Niche Magazines

December 9, 2005 7:51 PM

Odd/Niche Magazines. Yesterday evening, I was on my way home on the train, when I noticed a man reading a glossy four-color magazine called Pizza Today. It floored me that there was actually a magazine dedicated to pizza, with a feature article on dessert pizzas on the cover! So I went looking for other odd niche magazines and found (bi)monthly printed publications for twins, LEGO fans, cowboys who are Christian, ferret lovers, collectors of clocks, goat and sheep herders, cephalopods, and beaders.
posted by lunarboy (35 comments total)

Thanks. I've always been fascinated by niche publications. One of my favorite is Convenience Store News.
posted by rachelpapers at 8:00 PM on December 9, 2005

In a rural Virginia supply store years ago I found one called Crappie which I believe was dedicated to sport fishermen who only fish for Crappie. I'm sad to this day that I didn't pick it up.
posted by jonson at 8:06 PM on December 9, 2005

The weirdest one I saw was a Quebec gay cowboy non-porn magazine (I kid ye not). It doesn't get much more niche than that.
posted by clevershark at 8:18 PM on December 9, 2005

In a rural Virginia supply store years ago I found one called Crappie which I believe was dedicated to sport fishermen who only fish for Crappie

I have issue #5 of "We Like Poo".

My girlfriend used to be the magazine manager of a large chain store. I saw all kinds of stuff in those days. There was an excellent magazine called Fishwrap... "The Magazine About Magazines".
posted by dobbs at 8:30 PM on December 9, 2005

From my collection: The Potato Grower magazine, Church Business, catering to the ever-changing roles of today’s church leaders, Garage Life (In Japanese), Undercover crossdressers, American Cemetery, the only independent trade magazine for cemetery owners and managers, “New Beauty”, a magazine about cosmetic surgery, Sunflower Magazine, Sushi & Tofu Magazine, Sheep Magazine- The Voice of the Independent Flockmaster, also, Goat Magazine (for the serious goat breeder), Tea Muse, Roll Call, The newspaper of Capitol Hill since 1955, Cell Door - Magazine about prison life, Bear Hunting Magazine
posted by growabrain at 8:32 PM on December 9, 2005

I subscribed to a lego magazine as a kid. Neat stuff. Wasn't that one, though.
posted by brundlefly at 8:36 PM on December 9, 2005

I, for one, am insulted that a blade-o-philiac has only Blade or Knives Illustrated. It's like I'm the scum of the Earth.
posted by Balisong at 8:48 PM on December 9, 2005

My uncle was the CFO of some company that produced window molding and whatnot. I stopped there once to have lunch with him and had to wait in the atrium for a bit. Across the table was strewn many copies of Fenestration Magazine.

I also have a friend who used to work at some niche magazine about machines that produce candy. I can't remember the name, but it was something very obvious, like Candy Machine Magazine.
posted by Falconetti at 8:50 PM on December 9, 2005

I worked in the Library of the U.S. Patent Office for about two years. There are literally hundreds of these publications which no one really knows about, including Chain Store Age, Signs of the Times and many others. There are thousands.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:50 PM on December 9, 2005

My favourite niche magazine is Chile Pepper, the journal of spicy food.
posted by thecjm at 9:03 PM on December 9, 2005

Ooops....
posted by growabrain at 9:33 PM on December 9, 2005

Subscriptions to Pizza Today are free! Hooray!
posted by loquax at 9:36 PM on December 9, 2005

Back in the early 70s I had a job reading/scanning magazines for client and topic mentions--among the mags I had in my regular rotation, along with the biggies like Iron Age or Metals Week, I had Flying Funeral Directors and Hog Farm Journal. There were about 40 people whose job it was to read the daily newspapers and about 15 of us to read the magazines. Magazine "editors" (yeah, they called us editors) got $2.50 an hour--newsies only got $2.05, and they didn't get to read Flying Funeral Directors either!

Sadly, both seem to have ceased publication.
posted by beelzbubba at 9:43 PM on December 9, 2005

Take a little trip to the library, and check out "Ulrich's Periodicals Dictionary." Or go here. It's a listing of all the magazines published in the US.
posted by Marky at 10:32 PM on December 9, 2005

I've always thought Beverage Digest was cool.
posted by TunnelArmr at 11:04 PM on December 9, 2005

Its good to know that Concrete Quarterly is still a going concern.
posted by lagavulin at 11:47 PM on December 9, 2005

Shame about the registration for Ulrich Marky. It's a pay only deal it seems.

