Texas Monthly ran a Willie Nelson cover picture (and story) in May 2008 and followed that the next month with the 2008 Texas Bar-B-Q Review. Given a choice of Willie, baked, or some smoked and sliced brisket/ribs/sausage, which one would appeal more to a sane reader? Hell, it's not even close. Take the 'cue every time. With this farewell to the state of Texas Bar-B-Q in 2008, we learn that the Bar-B-Q cover outsold the Willie cover at the newstands, hands down. Willie may be able to make your blue eyes cry in the rain, but he can't make your mouth water. If this is (fair & balanced) magazine art design, so be it.
[x Texas Monthly]
Pit Happens
By Evan Smith
This is for those of you curious enough to wonder which of our covers sell well on the newsstands and which don’t. Yesterday I found out that our May and June issues were the major home runs we expected them to be. The Willie cover did extremely well, as all Willie covers do: a sell-through of 62 percent, well above the 50 percent or so that is our average, and more than 44,000 copies sold vs. the typical 31,000 or so. And the best barbecue joints did even better: a 67 percent sell-through and nearly 47,000 copies sold — a full 11,000 copies better an our ‘03 barbecue cover and 8,000 or so more than our ‘97 cover. We’ll close out the first six months at somewhere north of a 51 percent sell-through on average, a full 20 percentage points above the industry average.
[Evan Smith, the editor of Texas Monthly, is a graduate of Hamilton College (Clinton, New York) with a bachelor’s degree in public policy and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) with a master’s degree in journalism, Smith previously held editorial positions at a number of national magazines, including The New Republic, where he was deputy editor. Since 2003, he has hosted "Texas Monthly Talks", an interview program that airs weekly on all PBS stations in Texas.]
Copyright © 2008 Texas Monthly Inc.
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