Magazine
publishers
(Boat to Cornmarket)
This is one of six pages about consumer magazine publishers, listed alphabetically, and their magazines. List of publishers on this page to the right.
- 4130 Publishing to BBC Magazines
- Boat International to Cornmarket (this page)
- Dazed to Emap
- Essential to Highbury House
- IFG to Parkhill
- Reader's Digest to Ziff-Davis UK
Other pages cover trade and business magazine publishers and contract magazine publishers.
Boat International
Boat International Publishing has five titles about luxury yachting and super boats.
- Boat International: Monthly devoted to luxury yachts. Has series of supplements: Interiors with October issue; Superports with August; Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez (October)
- Boat International USA Covers North American market
- Dockwalk Quarterly for owners, skippers, brokers and specialist suppliers
- Mer & Bateaux French luxury market. Published five times a year
- Meer & Yachten Covers power and sail luxury yachting for Germany.
Brightday Publishing
Learning Support magazine was set up by primary school teacher Trevor Chalkley and journalist Frances Rickford for teaching assistants in primary schools and published from 2005 to 2011.
Bristol Magazines [Immediate]
Part of the BBC magazine empire that became Immediate. Division set up by BBC Magazines (based in Bristol) in April 2006 when Origin sold off. Retained BBC branded titles and contract titles. BBC-branded consumer magazines:
- BBC Focus
- BBC History
- BBC Music
- BBC Sky At Night
- BBC Wildlife
- Gardens Illustrated
Brooklands Group Ltd
Went into administration at the start of 2009. Magazines focused on the travel and home interest markets. Grew through titles licensed from Channel 4 production company Celador. However, Brooklands closed four of its five Channel 4 tie-ins – Property Ladder, You Are What You Eat, Location, Location, Location and Supernanny in October 2006 to concentrate on contract titles and the launch of another Channel 4 title, Popworld Pulp in spring 2007 – a magazine that closed after just a few issues.
- Everything France: launched in 2003
- Everything Spain:
- Perfect Home:
- A Place in the Sun: official magazine of the Channel 4 TV series
- You Are What You Eat: March 2005 launch (May cover date). Closed October 2006
- Location, Location, Location: based on TV series. Closed October 2006
John Brown Media
Founded in 1987 by John Brown, who left Virgin with the contract to publish Hot Air, an in-flight magazine for Virgin Atlantic. Had consumer titles but sold these in 2001 to pave way for merger with Citrus (had been BLA until 1999) and become number two customer magazine publisher. Became number one at John Brown Citrus Publishing when it won the contract for satellite broadcaster Sky’s customer magazine, the UK's highest circulation magazine (ABC figure 5,183,964) from Redwood Publishing – though it lost this to News Magazines in 2007. Titles have included: Classic FM for the radio station; Hot Air, Hot Line for Virgin; Waitrose Food Illustrated (originally followed Gardens Illustrated format as a consumer magazine; became contract title for supermarket chain Waitrose in 1998, still sold in newsagents); Room launched in 1997 at £1 a copy with a run of 500,000 copies for Ikea's eight UK stores; Wisden Cricket Monthly. Former consumer titles:- Bare (closed 2001) Sept/Oct 2000 launch into very competitive women's market: 'Being and wellbeing'
- Bizarre (M) 1997 launch. Sold to IFG in 2001; later published by Dennis
- Fortean Times This 'journal of strange phenomena' bought up in 1991. Sold to IFG in 2001
- Gardens Illustrated 1993 launch. Large format, innovative title. Sold to BBC
- Viz (bi-M) This comic was the company's first news-stand title. Founded by former DSS clerk Chris Donald in 1979 in Newcastle (aged 19). He started selling it in pubs and describes it as 'puerile and inane'. In 1989, sales reached over a million. Sold to IFG in 2001; later published by Dennis
Buck Publishing Ltd
Set up by editor and publisher Steve Doyle, who put his own cash behind the publishing of men's monthly Buck in 2008. Rather than aiming at City slickers, Buck sees itself as for the more creative man, who's happy to burnish his own image, instead of buying one off a shelf through GQ.
