Time Inc’s latest wheeze to revitalise the magazine industry launches in a few weeks. MagHound takes the NetFlix subscriber model (LoveFilm for you Britishers) and applies it to magazines: any titles you want for a fixed fee. It’s a bold idea, but there’s a few crucial details yet to be confirmed that will make the difference between it being the Messiah or just a very naughty boy.

Here’s the form letter that Aimee at Time Inc sent to me in response to a few casual queries:

Many thanks for your interest in MAGHOUND, a new online membership service that allows magazine lovers to choose up to fifteen magazine titles- and get them delivered to their home- for one low monthly fee. MAGHOUND members are able to add or change magazine titles whenever they wish, with no long-term commitment or obligation.

A MAGHOUND membership is priced by tier- three titles for $4.95 per month, five titles for $7.95, seven titles for $9.95, and $1 per title for eight titles or more. Titles that are more expensive to publish are considered “premium” titles and will have a small additional fee per month. First-time MAGHOUND users are eligible to receive a free one month trial.

MAGHOUND looks forward to a successful September 2008 debut. By launch, the service will carry approximately 250 diverse magazine titles offered by several major publishers. MAGHOUND is always looking for new additions, so if you have a publisher or title in mind, please let us know at maghound@customersvc.com

MAGHOUND is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Time Inc, the publishers of Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

So let’s break that down. Three titles for $5 is a decent enough price, I suppose – cheaper than the newsstand, not quite as cheap as some of the deals you can get as a subscriber in the US. But that’s ok, you’re paying for the convenience of being able to swap your faves. It’s the rest of the detail that seems a little hazy.

The phrase “Premium titles” brings down the fog of doubt immediately, lit only by a 30-feet tall flashing neon question: what is premium? Close by are the shining followups: Is it “anything you’ve ever heard of”, or just the really big stuff? How much is “a small additional fee”? And will this make the whole thing unnecessarily complicated from day one?

The rest of the questions break down into three categories:

The functional

What are the monthly cycles on this? Do I have to get all my magazines in one parcel (doubtlful, if publishers are sending them out themselves), or do I have 3 “credits” to use per month?

What’s the delay between choosing a title and getting it?

When do I have to choose? Can I see a great mag on the newsstand, and then select it on my MagHound account? Or do I have to put my order in the previous month, going on brand / pre-issue hype alone?

Will I get an inordinate amount of crap in the mail for signing up? (Answer: almost certainly. Magazine choices are demographic gold mines)

The structural

Are Time Inc the best people to do this, rather than say the Magazine Publishers of America or even Comag?

What’s the financial split for the mags in question, and how much will Time Inc charge them to be on the homepage / send out special “Look out for this month’s XXXXX” emails to all subscribers (surely the cornerstone of their business model)?

The crux of the matter

Will people want to consume/buy magazines in this way?

Consumers are essentially split into two basic groups: regular readers and casual readers. Regular readers will usually subscribe to their favourite magazines, especially in the USA, though will probably also be casual readers of other titles. Casual readers will glance over what’s available and decide on the spur of the moment. How will they do this? Assuming their train/plane isn’t about to leave, they probably pick the magazine up, flick through it, stop at certain articles. If the lucky publication succeeds in keeping their attention for more than 30 seconds, chances are that they’ll take it to the cashier. (Or, if you’re unlucky, they’ll just stand there and read until they’re done). The vast majority of newsstand consumers will buy magazines for instant gratification – for reading on the train, while eating dinner, at the hairdressers and so on. It’s a functional, cheap thrill.

MagHound seems determined to create a new kind of reader, the casual multiple subscriber. This is a person who doesn’t need that instant gratification and yet doesn’t want to commit to a single title for long. Neither one nor other, it assumes a magazine-title literacy that most people won’t have, without having a commitment to any particular brands. It’s a strange hybrid that doesn’t really have a place in the current consumption model; as a system, it really only seems to make sense, as the Freakonomics blog points out, as a way of handling your subscriptions that already exist.

The Netflix model works because they’re films. You don’t own them, you mail them back when you’re done, and you don’t mind the expectation of waiting for another to arrive (just as we do for upcoming films in the cinema). Whether an instant-hit medium like newsstand magazines will work the same way is, to say the least, unproven. Still, I’ll be signing up, and will let you know next month how the hound hunts.

