by the broadsheets? For years books were the only area of the arts apart from the stage to be expansively covered by the National press. Even today the "review/culture" sections of papers are mainly filled with book reviews and author interviews. I doubt there's much room for a monthly Book magazine the LRB/Granta onyl survive because they are highly subsidised I believe.

it's a great shame there isn't one, because broadsheet book coverage is terrible and notable mainly for reviewing the books that people don't actually read. If I was to hazard a guess at *why* there isn't one it would be because the experience of reading a book is so different to that of music: it's solitary, you generally read books once and they take a lot longer to consume; plus you don't have the personalities around like you do with music. That said there could be a Waitrose Food Illustrated equivalent for books I would have thought. And now I've written that I'm thinking, Actually, don't Waterstones do something?

I apologise if I've wasted your time with this poorly conceived post.

subscribers/readers are also enthusiastic print users. Actually buggered if I can think of a valid reason why.

On s related topic: has anyone ever wondered why there isn't a similar equivelant to Word/Q/Uncut etc for television? Lets face it - far more of us watch TV than listen to music or read books.

I guess that books are not seen as so homogeneous a market for one publication to cover all the bases, the way that a publication can cover rock/metal/ opera or all that month's cinema releases. When book groups took off, especially on the TV, I wondered if some monthly looking at popular fiction might have emerged, but it didn't happen. Plus the selective markets that do exist for existing book magazines are pretty robust; LRB and TLS do very well out of loyal readers and institutional subscriptions, and wouldn't need to change.

Someone replied that book sales are actually far lower than you'd imagine, even for the supposedly big names like Peter James.
But, yes, I'd definitely buy something that wasn't as cliquey as TLROB or the broadsheet supplements which could combine coverage of Ian McEwan and Harlan Coben happily.

something I have often thought of, think there have been a few glossy style mags but they have been largely tied into a particular promotional campaigns. Much as I dislike what Waterstones has become, their mag is pretty reasonable if a little too light. They have some good reviewers and the main articles are ok. It would be a challenge, but it would be good to have a mag that combined the different tones of the Literary Review, Waterstones mag and the caustic and very funny reviews in Private Eye. Agree that the broadsheet coverage, especially the Sundays has become increasingly poor though there are some good writers, Robert McCrum and Rachel Cooke especially. Often wonder what the editors are thinking of when they plan their coverage, they don't seem to cater for the literate middle ground.

....have traditionally been subsidised, in the LRB's case by the Arts Council and in the TLS's case by News International.

Book publishers tend to invest all their marketing money in:
a) paying very famous people to write books
b) discounting books in the shops.

As a rule they rarely advertise in print.

I seem to remember buying the first issue of a magazine round about the time The Word was launched.I can't remember thie title of it.I think it only lasted a couple of issues. While it was a reasonable enough effort I wasn't enthused enough to buy a further issue

... isn't reading about reading rather like dancing about dancing?

i.e. if you've only a limited amount of time available for book reading, would you really want to set aside a portion of that time for reading about books, as opposed to actually reading books?

The TV one was called something like The Box ? It was Ok but didnt last .

Agreed the quality / choice of broadsheet book reviewing is odd .
In the Saturday Guardian Steve Poole s non fiction choice seems to exist of books that may well have been made up - I can`t imagine more than about 3 people being interested in some of them .

eg: "The Freudian Robot" which "links the birth of information theory and cybernetics with literary modernism and psychoanalysis"

or 42 by Peter Gill " a rather admirably pointless compendium of instances of the number 42" .All yours for £9

I subscribed to the Literary Review for years, as it was the nearest thing to a general interest magazine about books that I could find. Under the idiosyncratic editorship of Auberon Waugh, it did at least have a personality, which is important in a magazine, and it managed to retain this after his death.

On the other hand, it was relentlessly upper-middle-class in its interests; you’d find lengthy reviews of the memoirs of dowager duchesses and guides to country houses, but books on popular culture rarely got a look-in. That got wearing over time, as did the fact that (like the broadsheets) they devoted most of their space to non-fiction, which I’m not that interested in. So I unsubscribed a few years ago and haven’t missed it since.

Pop music is a visual medium - so (obviously) are films, and so are fashion, cars, celebs, carp, model railways, quilting and all those other fine magazine titles.

Whereas books - longform text - simply don't provide good pictures. Authors look tweedy or mad, but they don't strike Strat poses or fall out of nightclubs, and they're mostly (whisper it) middle aged or worse.

Magazines are a great visual medium, but books lend themselves better to newspapers and the like (eg London Review of Books, Spectator). There's plenty of blogging on the subject, of course.

Can't help you on TV mags, though. I guess TV just infiltrates everything, as the omnipresent and omnivorous medium.

Couple of reasons for this I think. One, the book world and consequently these pages are massively cliquey so there's endless back-scratching that goes on. Secondly the impression I get is that most books are chosen because the review makes a good, easy article in itself. This weekend read the non-fiction book reviews (no doubt the majority) in the supplement of your choice. Chances are 9 times out of 10 they won't review the book at all, it'll just be a precis of its content (particularly true of biogs.) Job done, space filled, easy peasy. Also, not expressing an opinion has the advantage of not offending an influential author/agent/publisher/journalist who might be able to get your/your wife's/daughter's etc. novel/article published in the future.
Waterstone's Mag - how independent is it? Haven't seen it for years but find it hard to believe that there's anything there that hasn't been paid for or not tied in to an in-store promotion of some kind...

...if I remember correctly, and it was exactly what literary Word readers would have wanted: a glossy, Word-style monthly with articles about authors, upcoming books, etc. It knocked the Waterstones quarterly into a cocked hat.

It only ran for a few issues (bimonthly, I think), and I can't find anything about it on the net, so I may well have been its only reader and clearly its publisher was too embarrassed to leave any trace of it on its website.

I knew its number was up when a search of WHSmith failed to uncover it and when I asked a member of staff she led me straight to the section of tattoo magazines. "Ink? Isn't that for tattoo artists?" "No, it's about books, it hasn't been going long." "Oh, erm..."

I thought it was terrific, and I mourn its passing deeply, especially given the complete absence of a replacement.

of all magazines are bought by casual buyers looking for something to read on the train, etc. They don't necessarily have a massive interest. That's why there's loads of film mags, even though most people don't go to the cinema, and why all the music monthlies have to circulate the same half-a-dozen universally known artist on their covers. And why there are about 3 magazines dedicated to customising volkswagen beetles, even though nobody actually does that in real life. Whreas if you read, you read. You don't read about reading.

David Pringle, the man behind the late lamented, by me at least, Million magazine:

"David Pringle's major venture into the world of commercial fiction appreciation (as opposed to fiction itself) was the now-defunct magazine, Million, which unfortunately folded after fourteen issues. With the benefit of hindsight, why might that have been?

"Million was my other pet hobby. I made mistakes; I was feeling a bit cocky. Interzone had been successful, and with Million I invested too much money too quickly. I shouldn't have started with a bi-monthly; I should have started with a quarterly. And the colour covers: I really should have started it as a fanzine. But the main reason it didn't succeed is we're talking about a very different kettle of fish. Interzone is primarily a fiction magazine, and Million was a magazine that commented on popular culture, popular fiction. And I suppose I discovered that the world didn't need such a magazine...

"Funnily enough, someone else started a magazine up during the period when Million was going - with a big glossy splash, lots of publicity. Bestseller: I don't know if anyone remembers that. Produced about three issues.

"Now they must have spent tens of thousands of pounds - and they failed, even with all that promotion behind them. And they were doing essentially the same thing. Personally, I think Million did it better! At least we achieved fourteen issues."