• by Larry Dobrow , November 23, 2003

To hear Blue Dolphin president Don Nicholas tell it, the Internet and the magazine business were made for one another.

Nicholas, also the company's chairman, chief executive officer, and editor-and-chief, is well aware that his words fly in the face of conventional wisdom. The Internet, the argument goes, will eventually replace magazines as the premiere source of information for special-interest aficionados, simply because those aficionados will be able to locate precisely the information they want on a moment's notice. But Nicholas believes that the emergence of bluedolphin.com, the self-dubbed "America's Magazine Superstore," is yet another sign that despite the low tides of the last few years, the magazine industry remains as vital as ever.

"When I tell people that I sell magazines over the Internet, they look at me all confused and say 'you mean digital magazines'," he recalls. "Everybody's been so quick to pronounce magazines dead, and they forget about the bond they have with [readers]. They're portable packets of information that people can carry around to the beach or wherever about a subject they love." For the record, Nicholas believes that the long-awaited digital magazines will eventually emerge, but not until a better device to read them (he envisions a PDA with extended battery life, extremely high resolution, and more) is conceived.

Nicholas has been able to translate his enthusiasm for the magazine medium into a very lucrative business: his company announced Friday that it grew its magazine subscription sales by 130 percent over the past year. Bolstered by a recent site redesign, the company has been selling around 10,000 subscriptions per week; with a brisk holiday period, bluedolphin.com could drive 2003 sales past the 600,000-subscription mark.

"Internet users and magazine readers have a much closer correlation than users of other mediums," he notes. "There's a vitality and connection among the two groups."

Nicholas isn't delusional - he realizes that some of his company's growth can be attributed to consumers' increasing comfort with online shopping. At the same time, he believes that he's done something that many publishers haven't been able to accomplish on their own: make buying and managing magazine subscriptions easy. "All our research says that people hate the [magazine] billing and renewing hassles - we've brought all of that online," he explains. Nicholas has his share of insider information: he sheepishly admits to being one of the people who helped write the borderline arcane magazine renewal materials.

Another key component in the company's success has been its ability to reach women, who Nicholas says buy 80 percent of all magazines purchased in the United States. Similarly, given that Bluedolphin.com's average customer is a 40-something woman with a household income of $60,000, Nicholas has been able to make headway among a group that is not especially computer-savvy. "Our gals were some of the last ones to want to shop on the net," he explains. "That's why now that we have them on the site, it's essential to make the experience as pleasant as possible." He's obviously tapped into something: the average bluedolphin.com customer spends between $200 and $300 per year on magazines.

A publishing veteran (he was editor-in-chief of Magazine Week before it was bought by Folio and has held several newspaper posts), Nicholas has more than his share of ideas about the future of magazines. In fact, he shrugs off the chance to speak about the future of his company in favor of offering a few big-picture predictions. "I think that once the economy bounces all the way back, you're going to see lots of special-interest magazines in the 100,000 to 300,000 circulation range start up," he offers. "The creativity is still there in the publishing community, but the financing isn't right now. I think you're going to see an explosion of creativity when the economy turns around and there's money for these projects again."

As for the means of distributing all these titles, well, Nicholas has obviously placed his bets on the Internet, which he believes is the most sensible sales venue for the magazine industry. "Part of the problem with the newsstand distribution system is that it was designed in the mid-1900s to accommodate 100 magazines," he notes. "Fifty-three years later, you have 1,000 to 1,500 significant magazines. And there will be more."