More Creative Ideas for publishing; acquisition and start-up will expand PSC's custom publishing

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July, 1988 by Paul Frichtl

More Creative Ideas for publishing | Custom publishing takes a giant step forward at PSC Publishing, the company formed last year to acquire Games and Needlecraft for Today. Its recent purchase, Creative Ideas for Living, and start-up Games Junior will take advantage of PSC's ability to customize magazines for selected readers.

Creative Ideas, covering such topics as food, home decorating, children and crafts, is a natural for custom publishing, says PSC president Gerard Calabrese. The company may selectively bind additional or optional special interest segments into subscriber copies, depending on readers' interests. Freestanding special segments are another option. Both, Calabrese says, open up ad sales opportunities.

The September launch of Games Junior presents another custom publishing opportunity. A bimonthly book of games and puzzles for children and parents, the magazine has already attracted the interest of several fast food chains wishing to sponsor special editions to use in promotions.

Games has already successfully created a "Games Deluxe" edition (see "Customized editorial: Pros and Cons," FOLIO:, September 1987, page 115), in which some 200,000 of 675,000 subscribers pay an extra $6 (for a total of $17.97) to have an additional game section bound into their copies. In addition, a "Special Edition," available primarily on newsstands, attracts another 100,000 buyers six times a year in the months alternating with regular bimonthly issues of Games. Subscriptions may be offered this year.

PSC purchased Creative Ideas for Living from Time Inc.'s Southern Progress subsidiary. Reportedly performing poorly, the 18-year-old women's magazine sold for $7.5 million, much of that apparently in subscription liability. Southern Progress, a regional and special interest publisher of four magazines, had grown uncomfortable with general-interest Creative Ideas, says the former owner's president, Donald Logan.

The new owners believe the national how-to women's magazine will fit well with Needlecraft for Today. "We wanted a vehicle that was compatible, but not competitive, with which we can cross-sell," Calabrese says. New sales opportunities not only include selling advertising, but also marketing lists and combining newsstand and subscription promotionS.

Calabrese, who took over Creative Ideas in June, is also looking to beef up the product. "Everything that needs to be in that magazine is currently encompassed in some form," he says. "Our job is to let it out, to make it more accessible to the people who buy it." The magazine's circulation is about 750,000, only a small percentage of which is newsstand sales.

The company's January 1987 purchase of Games from Playboy Enterprises has produced mixed results. Ad pages dove from 218 for 1986 to 98 in 1987, but Calabrese attributes most of the decline to an immediate move to cut the frequency in half, to six times per year. He adds that the increased profitability of the circulation--up 25 percent in 18 months--more than compensates for the ad decline.

PHOTO : Custom publishing operations, already in place for Games and Needlecraft for Today, will expand into two new properties. Creative Ideas for Living may carry optional special interest editorial sections requested by individual readers.