The Hamptons publishing scene is booming again — and so are the internecine rivalries between the glossies that populate the East End.
“The Hamptons from a media perspective are alive and well,” said Richard Burns, chairman of Manhattan Media, which last year started the spin-off Avenue on the Beach, and owns the 40-year-old title, Dan’s Papers.
Brandusa Niro, the editor-in-chief and publisher of The Daily Front Row — who broke away from a joint venture with Dan’s to launch her own glossy, “The Daily Summer” — calls the competition a “fun and friendly rivalry.”
“We are so different, and the rest of them all compete with each other looking interchangeable, the same,” said Niro, getting ready for a her second summer season issue, with actress Gigi Hadid, photographed by Gilles Bensimon, on the cover.
“I don’t know if there is room for everyone, but I know we doubled our ad base and our revenue,” said Niro.
Cristina Cuomo, the editor-in-chief of Beach — also in its second year — is expanding to six issues from five and has 71 ad pages in a 146-page issue. She is striving for a distinctly literary approach.
“Instead of taking your book to the beach, we want you to take Beach to the beach,” she said. The title boasts Literary Editor Taylor Plimpton, son of literary lion George Plimpton, and has contributors ranging from Arianna Huffington to Ali Wentworth, writing about her fist date with new hubby George Stephanopoulos, as well as an excerpt from the last novel by the late Peter Matthiessen and a story on a local oyster shucker named Howard Pickerell.
While Cuomo is adding a sixth issue, Avenue on the Beach is holding steady at three.
Burns expects to pull in $6 million to $7 million between advertising and events, such as Dan’s Taste of Two Forks and a recently inked deal with the Long Island Wine Council, called Harvest East End.
He is holding a launch party at Delmonico’s in Southampton on Sunday.
His Memorial Day cover is Fernanda Niven, granddaughter of David Niven, shot on Cooper’s Beach in Southampton.
He said the debut summer issue this year will have about 98 ad pages while Dan’s racks up 245 ad pages.
The biggest magazine issue of the season still belongs to the 36-year-old Hamptons Magazine, owned by Niche Media and edited by Samantha Yanks.
The Memorial Day issue with Heidi Klum on the cover with a story inside by Tim Gunn, slated to hit this weekend, is a fat 396 total pages, including 236 ad pages.
“It’s a very robust summer,” said the spokesperson, but she said the real peak of the season happens around July 4 when the Hamptons are going full throttle.
Justin Mitchell, the editor-in-chief of Social Life, said, “I’ve been around for 11 year’s and I’ve seen a lot of magazines come and go.” He has Christie Brinkley on the cover, and says she is hosting an invitation-only party at a mansion in Wainscott on Saturday night.
“The market, like the economy, goes up and down and you have to be strong to survive the down years,” Mitchell said.
He stays largely above the fray, but that may change next year when Mitchell plans to steal a move out of the playbook of Manhattan Media and Modern Luxury — which came East for the summer — by distributing six fall and winter issues to wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods starting in 2015.