Magazine Publishing: Products, Communities And Contexts

Abstract

Magazines continue to assert their popularity despite repeated predictions of their demise. For many consumers, this is seen in the ongoing presence of magazines in daily life, including through the retail sale of a wide variety of published titles in long-established genres, such as those for women or those that appeal to readers with particular interests or at certain stages of their lives. Variety now extends to the medium of publication: Some titles embrace the capacities of digital or multi-platform delivery; others exploit the aesthetic pleasures and practicality of paper (Le Masurier 2012). As it has done since its beginning, which is variously traced to the seventeenth or early eighteenth century (Le Masurier 2014), the magazine continues to reinvent itself. The contemporary consumer magazine market -those titles on sale to the public- is therefore highly segmented, dynamic and competitive (Williamson 2014, 122), dependent as magazines generally are on economic imperatives around attracting and retaining readers and advertisers. In addition to consumer magazines are other broadly-defined types, such as b2b (business-to-business) and promotional publications, that illustrate what Holmes (2007, 512) calls "the protean nature of the [magazine] form".