These things are really magazines that run once a year. The notion of a magazine is a weird concept that doesn’t compute for anyone younger than 35.
Ageism aside, your stereotype of young people today is about a decade out of date. It doesn't sound like you've been to a book store in America since 2015.
I see high schoolers gathered around the magazine racks at the book store every time I visit, which is at least weekly.
In a lot of ways, nothing has changed. Blue jeans, concert shirts, and someone always walks away with a Rolling Stone.
> Their audience is old people who buy the book at the cashier line at Walmart.
That's the Old Farmer's Almanac. I don't know where this Farmer's Almanac is on the shelves, but it's certainly not at Walmart, which carries a different publication that's even older.
Confusing names, yes, because one is TFA and the other is TOFA.
The retail experience is. Farmer's Almanac sat above the candy in the checkout aisle.
That's all transitioning to delivery and self-checkout. 20 years ago, you'd like 30 lanes open with eyeballs on the book. Now, in my area there's like 3-5 lanes most times.
With all the digital AI slop these days I'm starting to look for magazines again. Ones that put some effort into verification that the stories really are true.
The last couple times I cracked open a magazine it was 50% ads and I'm not sure how many articles were PR releases. Thinking of Pop Sci, Psychology Today, etc
I think there's been a micro-boom in prestige periodicals. Until I kind of fell back out of love with tennis, I was a subscriber of Racquet, which is a really high quality print publication about tennis (and occasionally other racquet sports).
Both their customer base and sales outlet is dying off.
These things are really magazines that run once a year. The notion of a magazine is a weird concept that doesn’t compute for anyone younger than 35.