A reminder: On Thursday, I’ll be speaking in Atlanta at the Magazine Association of the Southeast breakfast. More information can be found on their website. The breakfast starts at 7:30 a.m.

End of print? B-to-B Online is reporting (temp. link) that Cygnus will cease publishing four regional printing-industry trade publications: Southern Graphics, Printing Journal, Print & Graphics and Printing Views. I will leave to others the opportunity to explore the irony in this news.

Up in smoke: One of the best vaporzine scouts I know sent me news of the launch later this year of Cigar Magazine which I thought already existed, but just was confusing it with something else.

(Thanks, Eddie Rider)

Hef chats about the magazine business: The interview at Bankrate.com contains none of the questions you or I would probably ask him. Fortunately.

Quote:

I think from very early on, the way the magazine is viewed has been pretty much in the eye of the beholder. Playboy is a Rorschach test. It reflects on the individual’s point of view of life and sexuality. But that was obvious from the very beginning. I wouldn’t be here if the magazine had not been more than a magazine from the very beginning. I started it with absolutely no money, and it pushed buttons that prompted response from the very beginning, or we wouldn’t have been able to publish the second or third issue…I’m fairly successful in business not because I’m a good businessman, but because I’m a very good entrepreneur. My skills are essentially marketing, editorial and creative. It’s the products and services that I created that speak to people, the things related to the magazine and the company and my life. These are the things of which I’m proudest, and that I do best.”

Falling for an old line*: A vaporzine called Maryland Life magazine will launch in January (available in December). Maryland Life will be a bi-monthly publication that “explores and celebrates the destinations, dining, home styles, and people that make Maryland a great place to live.”

Quote from press release:

“Statewide magazines are some of the most profitable and longest running publications in the U.S., especially within the Mid-Atlantic, and yet Maryland has been underserved for years. We plan to change that trend,” said Dan Patrell, Editor of Maryland Life and President of Great State Publishing, LLC. “Maryland Life will fill this void by celebrating life and living in Maryland for our state’s citizens, as well as the many people that come to the state each year for business or pleasure.”

Some of the most profitable and longest running publications are statewide magazines? I’d like to see a list of this category.

*Maryland is the “The Old Line State”

Scholarly scam? A “subscription company” in Houston, run by a husband-wife team, is being sued by some really big scientific publishing companies. The publishers are accusing Scholarly Publications Inc. of using false names to purchase subscriptions to scientific journals at the individual rate (which can be as little as a few hundred dollars per year) and reselling the subscriptions to libraries (which can have rates as high as several thousand dollars per year). The company says the lawsuits are based on a “misunderstanding” and that things are being worked out with the publishers.

Popular science experiment: MediaPost’s Michael Shields profiles the magazine Popular Science, a title that’s hot now…something noted here a while back.

PDF version update: As I’m still trying to get my post-vacation blogging groove back, I’ll just point over to PaidContent.org’s Rafat Ali’s update on some recent news regarding “digital magazines” (translation: PDF-ish versions). Rafat and I have been debating (although, not with each other) this topic for two years, so it’s somewhat amusing to see that the debate has been recently “set off.”

How magazines get started (continued): If you were wondering how a city can end up with a local hair design magazine, now you know.

Quote:

Payne and Williams started thinking about a magazine four years ago, but the spark came a year ago when Keif Savage, a Los Angeles-based photographer, decided to offer his skills.

(An explanation of the feature “How magazines get started (continued)” can be found here.)