 Munsey's Magazine, May 1911 | |
| Publisher | Frank A. Munsey Company |
|---|---|
| First issue | February 2, 1889 |
| Final issue | October 1929 |
| Country | United States |
Munsey's Magazine was an American magazine founded by Frank Munsey in 1889 as Munsey's Weekly, a humor magazine edited by John Kendrick Bangs. It was unsuccessful, and by late 1891 had lost $100,000 ($3.39 million in 2023). Munsey converted it into an illustrated general monthly in October of that year, retitled Munsey's Magazine and priced at twenty-five cents ($8.48 in 2023). Richard Titherington became the editor, and remained in that role throughout the magazine's existence. In 1893 Munsey cut the price to ten cents ($3.39 in 2023). This brought him into conflict with the American News Company, which had a near-monopoly on magazine distribution, as they were unwilling to handle the magazine at the price Munsey proposed. Munsey started his own distribution company and was quickly successful: the first ten cent issue began with a print run of 20,000 copies but eventually sold 60,000, and within a year circulation had risen to over a quarter of a million copies.
Munsey's Magazine included both fiction and non-fiction on art, music and the theatre, and celebrities. In 1893 Munsey became one of the first publishers to regularly depict a pretty young woman on the cover, and circulation was also boosted by the liberal use of illustrations. During the mid-1890s Munsey's often included images of nude and semi-nude women, though this became less common later in the decade. Circulation peaked at about 700,000 in 1897, and fluctuated thereafter until the 1910s, when it began to decline. The magazine became fiction-only in 1921. Many popular writers appeared in its pages, including O. Henry, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bret Harte, Max Brand, Edgar Rice Burroughs, P. G. Wodehouse, Joseph Conrad, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. By 1924 circulation had dwindled to 64,000 and in 1929 the magazine was merged with Argosy, another of Munsey's magazines. The price cut from twenty-five cents to ten cents is considered by historians to have been the start of a revolution in magazine publishing. Before 1893, the bulk of most magazines' income came from the sale of subscriptions, though advertising was another source. Munsey's Magazine showed that it was possible to set a low price in order to increase circulation and attract sufficient advertising revenue to make a substantial profit. Other magazines, notably McClure's and Cosmopolitan, quickly followed suit, but it was not until 1904 that Everybody's Magazine managed to outstrip Munsey's circulation, reaching a figure of almost a million.