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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erik Mona" data-source="post: 3603883" data-attributes="member: 2174">That's reasonable.You think correctly. That's the job of the editor-in-chief, after all. Too few readers and the magazine gets cancelled. Or at least that was the operating assumption. Turns out there are other reasons the magazine could get cancelled too, but we weren't considering that possibility when I wrote that editorial.The magazine and the gaming industries were much different back in those days. In fact, Dragon was at the time sold in bookstores as a book product, and not through magazine distribution, so "competing on the newsstand" wasn't really even a concern back in the "heyday." The magazine was selling more than 100,000 copies back then, so it's pretty clear that the game itself was much, much more popular in terms of unit sales than it is today, much more akin to a Pokemon-style fad than the graying hobby that D&D has become today.Additionally, it's clear through research and seven years of number crunching that the actual "quality" or subject matter of a cover has less to do with the sales of a mass market magazine than things like the color (red and white covers sell well, yellow and blue covers do not) and cover lines (covers with lots of numbers on them sell better than covers without). It's an arcane science and it's maddening and you're right to be frustrated about it, but it is what it is.Yes. I am saying exactly that.I don't really expect you to believe it. I know I didn't when I joined the periodicals staff back in 1999, fresh from gamer-land. I hated the words on my covers too and missed the days when I could stare at the cover for a long time without reading a stupid pun.But the numbers learned me.Right after taking over Dragon, I ran a test on an issue with minimal coverlines, and despite it being a decent issue, the sales numbers were terrible. Not so much in game stores, but in mass market magazine accounts, which makes up a considerable amount of Dragon's distribution.I honestly think, if sales were all we cared about, that the coverlines should be MORE overwhelming than they are, but I just can't bring myself to make that decision. When I edited Dungeon art director Sean Glenn and I redesigned the cover format of that magazine to trim down the coverlines and give more space to the art, and I think that's probably the best approach.On the newsstand, a few lines in the upper right hand corner are utterly worthless. Go to Barnes and Noble or any other newsstand where magazines are not displayed "full face" (which is most of them). Magazines there are fanned out, so that you usually only see about three inches of the LEFT side of the magazine. That's why most of the coverlines we do run are either on the top (the "skyline") or on the left-hand side. You might as well not put coverlines on the right, so I don't whenever I can help it.That said, Dragon has a LOT more different bits of content in it than Dungeon, so the temptation to run the table of contents on the cover is strong, because each of those coverlines could convince hundreds of extra people to look at the magazine.The coverline revolution probably happened about the time Johnny L. Wilson took over as group publisher of Dragon and Dungeon about 1998 or so, or perhaps earlier when Pierce Watters became Editor-in-Chief (and later Circulation Director). Both of these men were veterans of the magazine field (as opposed to gamers-made-good like yours truly), and they had a pretty good idea what does and doesn't work in the mass market. As a result, the circulations of both magazines climbed under their leadership (and, to be fair, with the beginning of third edition). Pierce in particular, with decades of experience selling books and magazines, has had a significant and positive effect on sales of Dragon and Dungeon magazines.Because printing on a polybag costs tens of thousands of dollars at the quantity we publish, and the magazines are expensive enough. If they never buy the magazine at all, they don't enjoy the cover or the contents.Sometimes, when space allows, we reproduce the cover without the logo or coverlines somewhere in the magazine.For our new monthly Adventure Path product, Pathfinder, we include no coverlines because it's a book and not a magazine, and doesn't need to compete with other magazines on the magazine rack.And it's been a huge relief, honestly.--Erik MonaEditor-in-ChiefDragon</blockquote>

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