Time Inc. experiments with customized magazine drawn from 8 titles

Time Inc., in partnership with one sponsor, Toyota Motor Corporation, is offering interested readers a personalized magazine called mine. Its content is drawn from eight different titles -- Time, Sports Illustrated, Food & Wine, Real Simple, Money, In Style, Golf, and Travel + Leisure. Readers get to select 5 titles from which content for their customized issue will be drawn. The first issue, which will have 36 pages (of which 4 will be Toyota ads), will be mailed early in April.

According to an Associate Press story carried by the Globe and Mail, the biweekly magazine is a five-issue, 10-week experiment to see how readers react. The publication is being used by Toyota to promote its new Lexus 2010 RX sport utility vehicle.

The magazine is free but the print edition is limited to the first 31,000 respondents, while an online version is available for another 200,000. It's only available to U.S. residents.

Sign-ups are available immediately at http://www.timeinc.com/mine, with the first issue to be shipped in the mail in early April, and then once every two weeks. Online subscribers will get digital editions that look just like the printed version in a special format that allows virtual page turns with clicks. A promotional push for the magazine kicks off Friday.