Mag publishers ride a burnt-orange tide

Standing behind an end zone during the Rose Bowl, Adam Hochfelder anxiously awaited the crucial fourth-down play in the final minute of the 2006 game.

Like thousands of Longhorn fans, Hochfelder, a Texas alumnus, was emotionally caught up in the game. Unlike those other fans, though, he had a lot at stake professionally. Hochfelder is executive editor of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football: National Championship Edition, a publication of Host Communications.

Hochfelder likened his situation to a card player throwing all of his chips on the table. Had Texas lost, about two months of work would have been wasted. “It was all contingent on Texas winning,” he said.

It was the same with other specialty publications commemorating the Rose Bowl champs.

USC, going for at least a share of a third straight national title but with an average-sized fan base, did not present an attractive market. None of the specialty magazine editors and publishers interviewed for this story planned to do a Trojans edition if USC had won.

But Texas, which was trying to provide its large and rowdy fan base with the school’s first Division I-A national football title since 1970, had publishers salivating.

“It’s a huge market down there and a passionate audience,” said Allison Keane, a spokeswoman for Sports Illustrated Presents.

SI Presents is a regular to the specialty publication market. Many of the other companies who published Texas magazines are not. Four of them produced a commemorative edition to honor a college football national champion for the first time, a sign of Texas’ marketability.

“We like to do books in places where people have a lot invested in the team,” said Michael Fresina, publisher of Street & Smith’s Champions: 2005 Texas Longhorns. “In the past few years, [the BCS championship has] been such a hornet’s nest. You really have to pick your market carefully.” (Street & Smith’s is a part of the company that publishes SportsBusiness Journal.)

The Texas magazines range in size from 64 to 144 pages and cost from $6.99 to $14.95 on newsstands. Most were circulated only in Texas but are also available for sale online. Host prepared just 45,000 copies; SI Presents printed 430,000.

Most publishers and editors said they hope to sell about half of their circulated copies, although Hochfelder thinks Host will sell at least 75 percent. Specialty magazines typically need to sell 20 to 25 percent to make a profit, Fresina said.

The key to maximizing sales, Fresina said, is getting the publication in stores quickly. Early sales figures were not available for the publications.

Huge sales numbers would be gravy to editors such as Hochfelder, who watched the Rose Bowl from the USC student section.

“This was a high-risk, high-reward project,” Hochfelder said. “It worked really well for us.”