Tribal Souvenirs

Get this.

Since the introduction of Google, print-magazine readership has gone up 11%.

Up.
Not down.
11%.

Anyone following the evolution of book publishing—whose fastest expanding market-within-a-market is digital books—can’t help but reel back a little bit. How is it the magazine peeps are somehow getting MORE out of print when the market is said to value print LESS?

I think magazine sales are still on the rise because they are souvenirs from the tribes we belong to.

They are pieces of our identity that sit on coffee tables, cementing our preference in clothing, interior design, travel, technology and culture.

Most books end up being outsider-stuff; forays into someone else’s ideas. Magazines, on the other hand, tap the “us” we feel we’re a part of.

It’s the literature of belonging.