magazines -- front of book, well, back of book -- counts for naught with casual readers.
• The well of most magazines will be approached from the back and, even if they reverse course and read through it the other direction, all the effort of carefully constructing opening spreads, running heads and anything that is told in linear fashion is likely completely lost on them.
• These readers are surfing through the magazine looking for something that catches their attention and it means that sub heads and decks and other display writing, as well as photography, illustration, sidebars and captions, means the difference between catching them or not.
• Opening spreads and single page openers have to be compelling not because people will come to them first, but because readers need to be motivated to stop and reverse course to read the story.
• Good advertising becomes as important as good editorial. It's also a reminder that, as the late great Howard Gossage said: "People read what they like, and sometimes it's an ad."
• The tradition of stacking small ads at the back actually gives these greater purchase with pass-along readers than they get with subscribers.
  
• Good ads in the back of the book are just as likely to be seen and read as at the front; just what we've been telling advertisers for years.

*Our observation is that people flipping through the magazine at the newsstand tend to flip from the front. Go figure.