Burda (Hubert) Media (HBM)
Owned by German Hubert Burda Media. UK company has consumer and B2B titles. Expanded into home interiors with purchase of Colchester-based Essential in April 2006 and then bought two wedding titles from IPC in 2011.
German parent Hubert Burda Media Group (HBM) has 250 titles publications: 60-odd in Germany and the rest in in 19 countries around the world. HBM publishes Germany's biggest selling celebrity weekly, Freizeit Revue, news weekly Focus and computer monthly Chip, as well as the German versions of Elle, In Style and Playboy. Also has TV production, radio and online divisions. Alan Urry – former UK boss of German rival Bauer – ran the company.
- Amber (Q): March 2003 launch for version of popular German title Young Lisa, but closed soon after. Had adopted 'handbag' size used for Glamour
- Essential Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom (M): focus on upmarket homes
- >Essential Kitchen & Bathroom Business (M): trade title for kitchen and bathroom retailers
- Full House (W): March 2005 launch at 40p (rising to 60p; by 27 April 2006 copy cost 90p). Reported by Guardian as having £9m launch budget. Traditional women's weekly combines celebrity gossip with puzzles and real-life stories. In 2012, Burda sold real-life titles Love it! and Full House! to Pep Publishing, a start-up from its UK chief, Luke Patten. Love It!'s circulation had halved since its 2006 launch in 2006 to 200,027 in 2011. Full House! also struggled after its launch in 2005, when it was dropped by Tesco, with its circulation falling from 235,787 to 172,015 in 2011.
- Living & Gardens (M): launched in March 2006. Burda already had homes titles in France, Germany and Italy. Closed after four issues.
- Love It! (W)
- The Magazine (Q) Rolls-Royce contract title
- The Specialist (Q) trade title sent to kitchen retailers and copies are included with Essential Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom for Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom Specialists Association
- Wedding: bought from IPC in 2011
- Wedding Flowers: bought from IPC in 2011
- Your Home (M): solutions to DIY problems, step-by-step projects and helpful hints 'by women for women'. Bought from NatMags in August 2003
Business Traveller
Business Traveller, launched in 1976, is the leading magazine in its field. It has 14 editions worldwide, in the UK, US, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, China, France, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Africa, Russia, Poland, Israel and India, as well as several websites. German edition published with Gruner & Jahr. Middle East edition launched spring 2000. BT is owned by Panacea Publications, which also publishes Buying Business Travel, The International Medical Travel Journal and Mix, a magazine about meetings in AsiaCabal Communications (later Highbury)
Consumer and contract publisher set up in June 1998 by former IPC editor-in-chief Sally O'Sullivan. Ambitious plan for six launches in a year not achieved. Mixed record, with Front the most successful title in terms of sales. In March 2003, Highbury House bought Cabal for £10 million. However, Highbury itself then collpased and its magazines were split among several publishers, including Future.- Crime Weekly Delayed by launch of IPC's 'spoiler' Chat Crime and Passion in February 1999. Never appeared
- Front (M) Lads magazine aimed at younger market than Loaded and FHM. First ABC came in at 140,000, well below target of 200,000. It had been hit by supermarkets refusing to stock the first issues because of raunchy content
- Good Health (M) Bought from Pantile Publications in Feb 1999. Since closed
- Mondo (M) Nov 2000 launch for the global hedonist. Closed in 2000
- Maximum Mountain Bike (M). Closed
- Pro Cycling (M). Closed
- The Real Homes Magazine (M) First ABC at 130,000, against 150,000 target. Went to Highbury and then sold to Hachette Filipacchi.
Centaur Publications
Has more than 30 trade magazines; 20 exhibitions; 150 conferences and 25 websites. Good links from home page. Leading titles include Creative Review, The Lawyer, Marketing Week, Money Marketing, New Media Age. Bought several titles from Miller-Freeman in 1999, including The Engineer, which Graham Sherren had edited before founding Centaur. Mad Jobs was a recruitment hub for media, marketing, advertising and design industries.Chelsea Magazine Company
Chelsea is an independent publishing company with offices in the UK and North America. The company bought bought Classic Boat from IPC Media in 2010. It publishes:- Artists & Illustrators, published for almost 25 years with profiles, practical ideas, technical advice and product tests for all types of artists, whether working in oils or watercolours, portraits or landscapes, abstract art or botanical illustration
- Britain, the official magazine of VisitBritain
- Cruise International,
- Current World Archaeology,
- First Eleven, for the parents with children at private schools.
