In boom times, the consumer magazine business defines itself by its launches. Launching is what major publishers like to do best: firing forth innovative, unforeseen titles that redefine markets and spawn imitators across the board.
But this year, no one in publishing is feeling nearly as bullish as usual, and the notable launches can very nearly be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Barring big surprises, this year's most significant launch will either be Condé Nast's UK edition of Wired or H Bauer's zeitgeist-tapping Eat In, which arrived on 2 April and 31 March respectively. Equally, new titles from Future (The Knitter, Triathlon Plus), NatMags (Triathlete's World) and KAL Media (Inside Crochet) are timely, yet modest and specialist.
Condé Nast's fashion and style magazine Love is bold and appealing but infrequent, with only two issues a year. With Waybuloo, due to launch in the summer, BBC Magazines offers something for the pre-schoolers. And that, give or take the unsubstantiated rumours of a ShortList for women, is that, as far as print is concerned.
In the midst of a general economic crisis brought about by risky investments, a healthy degree of caution in the market is understandable. Given the depressed state of the advertising market and the level of investment required for a major new launch, it is also pretty well inevitable.
"The cost of launching on the news-stand is now quite extraordinary," says ShortList Media chief executive Mike Soutar. "On a normal, orthodox news-stand launch for a new weekly that aims to get into the top three in its sector, you can easily spend £12m in year one. News-stand magazines have never been riskier and, I suspect, all but the boldest publishers will draw their horns in for a while."
Proponents of the free sector have their reasons for knocking paid-for magazines, but Soutar's view is equally borne out by the reticence of news-stand publishers.
Fresh investment
At the time of the February magazine ABC results, Enders press analyst Douglas McCabe noted that publishers need "to make WHSmith feel exciting again". For the moment, if publishers do indeed rise to that challenge, it looks as though they will do so largely through existing products.
But the regular rhythm of new launches has contributed to a general belief that the magazine market needs constant infusions of fresh investment to survive.
Historically, 60% to 70% of copy sales have come from magazines launched in the previous decade, leading some to suggest that a one or two-year dry spell could contribute to a pattern of falling revenues for years to come. But publishers have their own reasons for not rising to that bait.
"You have to be careful with those sorts of generalities," says Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future. "It is true that if you look at what has stimulated the magazine market over the past decade, it is the Heats and OKs and Looks and reality and celebrity titles. But those types of magazine launches are always backed by massive advertising budgets, they are always promoted heavily, and whether or not they displace or increase the market is always open for debate."
According to a survey by media consultancy Wessenden Marketing, the number of launches was tailing off even before the storm hit last year. Every year for the past three years, new magazines have accounted for about 10% of the total number of titles on sale, the report showed, down from a historical average of about 20%.
Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Condé Nast and suddenly Britain's most prolific publisher of new titles, believes anyone who puts out a new product in a downturn "gets big points for courage". He is talking about his own company, of course, but he concedes that the conditions, while treacherous, aren't entirely negative.
"There is one advantage about launching in a downturn, and that is the media we have been buying has been cheaper," he says. "Also, we have been launching at a time when there is much less activity, which has meant that retailers have been unusually supportive. Three years ago, there were dozens of launches and everyone was saying, ‘oh, so what?'"
As any publisher bold enough to lay down ambitious launch plans will discover, a very different reaction awaits in today's market.
Everyone admires a glorious flight in the face of popular wisdom, after all. But with a handful of commendable exceptions, no one seems to want to do the flying.
Nicholas Coleridge
Managing director, British Condé Nast and vice-president
Condé Nast International
It is always more complicated launching into an uncertain environment, simply because advertisers become much more cautious and less willing to back a newborn magazine.
All the same, Vogue launched here in 1916, when there was not only paper rationing but clothes rationing. House & Garden came out in 1946, when there was wholesale rationing and no one could buy any new stuff. And we launched Vanity Fair in the downturn in 1981 and GQ in 1989, so we have experience of launching in a recession.
This proves a good magazine can be launched at any time. If you have a magazine you want to bring to the market, you just have to take a deep breath and put it out there.
With something such as Wired, the intention is to find the 60,000 or so people who are interested in reading it. We seem to be finding them, but we carried less advertising in the first issue than we would have done in a boom market - 50 pages rather than 70.
With Love, no one has launched a fashion magazine in the past three years, and I don't suppose anyone is going to in the next three years, but we carried 110 pages of advertising in the first issue, from all the major fashion brands.
Obviously, the magazine industry is going through a cautious moment where we are going to see more closures than launches, but I believe it is healthy for a company to be doing new things.
Peter Phippen
Managing director
BBC Magazines
It is good to see magazine launches and I am pleased one or two are still happening, as they are absolutely necessary for the lifeblood of the industry. Inevitably, there are fewer launches during a downturn and we aren't launching as many magazines as we have in the past.
We launched Match of the Day just over a year ago and we launched Lonely Planet Magazine last November, but we have fewer plans in the year ahead.
Waybuloo is launching in June and that will probably be the most exciting launch in the children's market in the next 12 months.
