Mr. Magazine

Joe Berger has been at it since the early 1980s.  He understands and knows the single copy and subscription magazine distribution channels inside out.  He is too humble to call himself president or founder of Joe Berger Consulting and prefers to be referred to as a “Magazine Marketing Consultant.” 

In that capacity, he offers service and advice to magazine publishers both big and small.  He is also will to chat with you about your magazine for an hour or two before “going on the clock.”

A realist and a firm believer that in a digital age, the platforms out there don’t meet the definition of a what a real magazine is, but he knows how expensive doing a print today, even if it is only 5,000 copies.

I asked Joe about his job and whether it is a walk in a rose garden, his answer, “Well, Samir, I look at it this way. Roses are pretty, right? They smell nice. They’re nice to look at. It’s great to sit in a rose garden. But if the chair collapses and you fall into the rose bush, you’re going to get stuck with a lot of thorns. Magazines aren’t easy. They’re not an easy thing to love. They’re not an easy thing to get into.”

So without any further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Joe Berger.  But first the soundbites:

On the changes in the magazine distribution industry: The first is you had the consolidation of magazine publishers through the leveraged buyouts of the 80s and 90s, carrying through to the private equity purchases in this century.

On another major change: When I got in the business in 82, there were probably about 11 national magazine distributors. Over time they were winnowed down till now, in 2024, we have one.

And one more change: The next set of changes came in subscription marketing. The advent of auto renew is a pretty big deal for both print and digital publishers. It can make life both a blessing and a curse for publishers.

On the cup half full or half empty: I’m generally an optimistic person. It comes down to what are you willing to deal with? Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion, but it doesn’t really do anything other than give you a desire for the way things were.

On his advice for someone launching a magazine: The advice that I give to everybody is, let’s look at your business plan, but just as important, maybe even more so, read your contracts and understand them.

On the biggest stumbling block launching a magazine: Money is a stumbling block, even for somebody who just wants to do something small, 5,000 copies, because press runs at that price are very pricey per copy. And then, how are you going to get them out to your audience?

On digital platforms: At the end of the day, I’m inclined to agree with you that if it’s just a website with a bunch of news articles, that’s not a magazine, that’s a website with news articles. The reality is that all these different things over the years were supposed to save magazines: tablets, pivot to video, pivot to subscriptions. Now, we’re pivoting to AI.

On his job as a walk in a rose garden:  Well, Samir, I look at it this way. Roses are pretty, right? They smell nice. They’re nice to look at. It’s great to sit in a rose garden. But if the chair collapses and you fall into the rose bush, you’re going to get stuck with a lot of thorns.

On bookazines: As far as bookazines go, they exist because the newsstand market does not work anymore. It doesn’t work very well for mass merchandise titles and it doesn’t work so great for specialty and niche titles.

On whether the newsstands will continue to exist: So long as Barnes & Noble exists,  we will have large-scale magazine racks.

On what he misses most: As far as the newsstand industry goes, the newsstand industry conferences that we used to have, it was nice to see people. The one-on-one meetings were  worthwhile.

And now for the lightly edited conversation with Joe Berger, Magazine Marketing Consultant:

Samir Husni: So you have been in this business since, what, the 80s?

Joe Berger: Since June of 1982. I graduated from college. I had a job offer from a small, actually the smallest national distributor at the time, a company called Capital Distributing. Capital was    owned by a publishing house called Charlton Press.

They published magazines, comics, and books. Most everything they had were the number two, three or four in their category. And they had offered me a job post-graduation on the terms that I got out to Chicago in early June for training.

And if you recall, back then, there was a pretty bad recession going on. So, I was happy to have a job offer. And that’s when it all kind of began for me.

Samir Husni: That’s great. And in those 40 plus years, I’m sure you’ve seen a few things. Can you name three major things that you think have changed?

Joe Berger: I can come up with nine divided into three different areas, all things that I’m involved in currently. Starting in newsstand distribution, three big things happened there.

