If you feel like you’re still on the chunky side (lol) this summer, pick up a copy of Women’s Health Philippines. I won’t guarantee that it’ll change things overnight, but I’m 100% sure Men’s Health’s sister magazine will point a lot of women in the right direction.

I’ve already gotten a chance to browse through a copy, and I’m very confident it’s going to give other women’s magazines out there a very good fight. It’s a GREAT first issue, particularly how it feels a lot more Pinoy than when Men’s Health first came out. And 16 ads in the first issue? Congratulations!

When I arrived in the US last September, one of the first things I did was look for the Esquire 75th Anniversary issue. Being a fan of magazines, and having worked for a magazine publishing company, seeing a moving cover (holograms don’t count) is a big step for the industry, both local and foreign.

With that being said, the magazines they come up with here in the US are nothing short of amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I sincerely believe that the talent we have here is at par, or even better than those in most parts of the world. It’s just that the business model is different in the US.

Roles are more properly defined, and thus, more attention is given to the smallest of details. Just compare the staff box of a Pinoy magazine with a foreign one’s, and you’ll know what I mean.  Even the culture is different (but that’s an entirely different story).

If you’re like me who’s a certified media sponge, and would like to get magazines from the US, I suggest you visit the websites of the magazines themselves. This guy was able to get a full year’s subscription of Esquire at Esquire.com for only $20 — shipping included!

The point of this post? Emerald Headway isn’t your only choice when it comes to foreign subscriptions. Their website isn’t even working.

Literally. Well, for Esquire at least.

The September* issue of will have an e-ink cover. 100,000 of the total 720,000 print run will be assembled by hand, with parts criss-crossing the globe before ending up newsstands, jumping out at your eyes with shifting images.

Link to full news item here.

While obviously another way to go when it comes to standing out on the newsstand, we just have to wonder if such a move is just a way for the print industry to desperately cope with the fast changing times. As the business model for magazines in the US is more geared towards subscription than newsstand sales, there is really no need for publishing companies to stick their necks out for the price of evolution.

Of course, locally, it’s an entirely different story.

Take the July issue of FHM Philippines, for example, which came arrived in the local industry’s first ever foil package. The thing you have to take note of is that the magazine has always been inside a foldcote cardboard enclosure for the past few years. Hence, there was a need to offer the reader something different. The move couldn’t have come at a better time as the issue also contained the annual 100 Sexiest Women in the World pullout supplement. Imagine how disappointed people would feel if it had only come with a normal issue?

In Esquire’s case, people may see this as just a gutsy move to stay afloat and top of mind among advertisers as the dollars move to online. While probably a production nightmare, you just have to understand — Esquire has been in existence for more almost 75 years now. Nothing left to prove, and everything they can do to pull in more readers.

Oh well, happy anniversary.

The August issue of Playboy Philippines greets us with Miriam Quiambao on the cover. Though I’ve always believed that there is absolutely no way for a magazine to change overnight, Playboy has finally taken the first steps towards meaningful (and necessary) change by getting rid of Beting Laygo Dolor. Good riddance.

Here are a few things about the cover.

1. White text on white background in some parts of the cover.
2. They may have overdone the accessories a bit with those gigantic earrings. They take too much attention away from Miriam’s eyes and body.
3. Miriam Quiambao falls into the “Cindy Kurleto” category. They’re both tall and sexy, but lack the top heaviness to warrant a two piece outfit. It would have made more sense for her to assume a full body stance so she could showcase those long limbs of hers.
4. Also Regarding Miriam Quiambao, her name should have been placed at the top left instead of Lance Armstrong’s, as the styling will leave her unrecognizable to some.
5. Is it just me or “Learn about Israel’s deadliest martial arts” should have been “Learn about Israel’s deadliest martial art“.
6. They may have featured too many sports guys on the cover. Barkley and Lance aren’t even in the Olympics.
7. There’s a significant improvement in printing from the first 4 issues. Not yet 100%, but is better.

I haven’t gotten the chance to look inside the issue, but from what I’ve seen so far, getting a more well known cover is one of the best decisions they’ve made since they launched (The first issue doesn’t do Priscilla Merielles any justice IMO).

With the editorial movements, I wouldn’t be surprised if the magazines takes a turn for the better in the next few months. However, the question still remains — are the changes good enough for you to spend P199 on it?

I’m keeping a close eye on this one.

I know this is 2 months overdue, but I just had to say something about this magnificent cover. It seems that Rogue caused quite an outrage when they painted the Philippine flag on Joey Mead’s body.

My take on the cover — this particular cover was done tastefully in my opinion. And no, I don’t think the people behind Rogue had intentions of desecrating our Philippine flag.

