The Death and Rebirth of Print Magazines in the Digital Age

Print magazines were supposed to die around 2010. Everyone said so. Tablets were the future, apps would replace newsstands, and physical paper was done.

Didn’t quite work out that way.

Sure, magazines took a massive hit. Ad revenue collapsed. Newsstand sales dropped by about 50% between 2010 and 2020. Hundreds of titles closed. But something weird happened around 2018-2019. Independent print magazines started appearing everywhere. Small runs, thick paper, no ads. They cost $20-30 per issue and people bought them.

What actually killed mainstream magazines

It wasn’t digital content. Magazines have been competing with other media forever. TV didn’t kill them. Radio didn’t kill them.

What killed them was the business model falling apart. Magazines made money from ads, not subscriptions. When advertisers could target people directly online for cheaper, they left. A full-page ad in Vogue might cost $100,000. Facebook lets you spend $100 and reach exactly who you want.

Subscription revenue never covered costs. Most magazines lose money on every subscriber because printing and mailing physical copies is expensive. They relied on advertisers to subsidize that.

When advertisers left, most magazines had three options: go digital-only, raise prices dramatically, or shut down. Cosmopolitan, GQ, and others tried reducing frequency. Monthly became quarterly. That bought time but didn’t fix the problem.

The part nobody saw coming

While legacy magazines struggled, a different kind of magazine emerged. Kinfolk started in 2011. Cereal launched in 2012. Monocle had been around since 2007, but really took off during this period. These weren’t trying to be Time or Newsweek. They looked more like art books.

Offscreen magazine charges $20 for a print issue about people who make websites and apps. It has maybe 15,000 readers. That’s tiny compared to legacy magazines. But it’s sustainable because the economics work differently.

The subscription model here is reversed. Readers cover the actual cost of production. There’s no advertiser middleman that needs convincing. You make something people want to own physically and they pay what it costs to make.

Why people still buy physical magazines

Digital should have won completely. It’s cheaper to produce, cheaper to distribute, searchable, shareable. You’d think that’s it.

But physical magazines do things screens don’t. You can’t casually flip through a PDF the same way. Digital doesn’t live on your coffee table for weeks. Guests don’t pick up your iPad and browse your saved articles.

There’s also the attention factor. When you read a physical magazine, you’re just reading it. Your phone isn’t pinging you. You’re not one tab away from checking email or Reddit. That focused reading experience became more valuable as screens became more distracting.

And honestly, some people just prefer physical objects. Same reason vinyl records came back while CDs stayed dead. It’s not about audio quality. It’s about the thing itself.

What works now (and what doesn’t)

Trying to be everything to everyone doesn’t work anymore. General interest magazines like Reader’s Digest or Life barely exist. The internet does “general interest” better and for free.

What works is going narrow and deep. Delayed Gratification covers only news that’s at least three months old (their tagline is “Last Quarter’s News Today”). That’s absurdly specific. But it works because they’re the only ones doing it.

The Gentlewoman comes out twice a year. Two issues. That’s it. Each one is thick, well-made, and costs around $20. Their print run is relatively small but they know exactly who their readers are.

Apartamento focuses on how real people (not interior designers) live in their homes. Very specific angle. Works because nobody else does it quite that way.

These magazines don’t compete with digital media. They exist alongside it. Most have websites but they’re minimal. The print product is the actual product, not a backup plan.

The economics are brutal but honest

Publishing a print magazine is expensive. Paper costs have gone up. Printing costs went up. Shipping costs definitely went up. Distribution is still a pain unless you’re only selling online.

Let’s say you want to print 5,000 copies of a 100-page magazine. You’re looking at $3-5 per copy just for printing, depending on paper quality. Add shipping, payment processing, website costs, and you need to charge at least $15 just to break even. That’s before paying anyone who created the content.

Most independent magazines start as side projects. Someone has a day job and does the magazine nights and weekends. First few issues lose money or barely break even. If it builds an audience, maybe it becomes sustainable. Very few people get rich from it.

But the cost transparency works in your favor. Readers understand that quality printing costs money. If you’re charging $25 for a quarterly magazine with good photography and writing, people get it. You’re not hiding behind the old model where subscriptions were cheap and advertisers paid the difference.

What this means for content creators

If you’re thinking about starting a print magazine, you need a few things figured out before you start:

Your audience has to be specific enough that they’d pay $15-30 per issue. “People interested in food” is too broad. “People who make bread at home and want to understand fermentation science” is more like it.

You need a reason for it to be print. Digital should be the worse option for your content. If your magazine is just articles and could work fine as a blog, why are you printing it?

Distribution matters more than you think. Getting into bookstores and specialty shops is tough. Most independent magazines sell primarily through their own website and maybe 20-30 retail locations that fit their aesthetic.

You probably can’t do this alone. Even small magazines need multiple people. Photography, design, editing, printing coordination, shipping, customer service. It’s actual work.

The rebirth part isn’t really a rebirth

Calling this a “rebirth” isn’t quite right. These new magazines aren’t trying to become what old magazines were. They’re doing something different that happens to also be print.

Legacy magazines wanted massive audiences because advertisers wanted massive audiences. New independent magazines want the right audience, however small that is. It’s more like how independent bookstores survived Amazon by becoming community spaces instead of just places that sell books.

Print magazines now exist because some people want them to exist and are willing to pay for them. Not because they’re the default way to consume long-form content. That shift changes everything about how they work.

The magazines that died were built on an advertising model that stopped working. The ones being born never relied on that model in the first place. Different foundations, different outcomes.