@muganda - I was not casting aspersions on Jacqui Thom - just the old guard. I recall reading drum as a kid and teen (yes). Those days they would have a sexy model on the cover but the content was so riveting and the written style akin to writings by Meja Mwangi and David Mailu - sex scandals, political intrigues, murder stories. I still recall the in depth stories of Idi Amin's peculiarities and the SRB, also the murder of Jackson Angaine's daughter and all the intrigues related to it (the case involved a famous criminal lawyer of those days, Byron Georgiadis)...and at some point one of its editors I think he was called Bundeh Garth, was arrested and tortured in those dark political days. It was a poor man's "weekly Review" complete with a sexy cover girl.

Anyway, I think Jacqui Thom did a good job, through the name Drum and the connotations behind DRUM (and drumbeat) would never have worked for the up market.

While we mourn that stable of magazines, and on the issue of media self regulation (or the glaring lack of it), there is another stable of magazines that prints drivel, though its flagship publication on motoring is well supported by motor dealerships....

The assumption that a magazine must have high circulation o be profitable is not valid! Thus you do not have to sell to the $2/day income group - they don't have the money to buy newspapers, let alone magazines!

I once did consultancy work for a Kenyan magazine which targeted senior corporate managers [and their wannabes!]. Circulation averaged 1,200 copies per month - one large Kenyan corporate had a subscription of 200 copies that it used to give to its key customers!]

Street sales were less than 100 copies per month, the rest was through subscription. Cover price was sh200 and this was ten years ago - no wonder street sales were so low.

This magazine had a gross turnover of between sh800k and 1m each month - from advertising. KQ used to book the back page in blocks of six months at a cost of sh180k each. DT Dobie would block the inside front cover for several months at sh230k.

Inside pages would get 3 - 4 full-page ads per month at sh150k each.

Printing cost for the magazine averaged sh250k per month and other production costs [writers' fees and administration would take another sh150k]

That would leave about sh500k for the owner per month....

That the magazine still went bankrupt! Couldn't pay printers; couldn't pay writers etc!!

Why?

Why?

Why?

Simple:- The ME (Managing Editor, for the uninitiated) kept withdrawing too much money from the business! Eventually, it had to fold - and that was quite a shame!

I tell this story to dispel the popular belief that you have to sell to all the economic groups to survive.

In a previous thread, I related the story of how DEACONS survived by up-scaling its target market and completely ignoring the lower income groups. Same happened to BATA. And both survived... and today they are very successful.

Why did EAM Close down? Give me time, I will find out

now we have an answer...

i used this phrase elsewhere... eating profits with a big spoon...

@mukiha - while on circulation - I believe many publishers exaggerate circulation figures to lure advertisers. I also believe subscriptions/sales are a thin revenue stream - the real money is in the adverts. As with the mag I mentioned above on motoring, given the thin competition in the market for such exclusive magazines (other than it, is the AA Published Autonews), local distributors (and therefore the principals they represent who fund advertising of different cars like Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota) on have two such channels - so this magazine gets 3-4 adverts per issue and I highly doubt circulation could be more than 2000 copies in Kenya.

At least with AutoNews, the content is rich, behind it is a REAL editorial board of suitably qualified persons....

In a different post I commented about a property magazine that was plagiarising left, right and centre and accruing huge revenues from adverts from banks, property developers, interior design houses, etc etc. I once asked at an outlet that stocked that magazine about how it was performing - rather than give sales figures, the shop attendant said that at the end of each month the publisher would send someone to collect the stock and replace with the new edition....so really its window dressing meant to assure advertisers that the magazine sells when in reality it does not...well, not as much as touted.

Just read a note from Hachette Livre - online content is eating into newspapers and magazines....non-fiction is also highly pirated and soon fiction too will be. Such is the environment that established publishers have to contend with and it perhaps explains the gradual departure of these foreign magazines from Kenya (East Africa).

Very very interesting perspectives....particularly, Kusadikika is the rule of thumb and Mukiha is the exception...and to think a close pal is now on her second issue of a new sports mag for the Kenyan mkt! Phew! I In my spare time I freelance for a Europe based 15 yr old magazine and the reason it does well is because content is in response to what readers ask for and competition for the niche mkt is minimal! But still my ME has adamantly refused to adopt online publication! I wonder how long this can go on without doing kamikaze.