Suffering an Advertising Drop, Esquire Hires a New Publisher

The appointment earlier this week of a new publisher at Esquire comes amid a glaring shrinkage of the men’s magazine. The total number of ad pages for the year through July is down nearly 24% compared with the same period last year.

The falloff is especially striking when the magazine lies alongside the fatter GQ. The rival monthly will have carried 736 pages of advertising through July, more than twice as many as Esquire, and is up in its ad count by 3.6% over the first seven months of 1995.

Valerie Salembier, Esquire’s new publisher, was president of the New York Post and publisher of TV Guide, and most recently has been president of Quest magazine in New York. She succeeds Lawrence Burstein, who resigned.

Salembier’s arrival in mid-July will not necessarily quell speculation in the industry that a change or two also may be looming on the editorial side, perhaps to enliven the product and help improve the ad picture.

The name of Peter Kaplan, editor of the New York Observer, the media-chronicling weekly that is beloved by many of the city’s publishing players, is whispered often as a possible successor to Esquire Editor in Chief Edward Kosner. Privately, Kaplan has dismissed the idea of following Kosner, who was named to the job at the end of 1993.

Kosner brushes off the talk, too. Sure he’s heard it, he said this week. But does the hiring of Salembier, whom he praises, signal moves in editorial, maybe involving his own job?

“Not that I’m aware of,” Kosner said.

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Expensive Business: Newsweek’s financial sleuth, Allan Sloan, uncovered the dollars and cents behind Wired’s operation in “Selling Attitude,” his report last week on the magazine’s about-to-go-public parent company, Wired Ventures. Hot and trendy though Wired is, the monthly cybermag spent a whopping $6.8 million during the 12 months ending March 31 on direct marketing--”a polite term for junk mail,” Sloan reported.

Launched in San Francisco three years ago, Wired has 300,000 subscribers. To spend $6.8 million in one year to identify and hook more readers is a Technicolor illustration of a publishing truth--that it costs a mint to build circulation and hold onto it. “Charge it [Wired] with some of these corporate costs, and it’s probably about breaking even,” Sloan wrote.

Meanwhile, HardWired, the magazine’s new book-publishing imprint, had its coming-out last weekend, displaying samplers of its first offerings at the Chicago convention of the American Booksellers Assn.

Among the six titles on the fall list will be what HardWired is calling a “digitally remastered” edition of Marshall McLuhan’s seminal work, “The Medium Is the Message”--that is, a reproduction of the original Bantam paperback that was put together by Jerome Agel and published in 1967. Wired lists the late McLuhan as its “patron saint.”

Other fall releases include a literary style guide from the editors of the magazine, “Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age,” and “Mind Grenades: Manifestos From the Future,” a dazzling, eight-color collection of the graphics and text that open each issue of the publication.

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Audie Awards: The Audio Publishers Assn., based in Hermosa Beach, tells us that there are more than 54,000 spoken-word titles in circulation. Most of them were released in the 10 years since the group of publishers, retailers and suppliers was formed.

To honor excellence in the books-on-tape format, the association handed out its first Audie Awards at the booksellers’ convention.

The best abridged fiction was Sandra Dallas’ “The Persian Pickle Club,” as read by Moira Kelly for Soundlines Entertainment. The best unabridged fiction was Richard Thomas’ reading of Earl Hamner Jr.’s “The Homecoming,” for Audio Renaissance.

“Charles Kuralt’s America,” read by the retired CBS newsman for Simon & Schuster Audio, was judged best abridged nonfiction. Brilliance Corp.’s production of Jonathan Kozol’s “Amazing Grace,” read by Dick Hill, was best unabridged nonfiction.

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Hispanic Media Directory: “The 1996 Complete Hispanic Media Directory” offers an indispensable rundown of the more than 1,500 newspapers, periodicals and broadcasters serving Hispanic communities around the country. The guide puts total Hispanic newspaper circulation at 8 million and magazines at 12 million.

The 224-page guide, which sells for $108.50, may be ordered from the publisher, ADR Publishing, 1401 Dove St., No. 310, Newport Beach, CA 92660.

* Ink will return in two weeks.