• Portfolio, Tuesday, November 25, 2008 9:30 AM

The E-Ink technology on Esquire's October cover was about as sexy as Angelina Jolie in the eyes of the magazine-buying public. Not bad for a flashing piece of plastic that some critics dismissed as a disappointment.

It was the first time a magazine used the digital wizardry that powers the Amazon's Kindle. The issue sold an estimated 140,000 copies on the newsstand, per ABC. That's just about equal to sales of the July 2007 issue, which featured Jolie. But the bestseller so far this year was the January cover with Johnny Depp on the cover-which sold about 160,000 issues.

Actually, not all the October magazines had the flashing cover gizmo. The publisher paid for ony 100,000 issues to feature the E-Ink; the rest had a standard paper cover.

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