Munsey's Magazine

In 1882 Frank Munsey moved from Augusta, Maine, to New York City, intending to launch a children's magazine. His main investor soon pulled out, leaving Munsey without enough capital to publish the magazine himself; instead he persuaded an existing publisher, E. G. Rideout, to take it on, with Munsey as manager and editor. The magazine was titled The Golden Argosy, and the first issue was dated December 2, 1882. Rideout went bankrupt in early 1883, and Munsey took over as publisher. The magazine was not initially profitable, and for years Munsey was under immense financial pressure. An advertising campaign in 1886 brought a surge in circulation to 115,000, but this was temporary, and though Munsey experimented with The Golden Argosy, shortening the title to just The Argosy, and changing the page size and page count, he was unable to reverse the decline. In 1889 Munsey launched ''Munsey's Weekly, hoping that it would establish itself as profitable before The Argosy'' failed completely. ''Munsey's Weekly'' The first issue of ''Munsey's Weekly was dated February 2, 1889. It was 36 pages long, in quarto format, and priced at ten cents ($ in ). at the time Bangs was working for Harper's, but only for two afternoons a week, leaving him time to take on other responsibilities. At Harper's'' he was responsible for "The Editor's Drawer", a long-established humorous column. Bangs found Munsey to be difficult to work for; Bangs was used to a relaxed relationship with his previous publisher, but Munsey was constantly asking him about his work. By this time Munsey had written several novels for The Golden Argosy, and he submitted one, titled A Tragedy of Errors, to Bangs, who rejected it. Munsey insisted on running the story, and Bangs serialized it, but offered his resignation from the editorship. His last issue was in June. Bangs and Munsey remained on good terms, and Bangs subsequently sold work to Munsey, both for ''Munsey's Magazine (as the Weekly was later retitled) and for the Daily Continent, a short-lived tabloid version of the daily paper the New York Star'', which Munsey acquired for a few months in 1891. The magazine continued without a named editor for two more years, managed by the same team that was running The Argosy. Munsey claimed that the acquisition would increase the Weeklys circulation from 26,000 to nearly 50,000. A review in ''Printers' Ink that month commented that none of the weekly papers paid well for syndicated writers, with Munsey's Weekly'' in the middle of the pack at $5 per column ($ in ); only two magazines paid more than $5, and several paid less. Circulation stayed below 40,000, which was not enough to meet its costs, and in two and a half years the magazine lost over $100,000 ($ in ). ''Munsey's Magazine'' In October 1891 Munsey changed the Weekly to a monthly, titled ''Munsey's Magazine'', and Richard Titherington, one of Munsey's earliest employees, was given the editorship. The size was reduced from quarto to standard, with 96 pages per issue, and the price increased to twenty-five cents ($ in ). The change to a monthly schedule did not help the circulation of ''Munsey's. though it was targeted at women rather than a general audience. The Epoch, which Munsey had acquired in 1892 and merged with Munsey's, had cost ten cents, The change brought Munsey into conflict with the American News Company (ANC), the distributor of almost all magazines of that time. ANC typically charged about five cents per copy for distributing a twenty-five or thirty-five cent magazine, but Munsey wanted a higher profit than this would give him. Initially ANC refused to handle the magazine at any price, but eventually they offered him four and a half cents. Munsey told them that his price was six and a half cents, and decided to bypass ANC. He notified about ten thousand dealers that ANC would not carry Munsey's Magazine'', but that it could be had directly from the publisher for seven cents in New York plus the cost of shipping. Munsey knew many of the dealers, and added personal letters to the notification, but fewer than a hundred orders came in response. At the suggestion of Charles Dana of the New York Sun, Munsey had already set up a distribution company, named Red Star News, and Dana now gave Munsey credit to run advertisements in the Sun for the magazine. Munsey wrote again to ANC and told them he was raising his price to seven cents. He did not know that ANC were now receiving thousands of orders for ''Munsey's'' from dealers: ANC sent someone to his office in response to his letter, asking for a price for 10,000 copies. They offered to pay five and three-quarter cents, but Munsey stuck to his seven-cents price. Munsey continued to advertise: the advertisements said "On all news stands", though at first this was far from the truth. The advertisements and production costs brought Munsey's debts to $150,000 ($ in ). Munsey was purchasing paper on four-month credit, and the planned increase in the print run of each issue, prompted by the success of the first ten-cent issue, meant Munsey's indebtedness to his paper supplier would increase very rapidly. The paper supplier visited Munsey to say that he had talked to others in the trade, and was convinced that it was impossible for Munsey to make a success of a ten-cent magazine. Munsey was able to persuade him to extend more credit, and was quickly proved right as circulation soared over the next couple of years. ''Munsey's remained the circulation leader among general magazines until late 1904, when Everybody's Magazine, propelled by a muckraking series about finance, reached a circulation of almost a million. Munsey's Magazine'' was not initially printed on pulp paper, and is not always regarded as a pulp magazine, but by 1900 it was using pulp paper for the signatures that did not include any illustrations, with better paper where photographs were reproduced. Later years Circulation fell slowly from 1898 until 1905, but advertising revenue stayed strong. Munsey had built a modern printing plant which reduced costs, and most of the writers used, for both fiction and editorial material, were not expensive. Art was typically printed as halftones, which were cheaper than woodcuts, and paper prices were low. The result was a very profitable magazine. A campaign to increase circulation began in 1905, but from 1906, when circulation was almost back to 700,000, it fell steadily, down to 400,000 in 1912. By this time Munsey's businesses included a grocery store chain, newspapers, and many other magazines, and he was no longer closely involved in the day-to-day management of ''Munsey's''. The price was raised from ten to fifteen cents in 1912. It was dropped again to ten cents in 1916 in an unsuccessful attempt to improve sales, and then raised to twenty cents in 1918. The page count, always higher than in the competing magazines, was increased again, sometimes to as many as 265 pages of non-advertising matter. Circulation continued to drop, to 130,000 in 1920, and advertising sales fell. The Argosy had merged with another of Munsey's magazines, All-Story, in 1920, and was retitled Argosy All-Story Weekly; the combined magazine's circulation was 500,000, far ahead of ''Munsey's. Munsey's was switched to an all-fiction policy, like Argosy All-Story Weekly, in 1921, but circulation was down to 64,000 by 1924, the last year for which Munsey reported separate figures. Munsey died in 1925, and William Dewart took over as publisher. In 1929 the two magazines were reorganized: Munsey's became All-Story, and Argosy All-Story Weekly became simply Argosy. The last issue of Munsey's Magazine'' was dated October 1929. == Contents and reception ==

