Google Books has been slowly adding to its magazine offerings, presumably preparing for the day when it starts to charge for content.
However, we’ve had to make do with press releases and blogosphere watchlists to find out when they might add anything interesting. No longer, as they now have a page dedicated to all of the (mostly obscure) magazines they have (occasionally poorly) scanned!
One of my favourite things about Google Books is their word clouds, where all of the text is automatically scanned for word frequency, and the more commonly used words appear in larger type. Sadly, right now there aren’t any clouds for the entire archives of any magazine, only issue-by-issue (any coders like to cobble together a fix for that?).
Above is Men’s Health from January 2006. Below is Women’s Health from the same month. followed by the December 2004 edition of Black Belt. Still burning that Bruce Lee flame.
About Magtastic
This website focuses on developments
in the magazine industry around
the world.
It is written by
Andrew Losowsky, a writer and editor based in the USA. He has so far edited two books about magazines, and has ideas for plenty more.
He writes about magazines for The Wall Street Journal and others, and
is co-curator of
the Colophon international magazine biennale. He also runs
Stack America.
The rest of the time, he creates experiences.
Contact me
My books
Stack America
The Colophon biennale
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