Winq and Mate Magazines Pair Up

As the above announcement on the web site of Mate magazine notes, two of the nicest gay lifestyle magazines you can imagine have paired up, and it just might be that the only downside is that instead of two separate good non-adult gay magazines, we now will have only one. Apparently with the current issues, Germany's Mate magazine and the Dutch Winq magazine have merged, with the unified publication to be called Mate but carrying the Winq design (see above).

In the United States, we get only a quarterly version of Winq, which is published monthly or bi-monthly (I wasn't certain which) in Holland. We also have received the English-language edition of the German Mate, which has also been quarterly. Now, presumably, we will be the happy recipients of an English-language edition of the combined Mate.

I  would like to make this pitch to the publishers of the new Mate: First, please improve your distribution in the United States. Both magazines could be hard to find here. Trust me. I live in San Francisco, so if a gay magazine should be easy to find, this is the city for it. But I know of only a few places that carried the former version of Mate, and maybe six places that carried Winq. And if you subscribed to the old Winq, you would pay about twice the price that you would have paid if you purchased it at the newsstand. This is a market that the new Mate could conquer, but it has to be better represented in the States.

Second, please make it monthly.

I'm a fan of both magazines. They have produced high-quality, beautifully designed magazines that, I think, put to shame American gay magazines. Let us hope that together they continue the best traditions of both publications and don't become a muddle.

The Dwindling Ranks of Gay Magazines

On a whim, I decided to update my blog's look at the state of gay magazines, which have been decimated in recent years. A combination of the brutal recession, the ability of the internet to undercut the print publications' market (especially for the adult titles), and some already weak publications has resulted in a steady decline in the ranks of publications targeting the gay audience.

But decimated doesn't do justice to the decline. The word comes from the ancient Romans, whose military commanders would punish mutinous or disastrously performing troops by killing one out of every 10 troops under their command (the deci- root comes from the Latin for ten). A brutal form of punishment, yes; but the rate of loss in the magazine market is likely much more than 10 percent.

Just checking out this list of gay magazines finds that of the 10 listed, five have ceased publication – six if you count The Advocate, which officially became a special section of sister mag Out. (One could quibble with my counting; there are additional surviving and dead magazines not listed, and Echelon, after all, is counted as having ceased publication, but it apparently is still alive as an online-only magazine. An online-only magazine is, to me, by definition an internet product. But such quibbles are what make life worth living, and a disagreement on that particular title doesn't appreciably alter the numbers calculation.)

I've long maintained on this blog – and still do – that print has a healthy future, if it does what print does best and lets the internet do what the 'net does best. I suspect that this market niche is kind of uniquely vulnerable to the internet. That part of the magazines' coverage that was about building community and interaction is exactly what the internet does better than print. And those magazines that offered little or nothing more than adult content have obviously lost their reason for living, in a world where the internet makes videos and pictures of any- and everything ubiquitous and often free.

Hope springs eternal, however. Playgirl (the ostensibly female-oriented but gay-friendly skin publication) is back and is trying to buck the trend, though not well, if you ask me. And on the non-adult side, we'll see how relatively new titles such as the wonderful Winq from the Netherlands fares.

UPDATE 3/27/11: Winq and Mate magazines team up.

Got It

Okay, I finally found it.

Winq Wink, Nudge Nudge

As blogger Matthew Rettenmund shows (here), I'm not the only one to appreciate global gay culture magazine Winq. (And there are others.) His blog offers a preview of the latest issue of the U.S. edition of Winq (cover, left; Netherlands edition cover lower right).

Glad to see others are noticing this good magazine. My one complaint would be this: It's a very difficult magazine to find. I never saw the first issue (had to buy it as a back issue, shipped all the way from Holland), and I quickly bought the second issue at a Borders here in San Francisco. But I haven't seen the third issue yet, despite my frequent visits to Borders. If I'm having trouble finding it in downtown San Fran, how is anyone finding it elsewhere?

I'd normally subscribe -- after all, I loves subscribing -- but the subscription price to have this quarterly delivered in the United States is $59, nearly twice the cover price (at $7.98 a pop). Not a bargain.

Hopefully, these are just the growing pains as the magazine spreads its wings (winqs? sorry) in the United States.

The Latest Shopping Spree, Part III

My latest magazine shopping sprees, a combination of newsstand,subscription, and in-store shopping:

SFX (July 2009): As part of my continuing self-therapy for Starlog withdrawal, I picked up the July '09 issue of British competitor SFX, which has itself come under heavy competition from DeathRay and Sci Fi Now. What made me pick up SFX (which yet again manages to cover the bottom leg of the "E" in its title so that its title looks like SEX)? The Harry Potter cover story.

