Craft beer, good music and magazines: It’s a winning combination for a publishing industry that is continuing to innovate and launch new titles this year. Seems magazines still have great appeal for readers who want to engage in their local communities and enjoy the finer things their area has to offer.
“As in previous years, the biggest category for new launches was ‘regional interest,’ which saw six new print titles launch, including 12th & Broad, a new magazine devoted to Nashville’s creative community, and ‘craft,’ with new titles like Craft Beer & Brewing. Other new launches in the first half of 2014 included Barbecue America and San Francisco Cottages & Garden,” writes Erik Sass in Media News Daily.
While these consumer magazines remain popular, the B2B market showed strong as well with 15 new titles launching, outnumbering B2B closures three to one.
And even though Crain’s New York chose to focus on the 27 closures in the first half of this year, those numbers were skewed by the shutdown of 13 auto enthusiast titles from TEN: The Enthusiast Network. As Sass notes, those TEN titles were formerly part of Source Interlink Media, the massive distributor that shut down this spring.
These new titles are being launching into an ad market that is favorable to niche market publications, meaning the advertising support is strong for this type of title. Smart publishers are taking advantage of this good combination of consumer interest and advertising support, and readers are coming out as the winners in this round.