19th century ''Munsey's Weekly included humorous pieces, but also a gossip column about politics and the society of Washington, D.C. Frank Luther Mott, a magazine historian, describes the magazine as "a good paper of handsome appearance". and he also began a series of cloth-bound books starting with his own The Boy Broker, which had been originally serialized in The Golden Argosy''. This was part of a run of issues in 1892 which each ran "a complete novel in each number", typically about fifty pages. Non-fiction departments included a theater column, "The Stage", written by C. Stuart Johnson; "Literary Chat"; a humor section called "Etchings", and editorial columns. In 1896 another well-known writer appeared: Hall Caine's The Christian, serialized from 1896 to 1897, was very popular. Other well-known authors followed, including F. Marion Crawford, H. Rider Haggard, Anthony Hope Hawkins, Myrtle Reed, and Grace MacGowan Cooke. Ella Wheeler Wilcox contributed poetry to the "Etchings" column. The magazine's covers were initially simply a table of contents, but in 1893 Munsey began putting a picture of a pretty girl on the cover of each magazine. He was the first publisher to do so regularly, and the policy probably gave the circulation another boost. The magazine grew to 160 pages of reading matter, with an article on "Artists and Their Work", leading each issue, a natural vehicle for numerous halftones. Johnson's "The Stage" had its share of nudes, as did a department called "Types of Fair Women". By the second half of the decade the use of nudes began to decline, but the reputation remained: in 1898 the Wilkes-Barre Public Library cancelled its subscription to ''Munsey's'' "because of the many illustrations ... which are on the nude order". Articles on famous people, both European aristocrats and American magnates and politicians, were common; these included a series on "Prominent American Families", and a series by Theodore Dreiser on American writers. New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt and U.S. House Speaker Thomas B. Reed each wrote articles for ''Munsey's'' in 1899, and a series called "My Favorite Novelist and His Best Book" brought contributions from Arthur Conan Doyle, Bret Harte, and Frank R. Stockton. Munsey's political bent was always Republican, but his admiration for Theodore Roosevelt led him to support the Progressive Party in 1912, and ''Munsey's'', along with Munsey's other publications, was strongly for Roosevelt during the Republican convention. Davis made an arrangement with O. Henry in January 1905 that for five years he would have the right of first refusal on all Henry's work. In return Davis agreed to pay ten cents a word for everything he bought from Henry. The result was that a dozen stories by Henry appeared in ''Munsey's'' over the next five years. Once they had become profitable, all of Munsey's magazines paid on acceptance or soon after, rather than on publication, unlike most of the competing magazines. This made them more attractive to writers. World War I brought more articles on military topics, often written by members of the government, including Robert Lansing, William C. Redfield, and Franklin Knight Lane. == Assessment ==

''Munsey's Magazine revolutionized the popular magazine market by proving that a general magazine could be successful at ten cents. McClure's Magazine dropped its price from fifteen cents to ten cents in July 1895, and Cosmopolitan followed suit in November; the three magazines were the leaders of the field, with Munsey's obtaining a head start in circulation because it had taken the first move to the lower price. It was not until 1912 that McClure's finally overtook it. Selling these magazine for ten cents meant that advertising support was required for the magazines to be profitable. Magazines such as Harper's and Atlantic, who were regarded as the leaders of their field, cost twenty-five to thirty-five cents, and their editors saw their market as "the best people, not the most people", in the words of one magazine historian. The revolution Munsey's'' began led to a huge expansion of the market for general magazines, and the new leaders of the field were published by men primarily interested in making money, rather than in culture. but relying on advertising rather than subscriptions for income became the dominant business model for consumer magazines in the 20th century. Munsey's biographer, George Britt, described Munsey and McClure as "great rivals of those days ... great business man matched against great editor". McClure considered Munsey "the greatest business man that ever entered the magazine field". McClure published what he liked, believing that what pleased him would please his readers, whereas Munsey published what he thought would be popular, but McClure felt that Munsey was the best editor in the business. Mott summarizes the magazine's history by saying it was "never a first-class magazine ... sometimes there was quality as well as quantity in the magazine, but there was a shocking amount of mediocrity". John Tebbel, a historian of magazines, agrees: "''Munsey's was never as good a magazine as McClure's or Cosmopolitan''; its level was nearer the mediocre." == Bibliographic details ==

John Kendrick Bangs was the editor from January to June 1889, Many issues of ''Munsey's Weekly may no longer exist; David Reed, in his history of popular magazines, reports that "it would appear that the first five volumes, that contain the weekly issues, are lost". Almost no academic institutions and libraries have any copies of the weekly issues. Surviving copyright records indicate that Munsey's Weekly'' appeared on a regular schedule until at least the January 21, 1890 issue. Other details A British edition of ''Munsey's Magazine'' was begun in 1899, printed in New York and distributed in the UK by Horace Marshall & Son. ==Notes==