A bubble magazine niche? I don’t know about you, but just the other day, I was saying to myself, what’s really missing on the magazine newsstand these days is a magazine for young men. And then, the next thing I know, The NY Time’s David Carr is previewing (registration required, etc.) Rodale’s effort to enhance its manhood by extending its Men’s Health franchise into a new title, Men’s Health BestLife.

Quote:

BestLife is not your father’s magazine - the coming issue mentions that black-marlin fishing in Madagascar is lovely this time of year. But neither is it the son’s - the cover trumpets “8 Essential Age Erasers.” There is little of the literary or journalistic ambitions of Esquire or GQ, but a tilt toward moneyed male consumers, with, for example, a feature on turntables for vinyl records costing many thousands of dollars.

The article will also go down in my book for having the most obvious quote ever uttered by a so-called industry expert:

“I think in some way, publishers are borrowing a lot from women’s magazines,” said Betsy Carter, a writer and editor who worked at Esquire in the 1980’s before starting New York Woman. “For a long time, it was thought that men had no interest in service journalism. But men are a lot more touchy-feely and aspirational than they used to be. And now that those readers are becoming baby boomers, it might be a good time to launch a magazine like BestLife that is aimed at them.”

Has Ms. Carter never flipped through the Elle-knock-off called Men’s Health Magazine in, say, the past decade? I predict the magazine will be great, but I am guessing (and I mean guessing) that rather than being a reaction to a great market-opportunity, BestLife is a project Rodale’s management had to back to keep superstar editorial director David Zinczenko from moving to GQ.

Early push: This weekend, I’ve been helping my friend, Alice Randall, set up a website (with blog) [URL - www.alicerandall.com] that she will launch before the May 4 publication date of her new book, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades. When it is launched, I will link to her new website that will be found (but not yet) at www.allicerandall.com. On that site, you’ll find lots of background information about the book and links to dozens of poems, songs, Nashville restaurants, monuments and other topics mentioned.

Despite the book’s official May 4 “lay down” date, it is already available on Amazon.com and at local bookstores in Nashville (especially my favorite, Davis-Kidd). As the book is a lead title in Houghton-Mifflin’s spring catalog, it should be available everywhere within days, if not already.

I mentioned the book a few weeks ago when the New York Times profiled Alice and the book. The early reviews for the book are extremely positive. While not all as glowing as this one, I believe the reviewer, Linda Richards, editor of the online literary magazine, January, captures perfectly the book and its author.

Please read the review in its entirety, but here is an excerpt:

Beautifully-executed and seemingly unrelated bits coalesce to present a perfect finished piece. And I don’t use perfect lightly here: Had I the power to alter Pushkin and the Queen on Spades, I wouldn’t change a thing. It is just right as it sits. Perfect. There, I’ve said it again….

…It’s tempting — and I know some reviewers will give in to the temptation — to call Alice Randall — author of The Wind Done Gone — one of the most important black voices to emerge in the United States over the last several years. That statement, while true, is not true enough. Randall understands the stuff of which stories are made. She knows how to build characters we care about. She knows how to impart import without hurting our heads or our enjoyment. Randall’s strong, clear, important voice doesn’t require that qualification of color. I suspect that author would appreciate the distinction.

(Reading back over Linda Richard’s review, I know certain I’ve buried the lead on this post. Forget the website I’m working on. Just go get the book and read it. And please feel free to spread the word that the book is available.)

Comparing comparison columns: Last Sunday, I linked to a column by Cheryl Wong in the NY Daily News on how to get the best price on a magazine subscription. This Sunday, Rosanne Wickman, a columnist for the Kansas City Star does a similar piece, only she uses a one-year subscription to Time as a benchmark for a price comparison survey. It reminds me of a price comparison aggregator I blogged a while back called Magazine Price Search. Then, again, you can always skip all this comparison shopping and get your subscriptions here at the rexblog magazine store where you can get Time for the low, low price of 71¢ per issue.

Hi-O, Hi-O, it’s on the road we go: A sold-out Atlanta-stop on an event-tour geared toward subscribers of O, The Oprah Magazine, drew 3,000 in Atlanta yesterday. The women (”women” is the word used by AP to describe those in the audience) “paid $45 each to hear Winfrey speak and to learn lifestyle tips on healthy eating, matching wine with food and yoga.” The “Hi Gorgeous Tour” goes to Kansas City and Jersey City next month.

Side note I: A one-year subscription to O, The Oprah Magazine costs $18 at the rexblog magazine affiliate store on Amazon.com (and you can purchase one for as low as $15 per year elsewhere). A sub-group of that subscriber base is willing to pay $45 to spend three hours with Oprah talking about yoga and how to feel good about oneself. There’s a lesson in there somewhere for other magazine brands. However, in this case, I think Oprah could put her name on about anything and charge whatever she wants and her audience would line up to purchase it. And this is good. She’s always had fans here in Nashville.

Side note II: Seeing the post below about Henry Luce and then this makes me believe that if Luce were alive today, he’d be Oprah Winfrey.

TV worth watching: As part of its American Masters series, PBS will air the documentary, Henry Luce and Time-Life’s America: A Vision of Empire on Thursday, April 28 at 8 p.m. CDT (check local listings).

Quote from the PBS website:

In the late 1930’s, (Henry Luce) was America’s single most powerful and innovative mass communicator. During the preceding decade and a half, with several other young men fresh from the nation’s Ivy League colleges, Henry Robinson Luce had started distinctive and popular magazines. Taken together these publications provided a more gripping and coherent view of the world than was to be found in similar periodicals and daily newspapers. They had also transformed Luce’s company, Time Inc., into a substantial concern. Luce and his partner had raised eighty-six thousand dollars to start their first magazine, Time, in 1923. In 1941, the revenues from Time, and other Luce enterprises reached forty-five million.

Henry Luce wikipedia entry.

Participate in a scientific experiment: The other day I posted a link to a page on Amazon.com where one can review this weblog. Thanks to the three people who at this point have added a review. One reviewer’s complaint about the wacky commenting feature that only allows someone who is “a member” of this weblog to comment led me to do something I’ve been wanting to do for two years and never had the patience to figure out: make commenting available to anyone, member or not. As there are no other privileges of membership than the ability to comment (accept that special sense of belong), I guess we’re all members now. Or at least we are if the new comments feature works. Please give it a try, if only to comment with the remark, “testing.”