Good post. Weird/niche is almost always good for a look.
posted by peacay at 12:17 AM on December 10, 2005

I love cephalopods. This page alone made me happy, thanks.
posted by hypersloth at 12:51 AM on December 10, 2005

mmm dessert pizza.
posted by johnny novak at 1:41 AM on December 10, 2005

Those are neat, but American Undercover Cephalopod Hunter Quarterly would be cooler.
posted by parallax7d at 6:58 AM on December 10, 2005

Ulrich's is heavily subscribed to by libraries. So if you have access to any academic library, or a fair-to-middling public library, you can access it through them.
posted by rachelpapers at 7:36 AM on December 10, 2005

Dear Sir or Madame,

I must take umbrage at being labeled a "niche magazine reader." It may interest you to know that currently there are 16, 732, 243 beaders in America at this moment many of whom subscribe to Beader's Quarterly. Also Beader's Digest, Beader's Journal, Beading in America, Beginning Beader, Beader Monthly, The Magazine of Beader's, American Beader, Best Beading, Beading for Profit, Bead Collecters, Beeding is Fun!, Bead-A-Lot, Bead by Bead, Washington Beader, Beading A to Z, The Home Beader, The Magazine for Beaders, The Best of Beaders, You Can Bead!, Beader's Weekly, The Traveling Beader, The Custom Beader, and Beading Power!
Sincerely,
Laura Jane
President of Beaders of America and Vice Secretary of International Home Beaders
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:06 AM on December 10, 2005

I was once a subscriber to the Brick Journal, though I think it had a different name, then. I can't remember. It was a while ago.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:06 AM on December 10, 2005

Ferret owners love to read about Ferrets as there is also Ferrets First, Modern Ferret, and there used to be a publication called Fancy Ferret.
posted by Mitheral at 9:49 AM on December 10, 2005

The Great Mulp: That made me laugh so hard. It's like the perfect description for a delightfully dull character, "I remember reading The Brick Journal years ago, but now that I think of it, I do believe it had a different name. Was it The Brick Monthly? Wait, no! It was The Brick Digest. I remember it had a lot of bricks in it."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:52 AM on December 10, 2005

When I'd wait for my ride at the pharmaceutical factory where I used to work, I'd read a magazine devoted to how to create faux effects in commercial food, such as a browned frozen chicken (never quite got the connection with my company though).
posted by artifarce at 10:27 AM on December 10, 2005

The Have I Got News For You headlines round features guest publications like this every week - Potato Storage International, Goat World, American Window Cleaner, International Car Park Design, Arthritis News. Some of the headlines beggar belief.
posted by jack_mo at 10:47 AM on December 10, 2005

Potato Storage International, Goat World, American Window Cleaner, International Car Park Design, Arthritis News

Oh my. Now you've got me thinking up the nichiest of the niche magazines possible.

Band-Aid Design
Zoo Manure Monthly
Ink Smudge Collector's Guild
Lightbulb Fancier's Digest
Styrafoam Peanut News
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:43 AM on December 10, 2005

Band-Aid Design

W00t, I'm so on that. What an untapped market!
posted by Firas at 12:31 PM on December 10, 2005

great post, lunarboy! : >

Mr. Magazine is good for launches.

and Little Known Fact: L. Frank Baum (Wizard of OZ) used to run a niche trade magazine--The Show Window
posted by amberglow at 12:32 PM on December 10, 2005

I can't remember the name of it, but I saw a glossy magazine about store fixtures - those little polished metal bolt-thingies that hold up a sheet of display case glass, or sign-glass, stuff like that.

Magazines for Lego, ferrets, clocks, beaders etc, seem pretty obvious to me, there are lots of people who would buy those. Trade magazines can get a bit weird though.
posted by -harlequin- at 3:23 PM on December 10, 2005

My favourite niche magazine is The Indexer, which describes itself as 'stimulating and sometimes provocative'. I particularly enjoy the review section, where inadequate indexes are exposed to the derision of the indexing community.
posted by verstegan at 3:58 PM on December 10, 2005

Wow, that indexing site has an awesomely elegant layout. They sure know how to put things in their places.

I suppose we can logically assume something called literary chaos magazine would have a poor webpage layout then?

YES
posted by parallax7d at 11:29 PM on December 10, 2005

This post reminds me just how much I miss Rich Hall's Onion World, on the old, pre-merger Comedy Channel.
posted by melorama at 7:37 AM on December 11, 2005

From verstegan's link:

The Cambridge history of twentieth-century English literature, ed. by Laura Marcus and Peter Nicholls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Rev. by John Sutherland, Times Literary Supplement, 4 March 2005.

The CHT-CEL has great virtues, some minor shortcomings, and, for a work of reference, one major blemish. The index is a disaster, so much so as to be horribly hilarious. Who, for example, would not want to read Morrison Blake’s And When Did You Last See Your Father?, D. H. Lawrence’s The Planned Serpent, Richard Hoggart’s The Abuses of Literacy, or Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot? Denys Thompson (Leavis’s erstwhile collaborator) is, one discovers, the author of The Making of the English Working Class. There is some impostor called ‘E. P. Thomson’ [sic] lurking a few entries down. Maxim Gorky wrote The Early Years of Thomas Hardy and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy. Oscar Lewenstein wrote The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Giles Cooper wrote The [sic] Lord of the Flies, ‘O. C. Dublin’ wrote Juno and the Paycock and ‘the Rosenbergs’ wrote Ragtime. There is much more, but not all of it funny ...
posted by Sonny Jim at 1:18 PM on December 11, 2005