The New York Times has a good summary of the launch of Mine Magazine, the customized, print-on-demand venture put together by Time Warner & Lexus:
Subscribers pick five of eight magazines, like Food & Wine or Sports Illustrated, and articles from those magazines appear in their custom magazines. Readers receive several issues with an article or two from each magazine, and issues come every two weeks.
“It’s almost similar to an RSS feed or something like that, where you get a selection” of content you are interested in, said David Nordstrom, the vice president for marketing at Lexus, a division of Toyota. “It’s kind of a print way of doing what people are doing on the Internet, and for us it was to say, what is a way we can reach customers in a way that’s different?”
Through its Web site, Time Inc. made 200,000 digital versions and 31,000 print versions available. So far almost all the print editions have been claimed, while fewer than 30,000 digital versions have been ordered, Lexus said.
“There were several people that thought digital’s going to be on fire and sell really well,” said Mr. Silverman of Team One. “We were a little surprised as well. I think a lot of people have talked about, well, the death of print, and digital is the new print.”
There were some technical glitches with the printing, as some magazines were sent out with the wrong article selection, but like the article says, “new business models come with new problems.”
(The magazine is still available for order from Time’s website.)
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