Why so? Read the cover lines people.

• THE STATE OF THE NATION: The naked truth about who we are and where we’re going.
• ROGUE’S HONOR ROLL: Nine Portraits of Philippine Pride
• WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE?

Nowadays, people tend to think that stunts like this are only pulled off to get more media attention. Maybe so, but it takes more from a person to actually look past the cover and see what’s inside the magazine (or book). More than that, the people from Rogue got millions of pesos worth of media mileage from the ruckus they caused. That in itself (even if unintentional), is enough indication that the issue fulfilled its purpose. They reeled the media in. They reeled the horny guy reader in. What more can you ask for?

Don’t get me wrong though, I still would have picked up the magazine because of the ehem, cover lines.

What you will find are a few snapshots of the local magazine industry’s first ever foil enclosed magazine.

I know, it might not mean much (at least not yet), but if you have 100+ magazines on the newsstand just battling it out for shelf space and attention, you know that anything a magazine publisher can do to stand out, just has to be done.

Front of Foil Cover

The new FHM standard for Special Issues

With all this being said, you should take the time to pick up this packed 100 Sexiest Women in the World Issue. Like the brand guy of FHM said, if you have to pick up only one copy of FHM in a year, this issue would definitely be it.

It’s about these four fellas’ below. And oh, congratulations to the Boston Celtics. They really took the heart out of my Lakers. Though he’s not a vet, I really think they couldn’t have accomplished that serious beatdown if it weren’t for Rajon. Oh well, there’s always next year.

As with everything else, sex also sells magazines. One look at the newsstands and you’ll notice that nine times out of ten, any male or female lifestyle magazine out there will have a sex related feature as one of its main cover lines. Remember the first time you laid your eyes on that partially concealed Playboy magazine in some store at the Virra Mall of old? (I once caught my cousin buying one from that store. Hah!) Sadly, Playboy Philippines is slowly destroying every bit of nostalgia that came with opening an issue of the magazine.

Macho during my high school days meant being able to bring a copy of Playboy to school without being caught. Any warm blooded Pinoy who thought Baywatch Mondays with CJ wasn’t enough just had to see her without the orange suit. While running on the beach. Okay enough now.

And then came the Internet.

Type a few names (any name), and boom. Pardon the language, but guys no longer have to part with some bucks to get racy images to whack off to. That is the absolute (and unfortunate) truth.

In recent years, a lot of print properties are starting to make their presence felt online. Aside from the absence of printing costs, a lot avenues for creativity are also explored. According to a story on the future of the publishing industry in the September 2007 issue of The Economist:

“The business model for consumer magazines is under pressure from several directions at once, both online and off. Magazines have become more expensive to launch, and the cost of attracting and keeping new subscribers has risen”

Publishing jargon aside, this only means one thing to the Pinoy consumer — why spend for printed pictures when you get it for free on the Internet? The article then goes on –

“There are good reasons why magazine owners should not feel despondent, however. For readers, many of the pleasing characteristics of magazines—their portability and glossiness, for instance—cannot be matched online. And magazines are not losing younger readers in droves in the way that newspapers are. According to a study carried out last year by the digital arm of Ogilvy Group, a communications company, appetite for magazines is largely unchanged between older “baby boomers” and young “millennials”.”

If you are someone who buys magazines for the premise of “relieving” yourself, then the reasoning above will sound like crap. But hey, it’s your money. From a business standpoint (and if I were still a publisher), as long as you buy the magazine, I wouldn’t mind your reasons for buying it at all. Just remember that you are paying upwards of P120 to ogle around 1/10 of what the magazine contains. If you are someone who buys magazines for both the eye candy and the articles, the above reasoning will make so much sense.

Make no mistake about it, if you pit two magazines with comparable (not identical, as this is impossible) content against each other, with the first one having a male personality on the cover, and the other with the hottest chick of the moment, the latter will outsell the former, hands down. Straight men may always choose to buy the magazine with the hot female cover, but it doesn’t mean that it’s the only reason they bought it.

I myself spend a third of my day on the Internet. Yet, I still buy magazines. I just appreciate the effort that goes into every single page. Reading a magazine just beats scrolling through a pdf file any day. Also, can you imagine yourself bringing your laptop with you to the crapper? I didn’t think so.

