News from the Magosphere: Mag business

Industry business

Men’s Health experiments with new iPhone revenue model
The most interesting bit is that it features micropayment options for “expansions” that help you meet your personal goals, such as “The Ultimate Abs Pack”. Could work very well for certain kinds of magazines

Beware the curse of the Men’s Vogue subscribers!
GQ promotes four-leaf clovers, rabbits’ feet as next season’s must-have accessories

Maxim creates American TV specials
A great excuse to link to one of the strangest and most revealing pieces of brand extension in recent years: Maxim hair dye

NEED gambles on campaign to remove all advertising from the mag
Adbusters doesn’t have any, after all. “Screw the man, save the world” is the slogan. If this doesn’t work, the hope is probably that the man doesn’t take it personally

Playboy pays huge sum for unfinished, unpublished Nabakov story
Sends orchids, puts in a bid without reading it, now says “parts of it are much more cohesive than others”. You can read more about the story of the story here, and read Playboy‘s 1964 interview with Nabakov here. It’s probably been a while since most literature professors picked up the mag (via Gawker)

WWD tries to explain what happened at Interview
Makes The Factory look slick and corporate