Thursday, October 6, 2011

Mooks and Canucks: The Bookazine Invasion Crosses the Border

Barely a week after Dead Tree Edition chronicled the rise of bookazines at U.S. newsstands, word comes that the hybrid publications are on the march in Canada as well.

"Special interest publications -- spinoffs from a core magazine -- are definitely a growth area for traditional publishers," the Canadian Magazines blog quotes Maryam Sanati of Toronto Life telling a meeting of Toronto editors.

Her advice includes "build on your publication's core competencies," "repurpose what you can from the main book", and "be as specific as possible." Sanati's formula for SIPs: "Very specific, very vertical = very successful."

Her goal is to meet the needs of specific consumers so well that "the newsstand-only products leap off the racks."

That raises a question relevant to both Canadian and U.S. bookazines: Why do we refer to them as “newsstand-only” books when we publishers claim to have gone multimedia and multichannel? Why aren’t we calling them “non-subscription” products and selling them on the Web and in editions for Nook, Kindle, iPad, etc.?

1 comment:

D. B. Scott said...

To be fair to the presenters, The Hockey News does sell replica digital editions. But good point about terminology.