More worthwhile reading about MagHound over at:

Portfolio.com
Corante.com
Forbes.com

The energy of the best magazines, the knowledge of the deepest insiders. Four books, four stories, four cities.

If you’ll pardon me a moment, a rather special project of mine has recently reached fruition. And I think you might like it.

We took four European cities, formed four editorial teams, found four designers and said to each of them: forget the word “guidebook”. Forget everything you think it means, forget the tourists, forget the famous sites. Find the words, find the photographers, find the illustrators, find the design that lets you share your love for the city. Take the time, share the secrets and do it in a way that should make someone excited enough to want to get on a plane tomorrow.

These are limited-edition love letters to the city, each one individual and specially created, with no template and no restrictions. Just as each city is different, so are the books – they don’t even share a structure. The only restrictions we placed on our teams: the books had to be useful, they had to share amazing experiences through passionate writing and design, and had to be out by this summer. Oh, and the name: A Weird and Wonderful Guide.

And so I spent nine months travelling between Amsterdam, Lisbon, London and Madrid, helping remarkable, talented people focus their passion in book form as they poured their love and skill onto the page. The secrets they uncovered are nothing short of remarkable, from Mexican wrestling in London to Cape Verdean nightclubs in Lisbon, from the Amsterdam students who live in shipping containers to the underground sex life of Madrid. And they illustrated them beautifully.

The designers, in alphabetical city order, were Lava (whose work includes the magazine Carp, the newspaper Dag and lots of clever books, posters, websites), Silva Designers (Mil Folhas magazine, Y, Pública and more), Jeremy Leslie / John Brown (MagCulture.com, multiple-garlanded magazines and books) and Murray Design (451, lots of work for Nike), all supported by over-talented local photographers and illustrators in each city.

There are a few distribution wrinkles currently being ironed out, so for now the books are currently only on sale here, where you’ll also find more about each tome, as well as the Barcelona book that I edited in 2006 (“The travel guide for the been-there, done-that set” — New York Times). If you enjoy the blog, if you like great design, and if you want to see these cities (and for that matter your own) in a completely fresh way, click on.

www.lecool.com/books

BBC to launch Lonely Planet magazine
Grauniad claims it will compete with Conde Nast Traveller and Sunday Times Travel. Surely it’s more likely to have Wanderlust and similar in its sights?

Esquire US produces handwritten cover lines
Now plagiarising itself

New luxury mag for iPhone
Not a first per se but having daily refreshed content in a bimonthly you buy on iTunes sounds intriguingly confusing. The price point sends mixed signals too

Is this the launch of the revamped Baron/O’Brien Interview?
The Kate Moss/Catwoman cover line suggests so. I wonder how those half-tones will come out in the printing? UPDATE: Yep, with increased distribution too

BAD IDEA opens up the Butcher’s Shop
Transparency and a lesson in good editing; mouseover for detailed comments. Part of their new Writer’s Lab

(Yet another) new contemporary arts magazine “takes flight”
I like the look of its selection, how it gives images space, and the playfulness of some of the giant typography. Will need good printing to make it all stand out. Not sure why, but it feels similar to the less-inspiring-but-also-Aussie Monument. Maybe it’s the architecture spread

Every copy has his thumbprint
Cute

Lad mags to blame for society’s ills
“Instant-hit hedonism” isn’t a bad tagline, actually

Time Inc to produce films based on its magazine articles
Expect the headline “Time and motion pictures” to appear somewhere soon

Mygazines saga continues
Exact Editions smells a rat regarding the regularity of what’s been scanned in so far by “users”. No more news from Mr Smith; meanwhile the discussion goes on

Everywhere magazine gets mothballed
Back “before the end of the year“. Disclosure: I have a piece in the latest (last?) edition. I was invited to contribute, which is a little different from the UGC model it espouses; I’ll receive the same payment as all the other contributors, though hopefully the free subscription will be transferred to the still-running JPG

American store pulls Mad magazine for spoof ad
“Embarrassed corporate PR guy” backpedals frantically

David Rowan is to edit Wired UK
With Danger Hammersley as Number Two, it seems

Faber dabbles in print on demand
Rather a lovely way of putting old books back into print. Magazines next?

