Publishing

The drinks went down easy. A little too easy for a wet Monday night. Alpha magazine was no more, the pin pulled in an 11 am meeting with management, and past and present staff were out drowning their sorrows. Outside, the rain poured down, as though in commiseration.

In its heyday, Alpha was the biggest-selling men’s magazine in Australian publishing history. Its demise says much about the current industry focus on electronic publishing. But it says more about how incredibly tough it is, and always has been, to sell magazines to men in Australia.

Men’s magazines are a tough game. The toughest. While women across all demographic groups have an automatic reflex to purchase mags both quality and trashy, men have no such compulsion. It’s like our hormonal cycle, or lack of it compared to women. The impulse is just not there.

Continue reading "Farewell to the first and last great Aussie men’s mag" »

Everyone in Australia knows that books cost a whole lot more than they should.

The absurdity in the debate about whether to make books cheaper is that politicians who will make the final decision – some of whom are beating their chests about our cultural heritage – are voting with their mice and buying books online from cheaper online retailers overseas.

Our website The Punch is surveying the nation’s MPs about their media consumption, including the use of new media, the type of technology they use, and how they buy movies, music and books.

Continue reading "Book debate is absurd when we’re buying them overseas" »