- Military Times, launched in September 2010 by Church Street Publishing, a joint venture between Chelsea and Current Publishing
- Racecar Engineering, a monthly that describes itself as 'the world’s leading technology publication for motorsport'.
Condé Nast Publications
Upmarket publisher of fashion-based monthlies. Massive success with launch of 'handbag-sized', cut-price Glamour to overtake long-term women's monthly leader Cosmopolitan (Nat Mags). High profile failure of Trash in 2003, a contract title for clubbing group Ministry of Sound.Subsidiary of US parent, which publishes 18 titles, including The New Yorker, GQ, Vogue and Wired. Outbid Hearst to buy Fairchild Publications from Disney in August 1999 for $650 million. The purchase of W, Women's Wear Daily and Jane made Condé Nast the biggest US fashion magazine publisher. Unsuccessful online strategy was focused around Condenet website.
- Business (closed 1991) (M): Condé Nast teamed up with the Financial Times in 1986 to back Kevin Kelly in launching this glossy monthly.
- Conde Nast Traveller (M)
- Eas Living (closed 2013; July last issue): April 2005 monthly launch aimed at women aged 35+. Went online only and also closed iPad and iPhone apps. The decision was taken even though ABC circulation looked healthy – it had increased 7% to 150,020 in the last half of 2012, while all the big glossies, including direct rival Good Housekeeping, had lost ground. Conde Nast's Glamour was down 9.1% year on year at 424,077. Easy Living's ABC figure was made up of 81,043 newstrade, 64,545 subscriptions, 4,235 regular bulk sales and 194 multiple copy subs. However, the devil was in the detail: of the newstrade sales, 48,888 where below full price and 1,825 at 20-50% of the cover price. Similarly with the subs: 52,255 at 20-50% and 11,920 at reduced price. The company blamed 'multi-bagged sales deals' whereby the title was sold in outlets such as WHSmith in a bag with another magazine for a cheap price
- Glamour (M): A5 'handbag-sized' women’s lifestyle/fashion glossy overtook Cosmopolitan as the bestseller within a year of its April 2001 launch. However, the tables were turned when the February 2017 issue adopted the 'midi' format, (276x203mm), the same size as stablemate Vanity Fair, rather than the handbag size of 223x168mm. Cosmopolitan had moved to the midi format, and switched from web offset to gravure printing, in October 2106.
- GQ (M)
- Tatler (M) Society magazine launched in 1901. In 1989, started to lay claim to the heritage of Addison and Steele's Tatler established in 1709
- Trash: Only one issue: July/Aug 2003. Contract title for Ministry of Sound. Editor Rachel Newsome, former Dazed & Confused editor
- Vogue (M) Fashion monthly (though was often published twice a month until 1980s). Liberis Publications launched Greek edition in spring 2000; the thirteenth version worldwide.
- World of Interiors (M) Upmarket interiors title with international flavour. Founded as Interiors in 1981 by Kevin Kelly with Min Hogg as editor. Changed name in 1983 to World of Interiors and bought out by Conde Nast to enable international expansion
See A to Z of women's monthlies
Cornmarket – see Haymarket
Founded in 1950s by Michael Heseltine and Clive Labovitch, who had met
at Oxford university. Labovitch had bought What's What, a student
guide to cinemas, restaurants and clubs. The company bought John Taylor's
Man About Town from Tailor & Cutter and the short-lived
weekly news magazine Topic from Dome Press. Then Geoffrey Crowther, chairman of printers
Hazell Watson & Viney bought a 40% stake in Cornmarket, which was
renamed Haymarket.
Man About Town, About Town and Town covers from the 1950s and 1960s – case study