The first is you had the consolidation of magazine publishers through the leveraged buyouts of the 80s and 90s, carrying through to the private equity purchases in this century. You also had the consolidation of the wholesaler side of the business. That was due, in many cases, to the owners fear of being charged by the FTC with collusion. Remember, the business came into being because of the FTC breaking up the old American News monopoly in the 1950’s. Many of the businesses were family owned and on their second, third, or fourth generation, and the new generations just didn’t want to have anything to do with all the changes the retailers wanted. And then the last thing that happened was the consolidation and collapse of national distributors.

When I got in the business in 82, there were probably about 11 national magazine distributors. Over time they were winnowed down till now, in 2024, we have one.

The next set of changes came in subscription marketing. The advent of auto renew is a pretty big deal for both print and digital publishers. It can make life both a blessing and a curse for publishers. The advent of email marketing is a big deal as well. And lastly, the fact that the post office has gone from kind of a pain in the neck to a giant pain in the neck, culminating in the difficulties we’ve seen arise even in the past six months.

Finally, in the magazine houses themselves consolidation has also been a really big deal. A number of very large magazine publishers and an even greater number of medium-sized publishers have just gone away. Secondly, the rise of digital publishers, who are is turning back to print to use as a brand extension. And lastly, the consolidation of major printers who will do magazines has affected everybody.

Samir Husni: Are you seeing the cup as half full or half empty?

Joe Berger: I’m generally an optimistic person. It comes down to what are you willing to deal with? Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion, but it doesn’t really do anything other than give you a desire for the way things were. You can’t go back, and in many cases they weren’t that way to begin with. I’d rather look to the future.

Samir Husni: Let me put you on the spot. If somebody today says, Joe, I want to start a new magazine, do you say like, get out of here? Or do you say, oh, come on and let me give you some advice?

Joe Berger: It would depend. I have said, go away. I give anybody who contacts me an hour or two of my time for free. And then after that, if they’re serious, we start the clock.

The advice that I give to everybody is, let’s look at your business plan, but just as important, maybe even more so, read your contracts and understand them. And for the love of God, don’t take them to your cousin Gerald, who does real estate on the side, because he’s not going to be able to understand these things and point you in the right direction.

About two years ago, I had a guy come to me. He had a really cool-looking alternative art magazine. I liked it a lot. And I liked him, but it became readily apparent that this guy didn’t have much money. And the contract that he was under with a very small distributor was not going to do him any good. He was never going to see any money.

There was really nothing that could be done for him unless he was willing to blow his rent money for the next few years. So I told him: here’s a couple things you might try to do and good luck. On the other hand, I’ve had people come to me who have a decent amount of money in the bank ready to invest in this. And if they have a halfway decent business plan I’ll work with them.  

Money is a stumbling block, even for somebody who just wants to do something small, 5,000 copies, because press runs at that price are very pricey per copy. And then, how are you going to get them out to your audience?

Samir Husni: You think that’s the reason people go digital?

Joe Berger: I think so, sure, because there’s less cost involved. And theoretically, you can get to your audience quicker.

At the end of the day, I’m inclined to agree with you that if it’s just a website with a bunch of news articles, that’s not a magazine, that’s a website with news articles. The reality is that all these different things over the years were supposed to save magazines: tablets, pivot to video, pivot to subscriptions. Now, we’re pivoting to AI. So far, none of it has actually done very much except for the very largest publishers that still have a bankroll that they can afford to lose.

Samir Husni: You’ve worked with some big publishers, and continue to consult with some major publishers. Has it been a walk in the rose garden through those years? Or have you had to pick a lot of thorns?

Joe Berger: Well, Samir, I look at it this way. Roses are pretty, right? They smell nice. They’re nice to look at. It’s great to sit in a rose garden. But if the chair collapses and you fall into the rose bush, you’re going to get stuck with a lot of thorns. Magazines aren’t easy. They’re not an easy thing to love. They’re not an easy thing to get into.

And honestly, as I’ve discovered, they’re not an easy thing to get out of. I have a really weird skill set. I’ve had many employers, potential employers, kind of look at me and go, I don’t know what to do with you. You’re an interesting guy and you seem nice, but I can’t fit you into that. So that’s at least been my experience.

Samir Husni: No, it’s not. Magazines aren’t easy. That’s for sure.

