LaunchPAD: For Brides, Expats and Entrepreneurs

Three new titles for three different audience groups.

The first two are already on the newsstand and the third should be out next month.

EXPAT Insider is a new monthly magazine that aims at giving the expat community settled in India an insight into entertainment to lifestyle and people of India

Bride & Style: A monthly magazine from the ITE Group, Bride and Style was launched at the ITE India 'Bride and Groom Fashion Show -2007. Jaya Prada launched the magazine in New Delhi.

DARE: CyberMedia’s DARE magazine is expected to hit the newsstand next week. Priced at Rs 30, it focuses on entrepreneurship and has a tagline “Because Entrepreneurs DO”

Editorial: Five Faces of Femina

In preparation of its fiftieth anniversary in 2008, the October 10, 2007 issue of Femina will be sold with five distinct covers.

This is a part of the two-fold activity undertaken to boost sales. Firstly, ‘Femina’ generated curiosity amongst its readers by conducting a poll on the '50 Most Beautiful Women in India' today, giving interested voters a list of 100 famous women of Indian origin.

This was followed by an SMS activity, inviting readers to nominate their choice of women. The magazine website www.femina.in, also carried an option for visitors to take part in the poll. Ads in ‘Mumbai Mirror’ completed the marketing effort on this. Once the results were compiled, they found their way into the October 10 issue.

Next, ‘Femina’ decided to take up the top five Most Beautiful Women (Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu, Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra and Dipika Padukone) and create five cover pages – one each for these five.

Original source link: agencyfaqs.com

Trends: The Magazine as an Object

However creative their content may be, most magazines still essentially amount to a pretty standard booklet of paper. Not so The Thing, which delivers an objet d'art instead. Its founders call it a magazine because incorporated into each object is some text. For example: The inaugural issue, shipped in August, was a plain brown window shade with one of two sentences silk-screened on it in black handwriting: "If this shade is down, I'm not who you think I am" or "If this shade is down, I'm begging your forgiveness on bended knee with tears streaming down my face."

That project was conceived by performance artist, writer and filmmaker Miranda July, who won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival for her film “Me and You and Everyone We Know” (2005). The next three issues of The Thing’s first subscription year will be by visual artists Anne Walsh, Kota Ezawa and Trisha Donnelly. Beyond that? There’s no telling yet which artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers editors Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan will invite.
Subscriptions cost USD 120 plus USD 10 shipping for each issue domestically or USD 30 per issue to ship internationally. Budding artists are lining up at The Thing’s door, and anyone else looking to create buzz could learn from its expectations-altering example. By breaking with convention, you gain the power to surprise and delight!

Original source link: Springwise
Interview with the founders

Free Stuff: Access to TimesSelect

Effective Sept. 19, content previously on available on TimesSelect (a New York Times premium service) will be available free to all NYTimes.com visitors.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

Event: MPA Forum | International - Outsourcing

The upcoming MPA Forum (September 19) hopes to show outsourcing as a way to reduce costs across all aspects of the media business and has two speakers from India.
1)Hoshie Ghaswalla, President of CyberMedia, will discuss the fundamentals of outsourcing.
2) Juhi Bhambal, Executive Editor, Global Services will discuss how she and a team put together a magazine, website, and events from an offshore destination.
Peter Meirs, Director Alternative Media Technologies, Time Inc., will add his perspective on the changing nature of outsourcing and discuss when outsourcing is not always the solution.

Related stories:
India: “Boston, not Bangalore” Campaign (posted November 13, 2006)
India: Ripe for Magazine Design and Production Outsourcing? (posted March 16, 2007)

Editorial: Alternative Story Forms

Finally a Study that proves what most editors and visual journalists have always believed. :)

According to Poynter.org, 'Alternative Story Forms' or tools like a timeline, a checklist, a fact box or a graphic—that are not part of the standard model of most newspaper or magazine narratives- are a good way to engage a reader’s attention.

As part of the Study readers were given one of six different versions (three print shown in the accompanying pciture and three online) of a story about bird flu. Each version included identical information fact for fact, but the design and story structure differed. When a reader finished reading one of these prototypes for five minutes, he or she answered questions about the story.

It was found that of the three print versions of the prototypes, the most visually graphic version (No. 3) resulted in the most correct answers and established that alt story forms helped readers remember facts presented to them.

Visit the original Source link to see the bigger version of six prototypes and more outcomes of the study.

