It was a banner year for magazines — at least in terms of new titles jumping into the market.
Professor Samir Husni, the director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, counted 234 magazine launches in 2014 — up 21 percent from the 185 launched a year earlier.
The one-time book-a-zines and annuals added 621 titles, although the book-a-zine craze seems to have slowed down somewhat. It was down by 32 titles from 2013.
The 234 new titles that published at least quarterly and the 621 specials launched in 2014 meant readers saw 855 new titles on newsstands.
That fell short of the record 1,056 magazines launched in 1998, which had few annuals and book-a-zines to pad the total.
On the other hand, it is healthier than the 177 new magazine launches Husni calculated in 1984, when he first tracked the market.
Husni tagged Dr. Oz The Good Life, which debuted in February, as his Magazine of the Year.
“It was the first magazine since O, the Oprah Magazine, in 2000 that had to go back on press for a second printing of its debut issue,” he said.
The joint venture between Hearst and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon/talk show host, plans to up the rate base to 800,000 next year from its launch rate base of 450,000.
One noticeable trend, Husni said, was the move by pure digital companies to roll out traditional print magazines.
The trend follows companies like Politico, DuJour and All Recipes, digital products all, that launched print titles in 2013.
Net-a-Porter launched Porter magazine with a February/March issue, while the booming apartment rental site, Airbnb, launched its own magazine, called Pineapple, this month.
“I know we live in a digital age, but print is still a powerful medium,” he said. “I think any digital company that is worth anything will be doing print magazines in the next two to three years,” said Husni.
One other reason for print’s staying power, according to publishers, is that there has been relentless downward pressure on the standard banner ads on the digital side, making the relatively stable print ad page prices more attractive.
Big publishers are nevertheless doing far fewer big launches. “With the exception of Meredith (Eat This, Not That), Hearst (Dr. Oz) and Bauer (Animal Tales; Girls’ World), the big companies are not putting out many new titles,” said Husni. Instead, Time Inc. and Condé Nast have been pumping out more one-time specials.
Current Time Inc. spinoffs include the Fifty Most Important People in the Bible and a one-off tied to the FX cable series “Sons of Anarchy.”
The biggest category for new magazines is the so-called special interest group, where 39 new launches with titles ranging from Raw Bike to CiderCraft to Vapor Lives.
There were 19 metro and regional titles launched with titles including Old Port, Sugar & Rice Magazine and Makena Magazine. That category tied with the pop culture genre for second place, which saw the introduction of titles Churn, East on Pop and Reserved Magazine.
Husni, who has trademarked the name Mr. Magazine, makes no attempt to count e-zines and digital-only magazines. “If it is not in print, it is not a magazine,” he says.