Compile on demand

Following the previous Colophon, we created a small magazine called Colophound, containing wisdom and objects from the first event.

One section was called Magazines 2027, in which a number of people, including me, had a stab at predicting a magazine future 20 years ahead. Others had already speculated on digital screens and moving paper, so I decided to focus on a kind of hybrid magazine, combining growing trends in print-on-demand technology and RSS readers. Here’s what I wrote:

“The cover is like a free gift for subscribers, because the content inside has been compiled to the individual formula of the person who this is for, in this case a woman in her early 20s…

“Also in this issue are 80 pages from Vogue – the latest big photoshoot and a summary of the catwalk fashions. The small print inside tells me that the following week will include selected content from Harpers, the week after that from Wallpaper* – and that more content can be purchased via the reader’s online profile.”

Two not twenty years on, have Mine, a new trial from Time Warner. You pick the 5 magazines (from a selection of 7, but this is a trial) that match your personality, and you’ll get sent a regular (weekly at first, then biweekly) compilation of features from the selection over the next ten weeks. These aren’t small publications either – Time, Sports Illustrated, InStyle among them.

It’s being described as a “printed RSS feed”. I should really talk to my lawyers.

For now at least, Mine is free for the first 33,000 US-based subscribers (and the first 100,000-odd digital subscribers) – sign up here. I’m predicting a rather disjointed reading experience… but who knows? Maybe this single-issue Reader’s Digest/The Week-style compressed edition will help keep print relevant. It certainly makes it a little more unpredictable, which can only be a good thing. Though does anyone know how they’ll report these on the advertising rate card?

Here’s how my 2007 piece ended:

“An ad on the inside back page talks of a new service starting this month – 20 pages of specially curated content for the price of 10. This content will be chosen, edited and designed by former big names in the magazine industry, including editors of the New Yorker and the designer of Creative Review; I can visit each of their profiles online to see who they are. Strange and a little disjointed as this new magazine world is, it’s something of a relief for me to see that the editor still has a job, albeit as a personal brand designed to compete with the magazines themselves.”

And for my next digital prediction: five years or less from now, Mine magazine and eMagazines do a deal, and compilation publications go big. It’s not The Future Of Print but I still suspect it might be one of them.