Study: Websites of American Magazines

The Bivings Group has started a new feature called ‘Friday's Five’ to showcase a weekly top 5 list. This week's list builds on their study “Analyzing the Websites of American Magazines" and gives the rundown of the Bivings five favorite magazine websites.

1. TV Guide: Site has tons of content related to TV and movies, including reviews, previews, video snippets, listings and interesting blog features.
Cool features: The 40+ celebrity blogs (comments allowed!) are augmented by community blogs maintained by readers.
2. Rolling Stone: Photos, videos, and blogs. User reviews and ratings of movies and cds. The most interesting feature is their section for listening to music.
Cool features: After a quick download of a mini-Rhapsody player (no registration required!), users can listen to music featured in the print edition of Rolling Stone. Celebrity playlists are another cool feature.
3. Better Homes and Gardens: BHG.com has alot of nifty features starting with a the shnazy feature box on the homepage.
Cool features: The "clip it" feature lets you save tidbits of information in your myBHG.com account so you can use them later. A downloadable widget gets you updates from the website. Interactive home design tools are also fun.
4. Family Circle: Offers similar functionality as BHG.com–reader comments for articles and features, bookmarking articles and features in their site accounts, and a tag cloud linked to message boards appears on the main site.
5. US News and World Report: The content is professional, interesting, and easy to browse.
Cool features: Highly valued content (primarily in the rankings section ) is available to a larger audience. The design is sane–the site isn't overcrowded, loaded with doohickeys, or cluttered with too many headlines.

What do you look for in magazine websites and what are some of your favorites? Share in the comments.

Download the Bivings Magazine report here

LaunchPAD: Tehelka Magazine, eMaxim

Tehekla Magazine: In his write up 'New Ship, Same Course', Tarun Tejpal discusses the transition of the Tehelka weekly tabloid to Tehelka magazine starting from this week’s issue.
Brief extract from his letter:
“When we set out to create the Tehelka weekly we chose the format of a tabloid. We felt Tehelka’s brand of proactive journalism would not fit well into the affectations of a magazine. … Even so it took us a long time to convince ourselves that we needed to find the shape of a magazine, and that only happened when we discovered a look that was not only different from all other weeklies but also capable of retaining our DNA unchanged."

Maxim India Ezine: Maxim India has launched what it claims to be the world’s first e-zine product – eMaxim writes Exchange4Media. The e-zine, which flips like a real book, has zoom in and zoom out facilities, has user based interfaces, television commercials, and videos all built in, comes as a free CD with the Maxim mega relaunch issue priced at Rs 150.

Article: Overseas, a Rosier Picture for Magazines

An nytimes.com interview with George Green, the chief executive of Hearst Magazines International gives an interesting insight into the differences in magazine business within US and the outside world (including India).

Some useful observations:
1) The United States is the only place where the postal service gives incentives for mailing magazines. About 90 percent of magazines in the US are sold by subscription, only 10 percent on newsstands. Outside the United States, that’s reversed.
2) Subscribers overseas do not expect a huge discount from the cover price. The US magazine business is driven entirely by ad revenue , but elsewhere it is driven by circulation as well as ads.
3) You hardly ever see newsstands in the United States anymore, but overseas you see them everywhere. Since publishers don’t mail many magazines, heavier paper is used to give a higher-quality look on the newsstand.
4) The concept of a rate base doesn’t exist in other countries. So you don’t have to spend a lot of money on promoting your new magazine to lots of readers. It can take more than three years for a new magazine to break even in the United States. Overseas, you can make money with your second issue.

And here is an interesting bit about Hearst presence in India:
“We’ve been in India for 10 years and still haven’t made much money. That’s a country where advertising rates and cover prices are low for everybody. We won’t leave, though.
If you want to consider yourself a truly international publisher, India is a place you have to be.”

You can read the entire interview here

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Finally a not-so-rosy news:
Business 2.0, which I read off and on since 1998, is coming to a close with its October issue according to MediaPost.

LaunchPAD: Outlook plans magazine on Stock Markets

Exchange4Media reports that the Outlook Group plans to launch a fortnightly magazine on the stock market by early 2008. The name of the magazine has not yet been decided, but the Group is currently conducting a consumer research to finalise the name. The Group has also roped in N Mahalakshmi (last with Business Standard-Smart Investor) as Editor of the forthcoming magazine.

The magazine is aimed at investors who understand the nuances of the business and spend huge amounts in stock markets. To give relief from the stock-related information, there would also be lifestyle-related information.

Read more here.