What gives us confidence? Well, the magazine is tied to a major new TV programme and it should be very popular. I believe Waybuloo will be the biggest thing since In The Night Garden, and that is one of our most successful children's magazines. Waybuloo will take advertising, but it is not heavily reliant on ad revenue.
If I'm completely honest, there are a few titles that we would love to launch but are currently on hold. Like every other company, we are running things pretty tightly at the moment and we don't know what trajectory the recession will take.
But we are looking at sales and ad revenue and forward bookings on a daily basis, so we will get a pretty good and early idea of when the market is turning up.
It is likely there will be a lot of launches when that happens.
Paul Keenan
Chief executive
Bauer Media
Launches are a must-do if you are in the magazine business. The market is very dynamic and advertisers need change, as do audiences.
I don't believe audiences demand innovation. What they actually tell you they like is what they like on that particular day. But consumers do respond to innovation and latent demand for new products builds up.
Commercially, the idea of launching magazines is very compelling. If you get the idea right and you get the right team on it, the launch can happen very quickly, and you can break even within a year.
There is something in the culture of the magazine business that means people are constantly looking at new ideas, applying them to our existing products, testing them out and drafting prototypes. Launching is inherently risky and innovation means being prepared to take risks and see things fail. These days, publishers' attention is on more fundamental matters.
People are getting their existing business fit and well-built against a challenging environment.
Commercially, things are looking pretty demanding, although there is quite a lot of optimism from media buyers that the second half of 2009 will not be as dramatic as the first half.
Evelyn Webster
Chief executive
IPC Media
We have a proven track record of launches in the past few years. Nuts, Pick Me Up, TV Easy and Look have all brought something new to their respective sectors and each is now firmly established.
That's not to say launching magazines is easy, at any time. We have a well-established, tried- and-tested approach to launching magazines, and we only launch when we are sure the market is there and the product is right.
Mainstream, mass-market magazines are very expensive propositions - expensive to create and expensive to market. Look debuted in 2007 with an £18m launch investment over the first two years and clearly it is much harder to justify that level of investment in the current market.
That's not to say that smaller, niche titles can't find audiences in this economic climate. Last summer, we launched SuperYacht World, a bi-monthly consumer magazine about the world's finest yachts and it continues to thrive.
Similarly, titles such as Cycling Weekly, Health & Fitness and VW Camper & Bus have recently evolved from one-shots to regular frequency titles, because they really deliver to their particular audiences.
Of course, if we were prepping a very expensive, high-profile launch, I wouldn't pre-empt it by flagging it in the pages of Media Week.
That said, one constant in all the insight into consumer behaviour during recessionary times is that consumers turn to the established brands they trust. That is why we are choosing to focus on - and invest in - our existing brands, whether in print or online.
Stevie Spring
Chief executive
Future
If you are in a creative company - and, please God, publishers should be creative - you are never short of ideas, so that is not the issue at the moment.
In this climate, we are still looking to develop and innovate, but with one eye on managing the risk. We are looking to launch into adjacent sectors, where we already have credibility and good relationships.
In the case of The Knitter and Triathlon Plus, we are already number one in crafting and number one in cycling, so that dampens the risk somewhat.
You only have to look at the advertising in Triathlon Plus to see it has been very well received, while The Knitter has broken every target it had.
We had a pretty good idea of what the commercial support would be and if you pre-sell subscriptions you have a good steer on whether people are interested.
If you are going to launch a magazine for enthusiasts into this market, it helps if those sectors are doing well. If you look at the February ABCs, you can see that Simply Knitting was up and the cycling portfolio had a brilliant set of results because people want to get fit. Generally, if you can catch the zeitgeist on a special interest magazine, you are in the right place at the right time.
I would think twice about launching a magazine from scratch at the moment - we are not going to bet the farm on anything. Most of the new product development budget is going into digital at present and I'm sure that is the same for everybody.
Duncan Edwards
Chief executive, NatMags and president and chief executive
Hearst Magazines International
In the UK, I believe most of the major publishers are focusing on managing their businesses in this changed financial environment, while they are having to grapple with some fairly significant issues.
Some of them have done that more publicly than others in terms of reducing the cost base.
Everybody knew this was going to be a hard year, but I don't believe anybody anticipated quite how bad it was going to be.
But I don't feel this is the end of magazine launches. One of the traits that characterises the magazine medium is its flexibility and inventiveness.
If you have a very good, insight-driven editorial idea, or if you have a strategic, overarching need to introduce a brand into the market, then that will trigger launches. I am sure we will see this happen, if not this year, then next year.
We weren't planning to launch anything in the UK that has had to be held back. In fact, we have launched Triathlete's World - we did some tests last year and put the magazine on a monthly basis this year. But as for the blockbuster, multi-million-pound launches - that would be a brave thing to do at the moment.
Big successes do come out of recessions. Cosmopolitan launched in 1972 and the following year we had the three-day week - I remember doing my homework by candlelight.
Does it look like the recession will produce any great franchise titles for the long term? Not so far.
But there may be things being cooked up in offices around London that we are not aware of.