What's the Best Thing to Blog About Just Days Before Christmas? Magazines!?

Yes, I know the magazine business is in flux, but what the heck? We're full steam in books and one of our strongest sidelines is greeting cards. And we've been dealing with the equivalent of the internet for years. It's called subscriptions where you buy the magazine for practically nothing. Who is going to pick up Entertainment Weekly for $5 when it costs 50 cents an issue to have it delivered? And there's the other problem that newsstand supplies are so tight that if we don't sell a copy for two weeks in a row, it stops coming. (This is also a problem with newspapers, which are compounded by the smallest margins ever. But I like 'em, so we have 'em. That's all there is to it. I guess that's for another post.)

Magazines are also important for us to spot cultural trends. When Philosophy Now features matryoshkas on their cover, you know they are part of the current zeitgeist. We've still got a nice selection in the store.

I've been asking Sharon to beef up some of our categories, and though we're not likely to go back to the near-zero margin foreign weeklies (even I have my limits), we have brought in a few new titles that are selling pretty well. If I play my cards right, Sharon may write some of this up in The Boswellians.

Here are Paste's Top 20 Magazines of 2010. You can read more on their website.

1. New York

2. The Economist

3. Wired

4. Esquire

5. Oxford American

6. The New Yorker

7. Good

8. The Atlantic

9. The Believer

10. Mojo

11. The Week

12. Mental Floss

13. ESPN

14. Bon Appetit

15. Texas Monthly

16. Monocle

17. Make

18. Afar

19. Garden and Gun

20. Decibel

Sadly, we don't stock Texas Monthly. I'm also not sure about Garden and Gun. But we did start carrying New York.

Why isn't Bitch on this list? The illustrations are fantastic, particularly the new ones from artist Kristopher Pollard (illlustration above to the right). We've still got the issue with his work--if you are his friend, you should buy it, you know. It's pretty much obligatory.

I'm hoping Mr. Pollard will design our spring 2011 tee shirt. And yes, we've still got Aaron Boyd's fishy tee in stock.

Oh good, I tried to sell some stuff after all.