I subscribe to a foodie magazine (Olive). The magazine lands on my mat around the 1st of the month. All well and good, except… it’s always a full month early. So I received my latest issue a couple of days ago and it’s for, yep, December. Which means every damn recipe is geared around Christmas dinner.
I don’t want to cook turkey in October. It also means that all their ‘seasonal’ recipes are a full month early, so in March they are trying to get me to break out the BBQ, or at the end of July they are introducing autumnal comfort food.
The reason for most things in magazine (and newspaper) publishing can usually be summed up in one word: advertising.
Advertisers plan their marketing campaigns well in advance. They want to advertise Christmas stuff in October/November - I bet the latest issue of Olive is full of Waitrose mince pie adverts and M&S turkeys, right? And where advertising leads, editorial follows.
The content is a slightly different matter from the month label, of course - they could just as easily call the mag that comes out at the end of October the “November” issue, rather than December. But it makes more sense to have all the Christmassy stuff in a “December” issue - plus, as others have said, it increases the perceived shelf-life of the magazine. If you see a magazine labelled “November” in a shop and the date is, say, November 15, then you would probably hold off buying it because you’d assume the December one is just about to come out.
This is the reason, from what I’ve read. The date on the magazine is what newstand sellers go by. Sometime in October they get antsy to pull the October magazines. So, the November magazines should arrive before November, so they don’t have October magazines in November. For weekly magazines, it’s worse. It’s Thursday, say, why would I buy a magazine dated Monday? It’s got to be stale news…
There’s also the consumer appeal angle. So in mid-October, am I likely to buy a magazine dated October (“hmmm, it’s been here for a while”) or November (“Hmm, must be brand new!”)?
Then they mail the new issue out to subscribers usually (!!?) earlier, hoping it arrives before the subscriber sees it on store shelves. Nothing annoys a customer like paying in advance for something, and your copy arrives when it’s already been on newstands a week.
However, even children’s magazines without advertising come out a month early. Children often write the editor to ask why, and the editors say it’s because they want to give children enough time to finish holiday-related crafts in time for the actual celebration.
It was originally for the convenience of newsstands, which were a major source of circulation before TV. Newsstand owners wanted only to sell the current issue of a magazine; if the magazine said “September” as the date, it would seem like it had been there three weeks on September 21. So publishers obliged and dated the magazine with a pull date. The newsstands would pull the magazine on the first day of the month listed. They would have the next month’s date on the magazine (“November” during October), so customers would know the magazine was the latest issue.
Comic books took this to extremes; the cover dates of many comics were several months after when they were put on the stands.
I thought it was much the same reason that cars and fashion are usually a full cycle ahead, in their case, a year rather than a month: Having customers perceive you as being in the past, last model/issue/fashion is a disadvantage. Giving customers the impression that they’re getting an early access to the future is an advantage.
Even if all magazines didn’t start out doing this, there was a great inentive for one of them to pull that trick. Say you have medical journals, all of them are marked November 2012 except for one marked December 2012. Surely knowledge did not regress and the December mag has at least and likely more info than the November one. So the December mag has an edge. Every mag has an incentive to follow suit and forward its issue date by one month just to avoid being put at a disadvantage.
This is even more the case when it comes to cars and fashion: “All those people who buy the November fashion mags will only have access to November fashion information but if I buy the December fashion mag, I’ll be one month ahead of them fashion-wise!” Same for cars, the 2012 technology will likely be at least as good and likely better than the 2011 tech and having next year’s car can boost the ego/status of people who identify with their car.
Why isn’t there an arms race over it, then, with magazines coming out two, three months ahead and cars and fashion coming out 2, 3 years ahead? Because bullshit stretched beyond believability is less effective than plausible, somewhat realistic bullshit.
I’d guess that apart from getting them to the newsstands before first selling date it’s also a matter of storage space. The publisher just wants to get rid of them as soon as they’re printed, not having to keep them somewhere until it’s time for delivery.
Grumble grumble Well, alright then, but it’s quite annoying when the subject matter is seasonal.
I have noticed that they cheat in their January editions, including a bunch more Christmas catering suggestions. There’s just so many things I need to know what to do with a turkey and some mince pies.
I feel bad, because the header actually isn’t missing any words. I thought it needed a verb to go with do (“Why do magazines appear a month, or more, early?”). But do works as the only verb (“Why [would they] do magazines a month, or more, early?”).
