Valley Publishers Find an Interest--and Fill It With Magazines : Culture: There are publications about opera, nutrition, muscles, music, motorcycles, radio electronics, hair, construction, food and wines, hockey and underground cables.

The San Fernando Valley is not widely thought of as a citadel of culture.

But hold on a second.

If one equates literary output with intellectual and artistic endeavor, the Valley would seem to qualify.

There may be more magazines published per square inch in these parts than anywhere outside of New York City.

It’s hard to get a fix on exactly how much is being published in the county, according to Fred Braden, general manager of Valley magazine, because there is a great fluctuation due to start-ups and shutdowns, and because many magazines are given away or do not request validation from the national Audit Bureau of Circulation for their subscription and newsstand numbers.

Nevertheless, almost 120 publications emanate from the corridor that runs from Agoura to Glendale and north.

Granted, the term literary is open to interpretation when applied to some of the more esoteric publications.

Easyriders, for example, is a less than cultured look at bikes, bikers and other macho stuff. The magazine, most likely, will not be the publishing vehicle of discovery for the second coming of Proust.

Neither, for that matter, will the glossy Nailpro, which addresses itself to those who service people who are very concerned with the condition of their fingernails.

The magazines published in this area cover subjects that range from foreign cars to managing gift shops. If you want to be a land baron or make more money or develop your muscles or learn about walls and ceilings, there’s a magazine published in the Valley for you.

There are others that tell you about the insider’s Hollywood, how to sell a song, how to do special effects, how to meditate and how to get a job.

Some of the publications are simply glorified newsletters and special interest publications that appeal to a narrow segment of society, but they sometimes have an international reputation.

Opera Quarterly is a robust, slick 200-page international publication for aria addicts that has a small but devoted 5,000-subscription base and sells another 3,000 copies on newsstands in North and South America, South Korea, France, England, Argentina, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Peru, according to its editor, Bruce Burroughs, who works out of his Van Nuys apartment.

If exotic wheels rev your engine, there is British Car, another slick little mover that has 65,000 subscribers in the United States and other outposts of what was once the British Empire, people wishing to keep up on Rolls-Royce classics and those zippy little Mini Coopers.

The Valley has a nationally recognized publication for those with a need to stay au courant on nutrition, radio electronics, communications, hair styling, construction, food and wines, kidney dialysis and transplantations, the gas industry, hockey, Iran, Israel, marketing, or tile and decorative surfaces.

But like other segments of the business community, publishing is adopting a bunker mentality for what looks like hard times. And some publications have already had them. More than a few periodicals publish, briefly, and then perish.

Braden, whose Valley magazine has an audited circulation of 32,000, said there is a 90% mortality rate for any new magazine because of undercapitalization. Even Valley--which has been published for 13 years and has the fallback financial resources of owner Jane Boeckman’s family money--is gearing up to broaden its circulation base in the face of current economic realities.

Muscle and magazine magnate Joe Weider is a good example. The best buddy of bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno had a recent failure with his Moxie magazine, which was meant to appeal to the blue-collar woman interested in fashion as well as fitness. Weider’s Woodland Hills-based empire is estimated to produce in excess of $350 million annually, according to report in the New York Times.

Moxie, after less than a year’s run, apparently did not draw either enough readership or advertising to warrant the continuing publication expense. According to a Weider spokesman, the magazine is being retooled.

But one disappointment does not an empire topple, and Weider--a gruff, self-made man--is rightfully an example to other would-be publishers who have a lot to say but little money for saying it.

Weider, born in Canada 67 years ago, started in the publishing business by putting together a newsletter for bodybuilders when he was a 17-year-old high school dropout. The newsletter, after several evolutions, became Muscle & Fitness and, along with Weider’s other bodybuilder publication, Flex, has a hammerlock on the less well-developed competition.

One food supplement company that was not allowed to advertise in Weider’s bodybuilding publications--which look like a catalogue for Weider’s own line of body enhancing products--took the master blaster to court, charging that his publications are so important in the industry that they have created a monopolistic environment. Although the case was dismissed, it did point out the importance of Weider in the fitness marketplace.

Another Valley publishing success story is in Agoura where the Rouse family is gearing up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Trailer Life magazine, a motor home publication that has a 350,000 subscriber base. It is the slick flagship of the company, which puts out eight other publications related to mobile homes.

Art Rouse, a former advertising executive, bought Trailer Life in 1958. In 1969, he began acquiring other publications, including MotorHome, RV Business and, in a stroke of genius, the Good Sam Club, which now has about 800,000 RV-owning members that receive a Rouse publication called Highways.

Art Rouse was bought out of the business five years ago by his sons, Richard and Denis, who subsequently sold the company to a New York investment firm that in turn sold it to Adams Communications. The Rouse sons, however, still manage the publications, which now gross about $60 million annually, according to Trailer Life’s editor, Bill Estes.

Although Weider and Rouse were businessmen who basically cornered the market on what was an untapped demographic resource, a lot of Valley publishers got into the business as reluctant entrepreneurs.

Madeline Williamson said she started Lifestyle, an ad-driven (as opposed to paid circulation) general interest magazine serving Agoura, Hidden Hills and Calabasas, because she couldn’t get a job.

“I graduated from CSUN in 1985 with a new degree in journalism and found that no one wanted to hire a 40-year-old, first-time editor,” she said.

Williamson decided to give herself a job and turned her garage into an office to produce and distribute a Calabasas neighborhood newsletter. That was the height of her publishing ambitions until a local builder offered to help finance a more upscale magazine.

“The contractor said he was putting up a major development in the area and would more or less subsidize a four-color publication with his advertising,” Williamson said.

All went well until the contractor’s homes were sold and the ads disappeared. Williamson said she really had to scramble.

“Luckily the communities we serve are affluent and advertisers like the demographics. Still we have had to work hard to keep the cash flowing,” she said.

Williamson said she is considering a number of offers to infuse capital into the operation so that she will have a financial cushion and be able to expand.

Deborah Carver and Carol Summer, two other accidental publishers, started their Creative Age publishing house, now in Van Nuys, because they were both fired from their jobs with a Brentwood trade publishing company in 1972. Instead of getting paranoid, they got busy.

They identified a couple of professions they thought could use a trade publication, went to work doing a mock-up and arm-twisted a bank into loaning them start-up costs.

“Instead of doing just one magazine we did three,” Carver said, remembering the craziness of the first year. The magazines were Dialysis and Transplantation, Emergency Medical Service and Undergrounding, which tells people how to lay cables underground.

“We had $20,000 and a lot of nerve,” Carver said, “but we really didn’t have a lot of choice. We were two single mothers with kids to care for and bills to pay.”

In 18 years, they have started eight magazines and business is good enough that they own their own office building and admit to a comfortable living.

“What makes the success so incredible,” Carver said, “is that we had never heard the term cash flow when we started out. Our accountant was in shock.”

He’s a lot happier now.

Most of the Valley’s publications are not going to send the aesthetically starved into ecstasy, nor are there any general circulation heavyweights like Vanity Fair or People or Esquire emanating from these parts.

But if you want to know “how to” or “what’s new” in a particular field, the Valley probably prints it.

Or will soon.