• Lisa Gokongwei and Aurora Mangubat, for deciding to bring in a videogame magazine
• Denis del Callar and Neil Palabrica, for giving me the chance to make my own decisions.
• Ed Geronia, Jaykee Evangelista, and the rest of the GM staff. Next to the FHM people, I think we had the most fun at the office
• The Summit Advertising Team. Special mention to Cha Clarino and Ginger Taduran (O wag na masama loob) for literally hitting our monthly quotas by themselves.
• The Production, Circulation, Trade, Web, and Events teams, for making GamesMaster’s presence felt in the three years that it was on the newsstands.
• Of course, my fellow Associate Publishers, for sitting through the long video presentations

If I forgot anyone, again, I’d like to thank you. So this doesn’t end like a goodbye blog post, time to move on….

To everyone who bought an issue, two issues, all issues — my sincerest thanks.

*For our June 2005 issue, we decided to give away a PSP to anyone who can give us the best picture showing how much he loves GamesMaster. Apparently, the winner was a she

*The GamesMaster forums are still active! Just visit Gamebayan.com.ph

If you haven’t read my blog posts about GamesMaster, just click on the following links:

• The Launch
• Trade
• Editorial Setbacks
• The Advertising Uphill Climb
• The Pinoy Gamer

“It’s very gratifying to see gamers around the world continuing to show such enthusiasm and support for World of Warcraft,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re always pleased to welcome new players to the game, and we’re looking forward to sharing the next major content update with the entire community in the months ahead.”

There have also been numerous claims about bringing over the game to the country. From LUG and Egames, to AMDG, the none of those rumors ever came into fruition. The license may have just proven to be too expensive not just for the aforementioned companies, but for gamers as well.

It put things into even clearer perspective for me, as to why GamesMaster Magazine had to be let go of, even if I felt that it was the right time to have a local videogame mag.

• Male
• 13-21 years old
• Image conscious and puts an emphasis on “coolness”
• Leads an active lifestyle, is outgoing and sociable.

Based on survey information, GamesMaster somehow overlapped with FHM’s market. You can even say that GM could have been the next title of choice if our male magazine buyers could afford to pick up another title. We were after all, second fiddle to a thriving male lifestyle magazine market that was dominated by a sister magazine. We were hitting our gamers with quality content (with free posters to boot!), but just couldn’t get over the 20,000 circulation hump.

We were right there man.

When we shut down GamesMaster, we were just getting ready to purchase an Xbox360. The Playstation 3 and Wii weren’t available yet, but excitement for the new consoles were never higher. Nowadays, those same consoles cost less than half of how much they used to cost.

Nintendo DS sales were trumping the Sony Playstation Portable’s on every front back then because of the innovative gameplay. Fast foward to 2008, and there are just as many PSP vendors as cellphone stalls.

I just can’t help but think about what could have happened had we decided to hang on for another year. I had just finished preparing for an event for another magazine I was handling, and was almost done preparing the packages for a more press friendly Gamer’s Pulse Awards. We had prepared some offline and online voting, and mobile texting initiatives as well.

Me and my immediate boss were given a few hours to decide on the matter, as we were shown some numbers that had to reached in the next few months to continue to stay out of the red. Some things I considered before I came to my decision:

• Level-up-Games had just merged with Netgames (gaming advertising was sure to dip)
• Some of the lifestyle advertisers we had been targeting had cut down on their advertising budget, and saw none of it going to GamesMaster.
• Somehow related to the reason above, GamesMaster reached all its targets because of special executions. It would be impractical to rely on purely these to reach our targets.

And so, sometime in July of 2006, we made the painful decision of not renewing the license for GamesMaster. It was a business decision that had to be made, and it was a choice that made the most sense. Given the chance to do things differently, I probably wouldn’t change anything about how we handled GamesMaster. We didn’t just do a good job, we did a GREAT job.

The one thing I do feel bad about is how we kept silent during those trying times when rumors about the magazine’s closing started circulating. I just could not visit our forums and post that in a few months, the magazine would be gone. Just imagine how difficult that was. If any former buyer of GamesMaster gets to read this, I give you my sincerest apologies.

Can a videogame magazine still exist in the Philippines?

What if we bring GamesMaster back? I don’t know – I think it would take a lot of time to build up the brand from where it left off (advertising wise, it will take longer!). To use the WoW analogy, if the game were to go offline for a year or two, they’ll lose so many subscribers to other existing MMO’s (no matter how good the game is).

Nevertheless, I still believe that a videogame magazine can exist in the country. Go to any Internet cafe and look any gamer in the eye – you know they want more. I don’t have any statistics, but I would think that any broadband Internet subscriber is also a potential reader. The Internet age just has a way of bringing all our controllers and keyboards together.

Just think, if an online fantasy game about orcs and humans is able to bring together 10 million people of different countries, race, and social status, wouldn’t you want to read about that too?

P.S. The old GamesMaster forums still exist — please visit gamebayan.com.ph