Joe Berger: On the other hand, to get back to them looking nice and smelling pretty, that’s very true. There’s been a lot of things about being in this business that I’ve really enjoyed. And there’s also things in this business at times that wake me up at two in the morning and keep me up until the sun comes out.

Samir Husni: Tell me, as you look at the field of magazines today, this is one thing you didn’t mention in terms of the changes that are taking place. We’ve seen a huge drop in the number of new magazines coming into the marketplace. I mean, the height of almost 500, 700 magazines back in the 80s and 90s to less than a hundred in the last two or three years.

But the market has exploded with bookazines. What’s your thoughts about this bookazine phenomenon? Are they magazines?

Joe Berger: Funny that you asked that question because in my newsletter on Tuesday, I’ll answer that question. But I’ll premiere it for you and you can tell me what you think about it.

As far as bookazines go, they exist because the newsstand market does not work anymore. It doesn’t work very well for mass merchandise titles and it doesn’t work so great for specialty and niche titles. Bookazines exist because the traditional newsstand market collapsed along with the titles that supported and made the newsstand distribution system exist in the first place. TV Guide, Cosmo, People, the women’s general service titles at checkout, adult publications, which was one of the big legs of a traditional magazine wholesaler’s profit center. All of that’s gone and nothing came that could take its place.

In the 90s and the early aughts, the industry was held up and supported to some degree because there was a decent number of medium-sized publications that still made the market possible. Titles like ones that I worked with, Computer Shopper, Low Rider, those types of publications. And that was a big part of what made it work. When that stopped working, it cleared the path for bookazines.

The only people who can really do bookazines effectively and with enough volume to make it worthwhile though still are very, very large publishers. So are they magazines? Again, if you go to the fact that a magazine is something that’s metered, that has frequency and that sort of thing, no. They’re basically annuals. They’re special interest publications. Back in the day when I worked at Outside, we had an Outside annual, with a different BiPAD and UPC code from Outside magazine.

Bookazines are using what’s left of the newsstand distribution business. There’s nothing wrong with them.  They’re something that at the moment is continuing an industry and making it possible for the industry to exist in some form. If you took bookazines away from what’s left of the newsstand marketplace, the market would shrink probably another 50 to 60 percent.

Samir Husni: Do you think we will see the day that there will be no newsstands in this country?

Joe Berger: No. Just like will we see a day when there’s going to be no record stores? There are still record stores. There’s not very many of them, but they’re still here.

Barnes & Noble, so long as Barnes & Noble exists,  we will have large-scale magazine racks. Now, we are seeing in their new stores, that are smaller than their old full-service stores, that the rack is about half the size of what it used to be, which means they can carry fewer titles. So we might see something like that happen.

And we obviously see in mainstream stores, Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, that the mainline rack has shrunk. In many cases, some stores I used to haunt on a pretty regular basis, they’ve gone from 12 running feet down to two. Sometimes you see checkouts, sometimes you see the checkouts pulled out.

I don’t think we’ll see the newsstand go away, but I think the newsstand will continue to shrink. And the other side of that equation, though, Samir, and I think this is good, is that we will see a lot of publishers who still want to sell their magazines via retail find other markets and places to sell them, if they’re clever enough.

Samir Husni: Can you give me an example of those other places?

Joe Berger: Sure. Go to a magazine like Kinfolk, for example, and look at their stockist list, and they’re in stores that have nothing to do with traditional newsstand distribution.

Samir Husni: Do you consult with Kinfolk?  

Joe Berger: I do not, but there’s a lot of indie magazines that I track. You might find them in clothing stores, they can be in record stores, they can be in all kinds of different alternative outlets, generally not mainstream retail. So long as some of that exists, there’s hope out there.

Samir Husni: Tell me, if you reflect back on those 40 years, what was the most pleasant moment, pleasant surprise, like, wow, I’ve made it.

Joe Berger: I don’t know if I’ve ever actually had that feeling.

Samir Husni: The opposite of that, what was the most challenging moment? You said, why am I doing this?

