BoSacks - The Profit Prophet : Why Do We Read Magazines?

The answer to this question could help heal that which plagues our industry.

Why do we read magazines? What is behind the allure of buying, owning and reading magazines?

There are, of course, many answers to this question. But if we are truly honest with ourselves, we might be able to turn the tide of our businesses or, at the very least, start a process of self-analysis that leads eventually to psychological and financial recoveries.

Some college professors will tell you that it is the form of the product-—rather than its substance—that maintains its hold on the public. I suppose that might be true for some magazine readers. Printed products do have a historic experiential hold on some of the reading public. But is that really it? Is it really the paper substrate and physical form that is the key to our ongoing and future success?

And so I am back to the question I asked: Why do people actually read magazines? The answer: to learn and to enjoy. That is the motivation behind most, if not all, reading adventures. We read to further our knowledge and to enjoy the experience. Sometimes, the learning is forced upon us by a job or by a school, or sometimes it’s just the need for that innate pleasure of discovering something new. Other times, we read solely for pleasure—the pure joy of wandering through a good writer’s brain. The great syntax road of discovery, where page by page you can unearth damn near anything that humans have accomplished, deduced, uncovered or invented.

Reading is one of the best indicators of exactly who the human race is. We can’t help ourselves. As a race of beings, we have a fundamental need to know things. We are driven to explore and attempt to understand, whether it is the spiritual whys, or the scientific hows. It has always been that way. It will always be that way.

So, the reasons we read magazines are much the same as why we read anything. We read to learn and to enjoy.

Books teach and educate, and magazines can do the same. Magazines contain the same things as books—words and pictures. Some magazines have fewer pictures than some books, and some have more. Why do The Atlantic and The New Yorker sometimes have more words than a good book? The answer is embedded in the design and function of those magazines. However brilliant the writing and the research is, the actual product of a magazine is usually designed to be a temporary and inexpensive distribution vehicle. Books are usually meant to have some permanence, and magazines by and large are meant to be periodic and disposable.

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