According to the New York Times, magazine publishers are trying to figure out if they can raise their prices without losing subscribers.
The answer is no.
I subscribe to more than twenty magazines, including Time, Newsweek, US News, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Wired, and GOOD. I read every single magazine cover to cover. I love magazines.
With some magazines, it can take weeks to finish reading through an issue because there are so many stories worth reading and so much detail to absorb. A pile going on ten inches high sits on the table next to my bed, filled with ‘must read’ issues and articles from these magazines. WIth other magazines on my list, it is rare that I find anything interesting or truly valuable from issue to issue. It happens, but not often. Most weeks I can breeze through an issue in minutes and send it off to the recycle bin without a second thought. The only reason i stay subscribed is because the subscription fee is cheap enough that I can wait around for the occasional ‘must read’ article.
If the prices go up, however, the number of magazines that I subscribe to will drop for sure.
I just don’t think magazine publishers understand — most content today that they produce isn’t worth paying big money for. The topics are predictable. The coverage is bland and generalized. The interviews are cookie-cutter. And so much of the magazine is filled with advertisements that — a) don’t speak to me as a reader, b) fail to provide me with any action that I can easily take, or c) don’t relate in any significant way to the content that I am paying to review — that I barely get any content in the first place.
In today’s article, the CMO of Heart Magazines, Michael A. Clinton, was quoted saying “We’re realizing that the product is undervalued.” I think he meant to say underwhelming.
I understand magazines are losing money. But, if publishers want their products to survive, and more importantly generate revenue from the content that they are offering, most are going to have to step up their game. More and better content is the key – and if you make that available, the audience will be there, with money to spend. I say that as a subscriber and someone who believes in the value of magazines. Raise the prices on your current offering and you will find yourself in a deeper hole with no prospect of digging yourself out.
Brian is Managing Director of little m media which provides strategic guidance and support to organizations around the use of the internet and technology to facilitate communications, engagement, education, and mobilization.