Joe Berger: That’s an easy one. First, let me answer your first question. In 1995, when the industry started to consolidate, it became very apparent that the industry as I knew it wasn’t going to exist anymore. Things were chaotic for several years, and when the dust began to settle, I realized that if I could survive that I could survive anything. Around 2002 I worked out a deal with the Athlon Sports Company, to bring my consulting practice in house with them and join with a colleague of mine, who I knew quite well and respected highly, and spent a number of years working with him, and with a gentleman who ran their newsstand department, and I really enjoyed that.

Maybe that’s when I thought I had made it?

In 2009, when the whole economy pretty much collapsed, Athlon exited our agreement and I was back on my own. They tried to do it with some dignity and respect, which were the words they used. But honestly, the feeling of betrayal that I felt at that time was very, very intense.

That was a pretty dark moment. Over the next decade we had Source Interlink collapse, we had a couple of other fairly large specialty wholesalers collapse, we had Kable go out of business, Curtis go out of business, all of that. It became apparent to me that I needed to change my focus and add some skill sets, which is what I’ve done since then.

So now, I’d say I feel more like a seasoned veteran. A survivor. And I still work with some very good people. That’s a nice feeling.

Samir Husni: What do you miss most? I mean, do you miss the face-to-face meetings that you used to do visiting the wholesaler? Do you miss the conferences, the conventions that are all gone?

Joe Berger: Yeah. As far as the newsstand industry goes, the newsstand industry conferences that we used to have, it was nice to see people. The one-on-one meetings were  worthwhile.

The thing I enjoyed most about the newsstand side of the business were the people. There were a lot of characters in the business, and some really, really good people. Some of them are now doing other things. Many of them have passed away. And that’s a shame. A lot of deep knowledge about how to do things has been lost over the years.

On the other hand, I mean, I still have a lot of face-to-face meetings like this, like you and I are having right now. And again, I’m doing other things as well. And so, I get together with those people and have meetings with them.

And I try to keep as many scheduled meetings with clients as I can.

Samir Husni: Before I ask my typical last two questions, is there anything I failed to ask you that you’d like to ask and answer?

Joe Berger: Good lord, I don’t know. I guess it’s, if I have any real regret or sadness about the magazine industry here in the States, it would be the fact that we don’t really have any good organizations right now. A lot of it, so much of it has sort of gone off into very niche directions.

There is the Niche Conference, there’s CRMA, there’s IRMA, but none of them are really nationally oriented. Companies like Mequoda have some meetings. There’s a subscription e-commerce service bureau company here in Chicago that has meetings for their clients. But there isn’t a really large-scale organization. And I think that’s a shame. I see it as something that’s hurting this business.

You have FIPP and Distripress in Europe.  I love what the International Magazine Conference has created.  Many good things could come out of that organization. I would love it if there was some way we could get their footprint here, stateside, bigger, so we could start doing IMC meetings here. Maybe at some point that’ll happen.

Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one day unannounced, what do I find you doing? Packing boxes these days?

Joe Berger: In the next two weeks, for sure. And then probably the two weeks after that, you’d see us unpacking boxes. But on a typical night, if Samir dropped in, you’d probably find me walking the foster dog, getting her ready for her evening. Then we’d be cooking some dinner, and then we’d have some dinner. And then we might play some games or read. At some point, we might all wind up on the couch, watching a little bit of TV. And then the dog would get her last walk of the night, and that would be that. Which I think is pretty much what a lot of people do.

Samir Husni: What keeps you up at night? I know you said sometimes you wake up at two in the morning until the sun comes up.

Joe Berger: Right now, the thing that will be waking me up at night and keeping me up for an hour or two would just simply be going through the list of everything we need to do as we prepare for this move to a new home and a new way of living.

But if you press me as far as magazine-related things, I guess  it would be the usual list of things that need to be done: Run the gap list, compare e-commerce results, look at a newsstand trial galley, edit the newsletter.  Do I have the headspace for all of this?

As far as the rest of it goes, you can’t really worry too much about what’s going to happen in the future because no matter how prepared you are, you never know exactly what’s going to happen.

Thank you, Samir. I appreciate the opportunity. We’ll talk to you soon.

Samir Husni: Thank you.