Less than 48 hours left for Condé Nast Portfolio blast off…

The countdown has started and early on Monday morning the first copies of Condé Nast Portfolio will start arriving at the desks of charter advertisers “in the most handsome ‘wrapping’ for a launch issue” David Carey, group president and publishing director of the magazine told me. The launch issue closed with 332 total pages and 185 ad pages. Portfolio.com will also go live on Monday April 16. More info on Portfolio’s premiere edition will follow in the next few days. In the meantime, I asked Mr. Carey about the reason Condé Nast decided to venture into the business magazine arena, a category of magazines Condé Nast did not carry in its portfolio (no pun intended) until now. He said, “While not known for business titles per se, Condé Nast publishes magazines that are the favorites of millions of business executives. Many read and admire our other titles … Vanity Fair, AD, Golf Digest, The New Yorker, Wired, Conde Nast Traveler, and more. We’re taking our trademark style — strong narrative journalism, great photography and design, best in class production values — and now applying it to the business field. When you see it, you’ll get it …. it’s a classic Condé Nast title, it has all our DNA, but only about business”. To order your own copy of the premiere issue click here.

Magazine fun facts…take 1

Once a week, I will try to bring you an interesting fact about some true, but bizarre, fact about our magazine industry. Here is the first fun fact courtesy of Capell’s Circulation Report… Did you know that the lowest selling issue of Sports Illustrated in 2005 was the Feb. 28 magazine selling 32,416 copies that week? Ten days earlier on Feb. 18 Sports Illustrated sold 1,083,827 copies for a difference of 1,051,411 copies. The reason for this huge difference in sales can be summed in two words: swimsuit issue.

Looking for an explanation…

I know I am not the one that is supposed to ask the questions, rather answer and comment on things, but this split cover phenomena is really getting out of control… It is becoming rare to find a magazine with one cover, whether two different covers one on the stands and another in your mail box, or split covers with both covers on the newsstands… I tried to give some answers in the past (read all about it here), now I would like to invite readers, editors, and designers to post their reactions in the comment link below. To understand what I am talking about, look above at the two covers of the May issue of Ladies’ Home Journal, the newsstand issue and the subscription issue, and the two split covers below of the special issue of Wizard magazine Mega Movie issue.