A new male-oriented magazine covering science, nature and psychology, to be called ID, Ideas and Discoveries, is in the works from Bauer Publication for launch before year’s end.
It marks one of the few magazine launches by a major US publisher this year.
The company said it will draw on a successful sister title, called Welt Der Wunder — World of Wonder — from its German parent company. It has installed Sebastian Raatz, the vice president of new media who previously worked at Axel Springer, as the launch editor.
The new magazine with big photos and graphics is slated to hit Dec. 10 with a 250,000-copy distribution and a fairly high $4.99 cover price. It will appear six times a year.
The launch signals a new direction for Bauer, where all of its existing magazines, including Life & Style, In Touch, First for Women and Woman’s World, are aimed at women.
Greg Slattery, the group publisher of women’s magazines who will be the launch publisher of ID, said he’s not discouraged by the tough ad climate. “Bauer has had success in launching a variety of magazines in different economic times with resounding success,” he said. And like other European titles — but unlike most American magazines — it will not depend on ads for the majority of its revenue stream but will instead rely on single-copy sales.
Big advance
Any sign that there was lingering ill will between Random House and controversial agent Andrew Wylie was dispelled with the news yesterday that the publisher is agreeing to fork over what is believed to be a low seven-figure advance to “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie for his memoir.
Markus Dohle, chairman and CEO of Random House Worldwide, put together the deal, which will bring the English, Spanish and German book rights to Random House imprints across the globe. This past summer, Wylie thought he had found a loophole in the contracts of many venerable authors who had signed book deals long before the dawn of electronic publishing.
Wylie said he was going to introduce a new imprint, called Odyssey, in partnership with Amazon that would sell electronic editions of past bestsellers directly to consumers, bypassing the publishing houses that had published the hardcover versions years earlier.
Random House reacted with fury and said it would halt all book deals with Wylie because, it said, he was now a competitor in the publishing world.
The feud was quietly settled in late August.
The book is due out in 2012.
Pecker plan
Rumors have been swirling for weeks that American Media CEO David Pecker was getting ready to pull out of the offices in Woodland Hills, Calif., that he has been renting from vitamin king Joe Weider ever since he purchased Weider Publications in 2002 for $350 million.
Over the past two years, budgets and staff have been cut after Weider’s biggest advertiser, Hydroxycut, under pressure from the FDA, issued a voluntary recall of its product in 2009 and halted advertising for a year. Some 500 ad pages disappeared from Muscle & Fitness. Staffers complained that no raises have been handed out for at least the past two years.
Earlier this month, vice president of human resources Ken Slivken flew in and began interviewing everyone working on Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Fit Pregnancy and Natural Health.
“The claim was ‘auditing’ but the rumors abound that he plans to move the magazines from their Woodland Hills offices to New York so he can keep a closer eye on them,” said one insider.
Yesterday, at least some of the prediction came true when Muscle & Fitness workers were informed that the title’s 12-member editorial staff will be moving to New York in January and getting a new editorial director.
Seth Kelly, a one-time top editor at Maxim, who had recently been running the Ultimate Fighting quarterly that American Media produces in New York, will be the new editorial director of Muscle & Fitness.
Kelly is also being named the editorial director of Flex and Muscle & Fitness Hers, although Allan Donelly will continue to serve as editor of Flex and Muscle & Fitness Hers. If any of the staffers of Muscle & Fitness make the move East, they may not want to unpack their boxes. They will be mov ing into One Park Ave. in January, but AMI has already signed a long-term lease to move far downtown to 4 New York Plaza in May.
AMI, which has about 70,000 square feet at its current Manhattan address will be taking over two floors with about 80,000 square feet when it moves into the 20-story office tower. The expectation is that the remaining Woodlands Hills staffers will be filling that space next spring.