Magforum.com - all about magazines and magazine publishing

Magforum.com is about the past, present and future of magazines and publishing. The site was founded in 2001 by Tony Quinn (tony [at] magforum.com), who, from 1999, had published similar pages as Head of Watford School of Publishing at West Herts College. Previously, he had been a group editor at BBC Magazines / Redwood Publishing. He has since returned to journalism on the Financial Times where he is a Chief Production Journalist dealing with print, web and iPad editions of the paper.

Two projects at present are:

• writing a visual history of British magazine design, 1840-2010, to be published by the V&A Museum using the collection of the National Art Library
• writing section on magazines 1914-2000 for the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume 7.

Both to be published in 2012.

Magforum has ISSN 1756-364X. It is classified by the academic librarians' websites BUBL as 070.5 (Dewey code for news media, journalism and publishing).

The main source of information is actual copies of magazines, which are often supplied by publishers. Access to most of the pages is from this page or the home page.

There is an accompanying blog at: magforum.wordpress.com/

Information on Magforum.com is structured around the following pages:

Launches, news and events in the world of magazines:

• year-by-year events back to 1975.

Case studies covering types of magazines and individual titles:

• Women's weeklies : the sector hots up
• News magazines : from Topic to Monocle
• The European : from Maxwell to Barclays
• Not Private Eye : Maxwell libel case
• Men's mags history : from Men Only to Nuts
• Man About Town : seminal men's magazine
• Men's weeklies : Nuts and Zoo lads' magazines
• Men's mags A-Z: from 66 to Zoo
• Car magazines : 1993, a watershed
• Women's monthlies slicks and glossies : A-Z
• Teen magazines : from Honey to Smash Hits
• Celebrity magazines price war
• Women's magazine covers
• Cover secrets

Magazine industry structure and types of publishers:

• UK magazine industry with international figures
• Types of publishers;
• Consumer magazine publishers;
• Business and B2B magazine publishers;
• Customer and contract magazine publishers.
  

Other features

• Magforum blog : regular commentary
• Answers to questions
• Collecting magazines
• Links
• UK newspapers
• Timeline from 1731
• Free advertising for small publishers and others
• Book reviews

Profiles of specific magazine sectors

• Car magazines
• Computer magazines
• Extreme sports magazines
• Homes and interiors magazines
• Money & finance magazines
• Property magazines
• Travel & holiday magazines
• Yachting & boating magazines

Advertising on Magforum is accepted in the form of banners (£10-£30 per 1,000 impressions depending on the page), skyscrapers and smaller shapes. Please seend e-mail Tony Quinn (tony [at] magforum.com) for details.

Publishers, students and researchers will find lots of useful stuff on the FAQ page.

The Magforum website has been designed and built by Max Quinn.

The typeface used for copy text is Baskerville, originally designed in the eighteenth century by Birmingham printer John Baskerville.