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To survive in an increasingly competitive marketplace, many magazines have merged into large, powerful chains often backed by deep-pocketed media conglomerates. This strategy provides more funding for magazines and enables them to lower their costs; for example, by centralizing basic functions such as content development or production.

In the commercial magazine industry, large companies or chains have come to dominate the business. Condé Nast is one example. A division of Advance Publications, which operates the Newhouse newspaper chain, the Condé Nast group controls several upscale consumer magazines, including Vanity Fair, GQ, and Vogue. Time Warner, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, also runs a magazine subsidiary, Time Inc. This top player among magazine-chain operators boasts about thirty major titles, including People and Sports Illustrated (see Table 4.2).

Many large publishers, including the Hearst Corporation, the Meredith Corporation, Time Inc., and Rodale Press, have also generated additional revenue by creating custom-publishing divisions. These divisions produce limited-distribution publications sometimes called magalogs for client companies that combine the style of glossy magazines with the sales pitch of retail catalogs. For example, a large, international corporation might pay a publisher to produce a magalog on “how to manage your 401(k)” for its employees.

A number of major magazines (Reader’s Digest, Cosmopolitan, Newsweek, and Time are good examples) have further boosted revenues by launching international editions in several languages. However, most U.S. magazines are local, regional, or specialized and therefore aren’t readily exportable to other countries. Of the approximately twenty thousand magazines now published in the United States, only about two hundred circulate routinely in the world market. Moreover, even the best-known and most-circulated magazines, backed by the largest companies, may not survive in the marketplace. For example, Condé Nast shut down the popular Gourmet and Modern Bride magazines at the end of 2009, though the Gourmet brand name continues to be used for occasional online and print publications.