GQ (July 2009): Everyone's been talking about the "first nude cover" of GQ magazine, featuring Sacha Baron Cohen in character (but out of costume) of his Bruno. It's the magazine's special comedy issue, in which it annoys me by having an asterisk (design pet peeve) on the cover copy for "* No Joke? It's Our #ü@%ing COMEDY ISSUE!" Hmm, I'll make myself sound twice my actual age and ask, Remember when men's magazines didn't try to sound profane and trashy? Ah, whatever. There's also a Harold Ramis article.

Heavy Metal (Summer 2009): The buxom women on the covers of HM aren't going to attract me (see Winq, below), but what makes me pick up each issue is the quick process of shuffling through the pages and seeing (a) if the art looks high-quality, and (b) if it looks like the stories might be of high originality. This issue passed the test at the newsstand.

Winq (Fall 2008): This was a back issue of one of my recent great discoveries, ordered from the publisher in Belgium. From fashion to Berlin's gay holocaust memorial to Arabs and the French to, er, robot love and more. Here's another high-quality, beautifully designed issue of this magazine that puts American gay magazines to shame. And it should. Oh, and did I mention that it has a cover price of $7.95 for 148 pages? Beat that, American running dogs! (Oh, yeah, there are also some pix of some rather comely men in non-nude situations.)

Playboy (July/August 2009): The long-anticipated and somewhat controversial combined July/August issue of Playboy finally arrived on newsstands and subscriber mailboxes. Whenever Playboy gets enough pages to do itself justice, I am reminded of why this is a great magazine. When they're really squeezing out a thin issue, there's often only one or two articles that interest me, and if one of them is uninteresting or stupid, well, it's a weak issue. But when they put out an extra-page anniversary or holiday issue, we all get to see that Playboy can draw the best writers and artists in the country. This issue, we get an interview with actor Alec Baldwin; a 20 Questions conversation with Judd Apatow; a profile of TV pitchman Billy Mays; a symposium on the future with such contributors as T. Boone Pickens, Seth MacFarlane, Reza Aslan, and others; a graphic novel interpretation of Ray Bradbury's classic "Fahrenheit 451"; and much more.

DNA (#110): I picked up this issue for the geekiest of reasons: The article on gays in science fiction, especially because it highlights one of my all-time favorites, Battlestar Galactica. I mean, the barely-clad gentleman on the cover, who seems to be having a bit of a struggle to keep his trunks on, probably doesn't hurt its newsstand sales, but I'm sure I'm not the only gay man to focus on the sci-fi article.

Was tempted by but didn't succumb: The Week, Dwell, The Economist, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, Attitude.

My previous shopping spree.

The Latest Shopping Spree, Part II

My latest trip to the bookstore, just a couple hours ago this afternoon, ended with me walking out with two magazines:

Monocle (June 2009): Another giant issue (more than 200 pages, I think, counting the inserts) from Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé. We get the only magazine that includes Lebanon's elections, Sarkozy, manga, an aviation survey, a look at Mongolia's capital, Obama's White House designing, and a report on the Karachi, Pakistan, police forces. I have no idea if this magazine is a resounding financial success, but I hope it is. It is a big part of my evolving view that these globally-fucused, hefty hefts are the successful magazines of the future, like my new best friend forever, Winq. I'll write more on this theory in the future.

Smithsonian (June 2009): What made me pick up this issue? I've always been impressed by this fine magazine, and I buy several issues of it every year. My mother used to bring home stacks of them from the publishing company where she worked. But my partner's a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, and they've got an article on Wright, so ... magazine purchased.

And then there are the magazines I almost bought, even carrying them with me until I decided for certain that I didn't want to spend money on them:

Deathray (June/July 2009): In my continuing effort to find a science fiction media magazine to replace the hole in my heart left by the print cessation (er, hiatus) of Starlog, I have been trying to choose between SFX, Deathray, and SciFi Now. Problem is, all three oversized British mags are so bleeping similar that one is left walking away from all of them. I had a Deathray in my hands, but before I went to the checkout counter, I realized I hadn't read the April/May issue (had barely opened it), so why spring for an entirely new issue?

