We need to talk.
As you may or may not know, media as we know it is dying. I can’t explain it all to you, but there are few salient facts that I think many of us fail to consider or understand when we’re balking at paying more than $12 for a subscription, or griping about the number of ads in a book (facts I just learned in the course of business over the last year, but that I’d never even given a thought to when I was studying journalism or freelancing, so I’m not judging, trust.)
1. If you love a magazine, never, ever call it to complain that “there are just too many ads in here!” Yes, people do this. I take about one of these calls every week. America, let’s get something straight. The $10 dollars you’re paying per year? Probably doesn’t even cover that magazine’s operating overhead, let alone funding for a dozen issues. Where I work, each issue generally costs over a million dollars to produce. Each issue. And we’re…not small, but not one of the titans of the category. If we were to count on the money our million or so subscribers paid to get the magazine, we’d blow through it in under a year, before we paid the freaking light bill. Ad-rich magazines are good things. Ad-rich means you get to keep reading.
2. The quantity of editorial is generally tied to the quantity of ad pages. The more ad pages in the book, the more pretty, fascinating, self-helpy articles the editors can include. Freelancers, had your article killed? Sorry, just not enough space given the ad revenue. Too bad, so sad.
3. Producing a book is hell. If you had any idea the kind of bulldoody advertisers demand of magazines when they buy ad space (must be at least 5 pages from a competitor, will only run ads on right hand pages, will not run an ad in any issue featuring natural disasters or controversial subject matter, and god forbid the production team screw up, because the advertiser demands free pages in subsequent issues) you would run screaming from the room, unless you were the most steel-willed, organized, puzzle-cracking mofo you know. And even then, you might run anyway, because it’s pretty freaking thankless, as jobs go.
So yeah, ads can be irritating and mags need to do some overhaulin’ to stay afloat, but next time you pick up your favorite glossy, and hate that it’s so skinny, or that it’s too full of cheezy poof-pushing, or not addressing any really pressing issues, you’ll know why.
And when ad pages decline, as they are in our currently shitactular economy? Bloodbath.
This is where being discerning about your magazine subscriptions come in. I used to get Self, Fitness, Shape, etc. but every time I read them I was annoyed to no end by the products they hawked.
I realized that those products were typically in line with the quality of the articles.
Now, when I read magazines like Bitch or Real Simple or various cooking magazines, I see the ads as something I could feasibly use/want, thus it’s far, far less annoying to see those ads.
The one thing that does baffle me is when magazines (and cooking magazines are the big one in this—Taste of Home, Cooks Country, Cooks Illustrated, Cuisine at Home) do an end of year book that is a compilation of all the magazines. Chances are I’m going to wait for that book instead of having 9-12 magazines lying around. I’d think this would be a way to deplete ad income, thus deplete magazine quality.
The only mag sub I get now is Cuisine at Home (which I LOVE) for $21 or $24 a year for 6 or so issues. I’d rather go with that than pay less and deal with advertising.
M-shel: I would guess they go with the year-end book as an option for people who don’t want mags lying around. However there are those that look forward to getting a new issue every other month or so. Same with comic book anthologies. Some people like going to their local comic book store every week to pick up the new issue, some people just wait for the anthology. Also I believe you’re more likely to see this with cooking mags because folks are more likely to keep and refer to them for recipes, techniques, etc. Add to all of that, Cuisine at Home even has an index and binders you can buy (all issues of Cuisine at Home come three-hole punched) which tells me they know their readers refer to their stuff regularly.
Shaz–I love Cuisine at Home (Sid intro’d me to it last year)…I’m getting the subscription this year, but when it ends I’ll probably just go with buying the bound version at the end of each year.
And I never thought about the cooking ones doing so because they’re kept and referred to, as opposed to other magazines that one tends to read once and then never really look at again.
Which reminds me that I should get Cuisine at Home, too. And Cooks Illustrated.
This is a great post. I think that people, in general, most people don’t understand what goes into any particular business and expect everything to be free.