And what’s even better: they have a long, rich history of doing great things that they can now reflect upon and revisit. The latest cover, for instance. After 75 years of doing things right, they deserve it. And the story referenced on the cover is something I’m really jealous of.

And don’t forget the GOAT/St. Sebastian cover!

STONER

Speaking of dead dogs, this conversation about dog killing in the name of art was interesting…

http://georgelois.com/Esq.virnalisi.html

But you can work forever on a great cover (it’s red and it’s got the photo of the celeb appropriate to your audience… in my case you got a 30% jump in newsstand sales if you had Bruce Lee) and have it all go to nothing if you don’t have shelf position.

Bottom shelf at the back isn’t going to move a lot of copies so you’d better be paying those extra fees for position.

In 1999 I went to the net with EJMAS.com and stayed there. Never made a dime since but I’m happier.

@6 Johann I agree with you on the fashion mags, so much that can be done without 200 pages of advertising. And “the net is free” for publishers, check out http://180mag.ca/ I’ve been publishing that “because I can” for over three years now.

Kim Taylor

I know even magazines with small news-stand sales spend lots of time thinking planning writing designing and TESTING covers.

Its not just about design and prettiness – its making your cover effective on the news-stand. Getting someone distracted and tired to notice and shell out $5 for you magazine as they are running home after eight hours of work.

If making effective covers was easy an intern would be doing it, not several million dollars worth of corporate vice presidents, editors, designers, and photo editors for two weeks.

Yep, Bait&Switch sucks and I wonder if it really is effective over the long term.

One page?
A half page?!
A quarter page?!?

Not cool.

An entire store of “traditional business model” magazines, and then that one section of fashion magazines that play by a different set of rules.

After seeing the gorgeous photography in the fashion magazines, I’d say we need more backroom printing deals, and more voodoo economics. I could have pitched camp, laid out a cot, and stayed in there for hours on end…

One of my favorite books on the Cover’s glorious past is “Front Page: Covers of the Twentieth Century”.

Your post sounds right from a great quote from its foreward:

“These days magazines tend to use their covers to advertise their interior. Headlines, sub-titles, advertisements and lists of contents jostle together where once the image reigned supreme. Of course there is always an image there still in the background. It’s hard to know sometimes who this strategy serves. Does it reassure the reader by telling them exactly what lies inside? Or do the editors of the magazine feel happier when all of its wares are on display?
For a long time though, things were different. The image alone was trusted much more. As a result every magazine cover was a work in its own right, a subtle mixture of art and marketing, reflecting a spirit rather than a menu or a table of contents. And the art director was king.”

When I was asked to shoot my first cover for a magazine a while back, it was very challenging to say the least, and exposed me to the inner working of the publication as I had never seen before. Everyone from Editor to Circulation to Publisher had a say as to what the image was to be.
Big arguments ensued. Lots of shouting.
They even went to the extent to have an illustrator draw the cover as it was to appear. To exact specifications. My job became more colour by numbers, than collaboration with the art director. A truly eye opening experience. The art director was no king, and it stifled the hell out of the publication as witnessed by the strife and inner fighting over the cover image.
It all worked out in the end, as the art director is living happily ever after with a well suited publication.

The end.