Not permanently or anything. I’m just escaping the mourning olympics here in the UK for a week or so. On Monday, if the flash Bank Holiday allows, I’m going to Spain for a week of doing nothing much.
One of the things I’m most looking forward to is buying a couple of magazines for the flight, a Houston travel tradition with a history almost as long as The Queue. In the good old days, when I was a frequent flyer to the US, I’d buy the News Statesman and one of the music magazines on the way out and Mental Floss and the New Yorker on the way back.
My mile-high reading time was a genuine treat and while I don’t miss US immigration, I do miss those magazine moments.
Get your people in the same room
Speaking of flying, I might have mentioned that I was in Cape Town last week (you can get through a lot of magazines on a flight from Manchester to Cape Town).
I was there to speak to 300 of Media24’s employees at the company’s News and Lifestyle Summit. Over a day and a half, Egbert De Waal and his team rolled out a stellar line up (and me) to update staff on what was going on inside the business and in the wider world of media.
But, with huge respect to my fellow presenters, the biggest value I could see came from getting so many colleagues together in one place. More than one person said to me, “I loved your presentation, BUT it’s just amazing to meet so many other people in the company and hear what they are doing”.
Whether you have 300 people or three, put them together in the same room and watch the inspiration fly.
Magazines are different
We all know that, right? But now the actual numbers are in.
A YouGov survey has shown that, while more than half of American and British consumers prefer to get their news digitally, less than a third of US readers and just 18% of UK readers want their magazine reading to be online.
Almost half of the Americans surveyed say they get more enjoyment from reading magazines in print and almost 60% of British consumer expressed a print preference. And the older your readers get the more likely they are to want paper - in Britain more 70% of people aged 55 or over say they prefer reading real-world magazines.
So if you’re looking for an idea to steal, you could do worse than getting any timely information you publish online and turning your print into a glorious luxury read that your audience can lean back and enjoy.
Newstands are magical places
This last item isn’t so much an idea you can steal as a reminder that we work in an industry that helps create magical places.
Photographer Trevor Traynor has travelled the world taking pictures of magazine kiosks. Shooting (if that’s the right word) with an iPhone, he has captured the magic of 100 newsstands in 20 cities, from Jersey City to Marrakesh.
If anyone is wondering what to get me for my next birthday, look no further than the book that Traynor is planning to publish next year. There’s an NFT too, but I’m not greedy.
I’d never heard ‘Magazine’ by Pedro The Lion before I started looking for magazine inspired songs, but I love it. Actually, I’d never heard of Pedro The Lion, but they (he?) are well worth a listen, even if it’s only to boost your muso credentials.
Thanks for reading
Please remember to send me any magazine publishing ideas that you think are worth stealing for future issues. And remember, if you would like any help finding ideas for your business, let's arrange a chat.