Business

Mag launches bounce back to ’08 levels

Magazine launches in 2012 climbed back to their pre-recession 2008 levels.

But the market has changed dramatically with titles launched by small entrepreneurial companies dominating the annual list while publishing giants have all but abandoned the launch pad, according to Prof. Samir Husni, who runs the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism.

Last year, there were 870 new magazines started with at least two issues. Of that number, 242 were published at least on a quarterly basis, according to Husni, who has been compiling the annual list of magazine launches since 1985.

The single largest category was the epicurean niche, which cranked out 161 new titles, narrowly beating out the special interest/lifestyle category, which tallied 147 new entrants.

Between 2008 and 2011, the number of magazines published at least quarterly never broke the 200-title mark and total launches in the recession-ravaged years ranged from a low of 678 last year to 798 in 2010. This year is still well short of the all-time record of 1,015 reached way back in 1998.

The full list of magazines and their covers will be available at http://www.commpro.biz on Monday.

While the biggest companies are sitting out the launch game, Husni said many have turned their attention to high-priced, ad-free “bookazines” dedicated to a single topic, often using material recycled from existing titles. They include Reader’s Digest “Best Jokes” and Time’s “Man Made Wonders of the World.” “It’s a whole new business model,” said Husni. “They are not trying to sell one million copies at $2.99. They are trying to sell 50,000 or 100,000 copies at $12.99.”

Husni also picked out his top five notable launches of the year, and first place is a tie between controversial gun enthusiast title Recoil and — at the other end of the spectrum — Highlights Hello magazine for babies.

In September, Recoil became embroiled in controversy after founding editor Jerry Tsai said a semi-automatic submachine gun was not intended for civilian use. His remark drew howls of protests from gun enthusiasts who called for an advertiser boycott. Tsai’s apology went unheeded, and he was forced to resign.

Even before the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, the publisher, Source Interlink, insisted it had no intention of shutting down the mag, although it has been mum on a replacement in recent days.

“The controversy reflects what is going on in society,” Husni said, adding that the debut issue of the quarterly magazine has been going for $125 a copy on eBay.

He said the co-winner for most notable launch, Highlights Hello for children under 2 years of age, is both waterproof and chewproof.

Rounding out the list of notable magazine launches is No. 3 Du Jour magazine, a fashion and lifestyle title launched by Jason Binn; No. 4 Howler, an independent magazine aimed at soccer fanatics that was crowdfunded and promoted through social media; and, at No. 5, Hearst’s Cosmopolitan for Latinas, one of the few launches from a big publisher.

Spin faces music

Spin magazine will no longer publish a print version.

BuzzFeed Media, which took over Spin in September from the McEvoy Group and began sacking staffers, acknowledged this week that it is not going to resume a print publication after all.

The issue that hit in September right before the takeover was its last. Faced with advertiser and newsstand erosion, Spin had been cut back to a bimonthly two years ago.

Not so fast, fella

AFL Web Printing — which once printed the Financial Times, the freebie daily Metro and Women’s Wear Daily — pulled the plug on its Vorhees, NJ, operation three weeks ago and told staffers they were out of jobs, effective immediately.

Not so fast, said one laid-off employee, Madan Ramcharan, who has filed suit in US District Court in New Jersey, claiming the shutdown was done without sufficient 60-day notice of a plant closing as required under the federal WARN Act.

The printer appears to have had a turbulent labor history. In mid-2010, CEO Dennis Forchic left the firm founded by his family only months after it had received a big cash infusion from Westbury Investment Partners, headed by Joseph Fogg.

In March, pressmen from the Teamsters-affiliated Graphic Communications Conference, which had unionized the plant in 2010, handed out leaflets outside the Financial Times and Condé Nast-owned WWD, claiming that the printer had been fined by OSHA for unsafe work conditions and that the National Labor Relations Board had ruled it had illegally fired nine workers in retaliation for union organizing activities.

The suit over the closure, filed by the New York City law firm Outten & Golden on behalf of Ramcharan, is seeking class-action status for some 250 laid-off, full-time employees.

AFL’s CEO Antoinette Franceschini and Westbury’s Fogg did not return calls.

kkelly@nypost.com