Why are monthly magazines so “unwieldy”?

Nat Ives at Advertising Age has a great piece this week discussing monthly magazines being slow to market from an advertiser's perspective. He notes that, in times of uncertainty, marketers want to wait until the last second to make a commitment.

“Unfortunately for monthlies, which often need about two months to get an ad into an issue, the "last second" is often actually well past their deadlines,” he writes.

Don’t be surprised if your publisher starts asking questions (again?) about why your ad-close deadlines are so far in advance of an issue’s actual production and why it takes nearly a month for copies to hit the newsstands.

Here’s the sad part: The Magazine Publishers of America formed an “immediacy committee” five years ago to focus on the issue, but the group has disbanded, Ives writes.