Fine formula for success - Taunton Press Inc

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May 1, 1994 by Karen Burka

Perhaps you've heard the story. Frustrated by the lack of quality magazines available on woodworking, his chosen hobby, Paul Roman, then a 41-year-old public relations executive, decided in 1974 to start his own. Using a few thousand dollars in savings, Roman and his wife, janice, mailed 20,000 direct-mail pieces to other woodworking enthusiasts, soliciting prepaid subscriptions for a new black-and-white quarterly. The goal was to find 25,000 Subscribers within a year. But that first mailing yielded a remarkable 15 percent response rate and netted $24,000. So the Rotnans mailed again, and got their 25,000 subscribers in just one month.

Veteran mailers scoffed. The Romans, they argued, had lucked out in finding an under-served audience willing to Pay premium prices ($25 and more for just six issues) for a high-end niche magazine, Fine Woodworking, which made its debut in 1975 and now has a subscriber base of 280,000, was a nice trick, the skeptics said, but they doubted that the Romans could pull it off again. The scoffers were Wrong. From their offices in Newtown, Connecticut, the Romans and their company, Taunton Press, have since successfully created three other niche magazines. Fine Homebuilding, launched in 1981, has 225,000 readers; Fine Gardening (1988) reaches 165,000 gardening enthusiasts, and Threads (1985) is read by 150,000 sewing fans. The average renewal rate for the magazines exceeds 70 percent. And each, in turn, feeds a self-supporting videotape and book division.

The Romans have no aspirations to become another Hearst or Conde Nast, says jan Roman, the company's president. (Paul, now 61, is chairman.) "We know we're not in markets that will generate circulations of one million or more," she says. "We have to make [our magazines! work at circulations of 200,000 to 250,000."

But the Romans are hardly amateurs anymore. During the last 20 years, they have built a reputation for expertise in identifying and marketing to reader niches that other publishers have deemed either too small or apply too specialized.

Now, Taunton is adding a new niche with a product called Fine Cooking, a project being watched very carefully in publishing and direct marketing circles. Like other Taunton titles, Fine Cooking is geared to serious practitioners--it focuses on techniques, rather than recipes. "Our magazines hold up well on the coffee table," Jan says, "but they're for people who are really doing it, not just collecting magazines." But unlike other Taunton publications, Fine Cooking potentially has a broader consumer appeal--certainly more so than, say, Fine Homebuilding. Taunton printed 275,000 copies of Fine Cooking's first issue--published with a February/March cover date--and is shooting for a 300,000 circulation, which would make it the largest Taunton title.

On its way to that goal, Fine Cooking must contend with several well-established competitors. Culinary heavyweight Bon Appetit, from Conde Nast, has a total paid circulation of more than 1.2 million, while Gourmet claims 900,000 readers and American Express' Food & Wine reaches more than 800,000.

Unspectacular response

To give its latest venture momentum, Taunton mailed 1.4 million direct-mail pieces to an artful combination of rented lists-including magazine subscribers, catalog lists, book buyers, book-club members and some business lists of professional chefs--as well as prospects from its own database.

To date, though, the results have been solid, but not spectacular: Responses are running about 3 percent. That, combined with Taunton's mixed record on new products in recent years--a boating title, Boals & Gear, launched in 1990, was folded a few months later after failing to achieve its circulation target--has prompted some observers to wonder whether the skeptics were right. What if the formula isn't applicable outside the niches it has already found?

Paul Roman, whose background includes training as a physicist at Middlebury College and Yale University, editorial positions at McGraw-Hill and 11 years in PR at Westinghouse, considers himself in the "high-quality information business." His philosophy is simple: Whatever he publishes has to be necessary for the hobby at hand.

Adds Jan, who raised the couple's five children before helping to launch Fine Woodworking: "We concentrate on fields where there is a substantial quantity of detailed information. The enthusiast has to enjoy both the process and the result of the hobby."

In line with this approach, Taunton magazines are reader-driven. Ninety percent of the editorial content is reader-written, keeping editors' hands full with novice writers. Readers also sustain the magazines' financial health by paying a relatively high price for the magazines.

The average subscription price for Taunton magazines, which are all bimonthly, is between $26 and $29. Subscriptions dominate newsstand sales, but vary by magazine. Paul Roman puts it at 100,000 to 200,000 subscriptions vs. 20,000 to 60,000 newsstand, typically. Cover prices range between $4 and $5. And there are no discounts.