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ought to be prettier
Harper's: Agencies must kick junk reader addiction
By Jeff Bercovici
The end of 2001 is not a good time to be a small magazine, with wholesaler consolidation crowding smaller titles off the newsstand in droves.
It’s not a good time to be an unprofitable magazine, with an advertising recession cutting into the margins of even the most prosperous books.
And, as the recent closure of Lingua Franca attests, it’s certainly not a good time to be a highbrow publication, with consumers spending less and less time reading magazines each year.
In other words, the end of 2001 is not a good time to be Harper’s.
Or is it?
Ask Harper’s publisher Rick MacArthur, and he’ll tell you that his magazine may be better equipped to face the future than it looks—at least his version of the future.
It’s a future in which small titles flourish as publishers and advertisers finally surrender their cherished belief that bigger is, almost by definition, better.
"I’m a big proponent of quality circulation, and I think that’s where the magazine industry has to go," says MacArthur. "Smaller is better, if it’s all paid."
Publishers, he says, can begin by charging readers more for subscriptions and single copies. Advertisers, for their part, should applaud publishers for getting rid of junk circulation.
But this utopian scenario won’t come about on its own, says MacArthur.
"The education that has to be done is to convince the ad agencies that smaller circulation is healthy, if it’s all paid, and bigger circulation, if it’s inflated, is not healthy."
According to MacArthur, what’s keeping advertisers from getting the message is, in part, certain reactionary elements within the magazine industry itself, which includes Harper’s’ two main competitors, The New Yorker, circulation 850,000, and The Atlantic Monthly, circulation almost 600,000.
"The problem is that The New Yorker and The Atlantic are still trying to play the big-magazine game," he says, citing The Atlantic’s purchase a year ago of the now-defunct Civilization’s subscriber list.
"They might show a temporary increase in circulation, which makes them look healthier, but it’s phony."
In addition to costing the circ-inflating magazines money, it perpetuates the ideal of size über alles, says MacArthur.
"When I go and make a sales call, it puts me in a tough position. By definition, the minute you go beyond your market, you start bringing on more marginal readers."
At a lean 214,000, Harper’s is relatively immune from charges of circulation padding.
But the magazine has been enjoying readership growth of late, and from the unlikeliest of sources: the newsstand.
Battling it out alongside the likes of O: The Oprah Magazine and Maxim, Harper’s grew single-copy sales by 53 percent between 1995 and 2000, according to a recent analysis by John Harrington, publisher of The New Single-Copy newsletter.
That might not be saying a heck of a lot for a magazine that even now only averages about 34,000 in newsstand sales per issue.
Although many small publishers have been learning to live without it, newsstand distribution is an increasingly vital component of Harper’s’ business strategy, MacArthur says.
That began to be the case around 1995, as the rising cost of direct mail and the death throes of the stampsheet sweepstakes firms forced Harper's to reconsider how it was selling subscriptions.
Now MacArthur talks like one who believes he has seen the light.
"It's so old media," he laughs. "What could be older media than trying to get your magazine sold on the newsstand?"
While other small magazines have been hit hard by the rampant consolidation in the magazine wholesaling business, Harper's has managed to increase single-copy sales while decreasing the number of copies it distributes through wholesalers.
It has done this by doubling the number of copies distributed through direct retailers, mostly bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders.
"You cannot look at the newsstand the way you look at direct mail or any other promotions you do," says MacArthur. "It's a way of reaching new readers who would never know about you otherwise."
October 29, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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