Discover (July/August 2009): A decade or two ago, my sister gave me a copy of an annual Best Science Writing of the Year anthology, and I loved it. I learned in the books' introduction that Discover magazine was one of the founders of a new type of popular science writing -- intelligent, accessible to the non-expert, and high-quality. I've read it off and on over the years, even subscribing once or twice. But I have to admit I hate-hate-hated the redesign instituted a few years ago when Bob Guccione Jr. took over the mag (and that's not a knock on Guccione; I see him as someone who's done a hell of a lot of things I wish I'd had the money to do in the magazine industry; I have a premiere issue of Spin magazine just a foot away from my keyboard as I write this, as a matter of fact, and I thought it was great when I heard a rumor that he was interested in reviving Omni as a quarterly, because it fed my own interest in restarting a late science/SF magazine). Anyway, this magazine just didn't make the final should-I-or-shouldn't-I decision as I was toting up the damage from my magazine grazing (particularly in light of my subscription to the weekly New Scientist), so back to the newsstand it went.

Maybe I should write one of these posts on the mags I'm buying used on eBay???

My previous shopping spree

Mavety Puts Gay Mags out of Their Misery

Can't say I am surprised. Can't say it'll make much difference in the publishing world. Can't say they'll be much missed, probably even by their regular readers. But Matthew Rettenmund blogs that Mavety Media Group canceled all of its gay magazine titles earlier today. And "gay magazine titles" here means magazines that were made up of nude pictures of men, erotic fiction, and porn ads ad nauseum. And that's it.

So the publishing world has lost such venerable titles as Mandate, Inches, Playguy, Honcho, and Torso. But before you sit shiva for these magazines, just think that they didn't really have anything to offer. As nothing more than porn mags, they really lacked anything with which to combat all of the free online porn out there.

Rettenmund, who besides being a very readable blogger and the author of Boy Culture and Blind Items: A Novel is also a veteran of the Mavety publishing world. He provides interesting background both on life inside the Mavety publishing family (such as the Christian ad sales rep) and on the gay magazine industry. It's almost enough to make one sorry to see these magazines go ... but no. They were a disappointment for anyone who's interested in what magazines can be when they really try.

But now everyone can trade up and subscribe to Winq, so there's an upside.

Winq: New Magazine Covering Global Gay Culture

I thought its title was "wing," but that didn't matter much. The real title is "winq," and that makes as much sense for an international gay magazine as "wing." So I bought the magazine, and have been impressed so far. It's been a long time since I've found a new magazine that actually impresses me with its quality and originality.

Yes, it's a new magazine. The issue I purchased was actually the second (spring 2009) American edition of a magazine from the Netherlands. The Dutch edition has been around for twenty-something issues, so it's a new/old magazine, but nonetheless it's a print magazine launch in the recession-rocked United States. It's new to us, as they say.

This is a magazine that could teach American magazines a thing or two. At $7.95 and 148 pages (including covers), it's a good value and it also sports some solid advertising support (but not overpowering; it's ad-edit ratio must be very low): Lufthansa, Dsquared, Dirk Bikkembergs, Adidas, Giorgio Armani, Wrangler, and others. The next thing you notice about Winq is that its interior pages are high-quality, uncoated, full-color paper. The layout, design, and production seem to be top-quality, and the articles are an interesting collection that range from the political (a look at Obama and equal rights) to the surprising (a profile of a gay prince in India) to the expected (an overview of famous rich gays around the world) to the juvenile (a look at how people use sex talk around the world).

There are also a couple photo spreads of lightly clad men, but there's no nudity. This is a magazine that can be left on the coffee table, unless you are having Miss California over for dinner.

Overall, its quality and originality caught my eye. It is doing something that other gay magazines are not doing, either by choice or lack of vision and abilities. American gay periodicals are either all-sex-and-nudity, or they're aimed at a very small portion of the gay audience, which takes narrow-casting to an extreme. Any time you take a small enough audience (gay men, classical music afficionados, comics readers, Catholic social workers), there's the danger that the publication will be overly narrow in viewpoint. The topics aren't narrow; the viewpoints expressed in articles usually are, because there simply isn't a large enough pool of writing talent on staff. So Winq solves that by being the magazine of "global queer culture," and it's an approach that can probably be used by other magazines, gay or straight. In fact, it is being used by a monthly news-and-business magazine called Monocle, which brings to American audiences ideas and news and culture from around the globe.

There are other attempts at bringing American gay readers something different, but distribution seems to be a challenge to them. Mate magazine is a German gay publication that also produces an English-language edition. It's high quality and features a lot of good coverage of style and travel, but the magazine is hard to find. And British publications such as Gay Times aren't really global magazines; they are thoroughly British in outlook, they just have distribution in the United States.

So, welcome to Winq. I don't know how long it'll survive in the United States, but while it does, I hope it encourages other publishers in niche markets to aim high in quality and higher in originality.

UPDATE 3/27/11: Winq and Mate magazines team up.