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for taking the time to write about Mygazines. I did however want to clear up a few misunderstandings about our site.

We will re-iterate we have every intention of working with the industry to fortify the future of magazines and the industry in general. The comparison to Napster with respect to someone driving past you with a radio on and claim that sharing, is not at all our position. We are saying, if you were to take all of the office’s in the world that purchase magazines for the sole purpose of providing entertainment for their clients, is the same as sharing. Furthermore, these offices see different people everyday, so the sharing is constant and consistent and usually includes many back dated issues as well as new. By virtue of the fact that these groups change everyday makes it like a free magazine store.

The most surprising aspect of almost every article is that they are completely missing our inactive revenue model. We have ways of drawing revenue from a number of sources, some more obvious than others. Mygazines is hardly a pirate website with the interest of breaking the industry. Rather, we offer a paradigm shift that is far more fiscally comprehensive than meets the eye and yet easily transitionable by even the biggest publishers.

The true future of the industry lies in the final stages of our site concept. We can easily transition to the final revenue model quickly with the co-operation of the publishers. We cannot however reveal the full concept at this time as we are saving that discussion for the publishing industry directly.

If our goal were to be pirates, we could have made live a number of features, including but not limited to, downloading and printing allowable to visitors and members alike.

Finally, to compare us to other similar sites with the only difference with of us being free, is to disregard the importance of the ‘mygazines’ custom magazine for users, notifications, and our full ability to share on the go, across the globe instantly.

As per our press release: We have every intention of working with the industry to provide not only revenue streams that are vast, but also an answer for the Publishers in general. Our method will increase current revenue, halt and reverse advertising revenue lost to the internet, and overcome the lack of the ability for magazines to stay current.

Mygazines sharing model is a solid one with lots of hidden potential revenue and demographics to appease all.

We can certainly continue to make our case and meet in the courts if need be. That seems to be the intention of the publishers as a whole. But ask yourself, to what end. Even if they are triumphant in this battle, they will lose the war. Apple already has a delivery system for digital reading via both the iphone and now ipod. Microsoft is also working to employ touch sensitivity to its products. Our idea would work as easily for those companies due to our concept. If we were to reveal such to those corporations, they could follow the business model and succeed without the need for working with the publishers at all. That’s all I can say at this point regarding our current revenue potential as well as the future model.

The competitiors have missed the boat. Even the sites that think they have come up with the future online version for magazines, they have not! Publisher friendly or not! There is a final stage missing that can’t be seen unless one has the freedom to think outside of the limitations of the industry as is. In doing so, we have ironically found a way to fortify the industry for all of those involved, increase jobs and magazine selection, while cutting overhead and increasing revenue dramatically for the publishers and industry as a whole.

We cannot elaborate fully as that would be tipping the hand too much. We wish to only divulge that information to the industry directly and sooner rather than later.

An hour later, John added

As well, aren’t we an interesting option for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft as the next major asset in the ads war. We can work with the industry or independently to achieve such. We prefer the former.

I’m very interested to see what John means by “the final stage missing”. I’m guessing he has a subscription model for the community in the pipeline, plus perhaps some form of contextual advertising. Digital publishing channel Texterity abandoned their subscription model recently, has found that in the consumer area, people view online as a companion to print, not a replacement, and so they give publications the option to be available for free. As the Magazine Publishers of America add their lawsuits to the pile, let’s see how this one plays out. I certainly agree with John that litigation is not the answer – even if it does succeed in closing down Mygazines.

Two interesting codas: John’s plans don’t seem to end with Mygazines for grown ups; he also owns the URL “Kidgazines.com” (as well as “urgazines.com”). And his location remains a small mystery. He tells me “Anguilla is our place of origin. This should not be considered as hiding. We are quite upfront about our place of origin on our site.” It is of course extremely easy to set up a company in Anguilla online, and there is no obligation to state detailed information about your company, its finances or its directors there. That could be a coincidence, of course, and Mr Smith may well be based there himself too. The telephone number registered for Mygazines.com, however, is in Romania. The story continues.

UPDATE: Mr Smith sent the same email to other media outlets