On August 21, 2017, North America experienced a total solar eclipse, the first eclipse since 1979 that was visible from the contiguous United States. At SkyNews, we do our best to provide news and practical information based on sky events that coincide with our bimonthly publishing schedule.
It’s not a perfect system: Our July/Aug issue that year was a special issue about the eclipse, and as you can see here, we flagged the solar event dramatically on our July/Aug cover, employing major sell-lines and the cover image to tout the eclipse.
But given the idiosyncracies of magazine publishing, timing was our challenge. The following issue, Sept/Oct, hit the newsstands in the second week of August—after the special July/Aug issue was off the stands but before the eclipse itself. We needed to be able to take advantage of current news stories about the upcoming event to help push the Sept/Oct newsstand issue in the days and weeks before August 21st.
To sweeten the pot, our team included a special 4-page information insert that would appear in the Sept/Oct issue for newsstand only. We would also bind in specially ordered safe solar eclipse viewers for the newsstand (in the July/Aug issue, we’d bound in viewers for subscribers).
To promote these bonus items, we stickered the newsstand issues and once again ran an eclipse on the cover. This decision represented a design challenge: We didn’t want potential readers to see another eclipse cover and think they’d already bought that issue. To mitigate that risk, I made sure the two images and the cover lines were substantially distinct in each issue. While Sept/Oct is traditionally our Astrophotography issue, we were also running one story about future eclipses. That gave us the opportunity to feature an eclipse image and cover lines on the full run of the magazine.
The cover line “Amazing Astro Images” would attract eyes after the August 21st eclipse, but our hope was to have the lion’s share of sales in the first two weeks the issue was on the stand.
In a side-by-side comparison, July/Aug is arguably stronger as a piece of design. It popped off the newsstand well against other magazines; it has clear, readable cover lines and a single focal point in its imagery.
But what happened next is a testament to the power of outside forces (North American TV, radio, newspapers, social media): The Sept/Oct issue was the biggest and best-selling issue in the almost 25-year history of the magazine. We had American stores calling us up on the eve of the eclipse asking for more copies, and ultimately, we had a newsstand sell-through of 75%... this is unicorn-level sales in the world of magazines, where 35% is considered a huge success.
So, a tip to magazine publishers: Run a cover story about a rare event that’s happening on one day only, in the middle of the day, across most of North America, that millions of people can see for free, and you won’t have to do any of your own press.
