News of the Magosphere January 14th ’11

The Stranger nails it again with a great cover
Clever reuse of the political graphic of the moment

Prisoners write letters to magazines
Great story on how the art of letter writing isn’t dead

Hearst tries to apply analytics to magazine distribution
Somewhat shocking it isn’t already an industry standard

The best glossy covers of 2010
One more list, this time against blatant Photoshoppery

How to copy and paste DRM’d publications
Can we now just allow copy and paste across the board?

iPad readers don’t read at the same times as other readers
Unsurprisingly for a $500 piece of kit, they seem to prefer doing it at home – which has implications for what they’ll buy

Light-up cereal boxes from CES
Next step, an issue of Esquire probably

Top publishers prepare to launch their own app store
Much better than making their own tablet, which is what they said the might do

1 comment

Phred on January 17, 2011 at 5:01 pm

About the article on newsstand analytics…keep in mind that the thought that using any sort of analytics to accurately predict newsstand sales is tricky stuff. So much is dependent on cover, when it goes on sale, what is on-sale around that particular title, whether or not there was any sort of promotion on that title, or a title displayed near by. Who stocked that particular rack? Did they do it right? Did they put all of the copies that were allocated to that store on-sale or did they free-lance? Is the title supposed to go in a specific pocket for that issue? Was it put in that pocket? If it was put in that pocket, was it put into the pocket with the cover facing out or was it put in upside down?

I’m not saying that using analytics is stupid. It’s not. But at the same time, let’s not get all excited that this is something new and it’s never been done before. It’s been done to death. It’s great that it’s getting the recognition it needs, but it’s really nothing new.