A fan magazine is a commercially written and published magazine intended for the amusement of fans of the popular culture subject matter that it covers. It is distinguished from a scholarly, literary or trade magazine on the one hand, by the target audience of its contents, and from a fanzine on the other, by the commercial and for-profit nature of its production and distribution.[1][2] Scholarly works on popular culture and fandoms do not always make this terminological distinction clear. In some relevant works, fanzines are called "fan magazines", possibly because the term "fanzine" is seen as slang.
American examples include Photoplay, Motion Picture Magazine, Modern Screen, Sports Illustrated and Cinefantastique.[citation needed]