Glamour, one of America’s most famous women’s magazines, will cease monthly publication next year. It is another sign that publishers continue to retreat and move to digital products.
Glamour editor in chief Samantha Barry told Cheddar, a streaming media business network about the news. She retweeted the announcement:
@glamourmag will end its print issues in 2019 except for special occasions. EIC @samanthabarry tells us the reasoning behind this was so they can free the magazine from the monthly editorial cycle to tell more relevant stories and better reach readers on digital.
Barry said Glamour might print one or two editors a year, but Glamour’s future is glamour.com
Glamour is just shy of 80 years old, first published in 1939. It is a flagship of one of America’s largest magazine publishers, Conde Nast, is controlled by the billionaire Newhouse family which also owns newspapers. Its other two large monthlies are Vanity Fair and Vogue.
Conde Nast has needed to retrench. It reportedly lost $120 million last year. It has put up three of its magazines for sale–Brides, Golf Digest and W. It has also cut dozens of people.
The decision to end Glamour’s monthly publication is not unique. Former news magazine US News, which was once a weekly, only publishes several times a year. Fortune magazine, which once came out twice a month, is down to 12 issues a year. These decisions to cut print are based on high publishing costs and a sharp drop in print advertising. Digital advertising which is only a little more than two decades old has surpassed print ad revenue at a number of magazine and newspaper companies
Barry made another argument common among magazine publishers. Glamour.com can be updated as often as its editors would like, without incurring extra costs. The Glamour website has huge sections on beauty, entertainment, fashion, and health. It also has a growing library of video. Video advertising generally gets a premium over most other kinds of online ads
And, Glamour can take advantage of the appetite for content social media users have. Glamour has 1.37 million followers on Twitter. Glamour.com also has a convenient way to post its content to Facebook and Pinterest.
Killing print is an experiment. It assumes that many people who read a magazine will continue to read it online. However, with the cost to print and mail a magazine no longer financially tenable, Glamour has decided to take a path already followed by so many others
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