Due to the success, this year’s distribution has been bumped up by 12.4%.

This year, the 2017 Ultimate Geography Quiz book features three regional covers.

Editor Aaron Kylie says:  “Given the provincial/territorial organization of the Ultimate Canadian Geography Quiz SIP, it seemed natural to have a number of regional covers for the issue. We selected three compelling images submitted to the Canadian Geographic Photo Club, one each for eastern, central and western Canada. Our hope is this will improve the newsstand success of this already popular SIP.”
 

But check out some of their other recent covers too.

Very few magazines have mastered the use of illustrated covers the way these folks have.

Clean and uncluttered, the messaging clear and concise, these covers are designed to sell.  They are Masters of the “3 second rule.”
 

The Nov/Dec 2016 issue of Horse Canada hit newsstands yesterday.  This time slot is typically the best each year, as the issue has a longer on-sale period.

Art Director Sieu Truong has created a clean, crisp cover.  The white background creates a seasonally appropriate color scheme and works to provide a high contrast platform for the image and type.  Great use of the cover real estate for the sell lines.  A strong, service-oriented cover!
 

Apparently, Topix produced, printed and shipped a special SIP to hit newsstands in time to take advantage of the historic outcome of the Presidential election.  Problem?

They assumed Hillary Clinton was going to win.

“Like everybody else, we got it wrong,” said Tony Romando, CEO of Topix Media, the Newsweek partner which produces special issues under the popular brand.”

The article goes on to say that the Madam President issue hit stores on Tuesday (election day) but were told not to put issues on sale until after the election i.e. Wednesday.  But some stores did.  Romando claims only 17 Clinton magazines were sold out of 125,000 printed and shipped.  Talk about a brutal sell-thru efficiency of .000136%.

Topix Media is now scrambling to get a President Trump SIP out to newsstands sometime later next week.
 

Can Rolling Stone magazine survive?  That’s the question after a jury ruled that RollingStone and its writer Sabrina Erdely were guilty of libel with malice, and of defamation. The trial lasted two weeks before the 10 member jury delivered their judgment.  The case stems from an article published in RollingStone entitled  “A Rape on Campus”.  In the article, the writer told the story of “Jackie”, who claimed she was raped at the University of Virginia.  It turned out the story was a fabrication.

The plaintiff, Nicole Eramo, a University administrator, claimed she was unfairly portrayed by the writer and RollingStone, as someone who was trying to prevent the story from coming out because “nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school.”  The plaintiff’s lawyers had to prove that RollingStone made her appear “odious, infamous or ridiculous” and that the magazine acted with “actual malice,” meaning that it knew that what it was writing about her was false or should have known that it was false.

The article was first published in the Dec 4th 2014 issue.  According to Wikipedia: “The article included a claim that a student, identified only as “Jackie” by the magazine, had been taken to a party hosted by the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia by a fellow student. At the party, Jackie alleged in the article, her date led her to a bedroom where she was raped by several fraternity members as part of an initiation rite. Jackie’s account generated much media attention, and the university suspended the fraternity. After other journalists investigated the article’s claims and found significant discrepancies, RollingStone issued multiple apologies for the story. Further investigation concluded that Jackie had fabricated the incident”.

The lawsuit sought $7.5 million in compensatory damages.

“According to the Associated Press, Eramo told jurors that, after the story’s publication, she had trouble sleeping, feared for her life, and struggled explaining the events to her then-7-year-old son. She said she contemplated suicide at one point, and her husband also testified that Eramo told him she didn’t know that should could live anymore.” She was awarded $3 million, of which $2 million was a judgment against the writer and $1 million against the magazine.  RollingStone has also agreed to pay Erdely’s legal costs.

Erdely was not fired after the article was retracted and continues to write for RollingStone.

RollingStone also faces a $25 million lawsuit from Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity where Jackie claimed her assault took place. That case is scheduled to go to trial late next year.