Sara Nelson Leaves the New York Post to Helm Publishers Weekly

Posted on January 6, 2005

The New York Times reports that Sara Nelson, the former books editor at The New York Post will take over the top editorial job at Publishers Weekly on Jan. 24th. Ms. Nelson replaces longtime editor, Nora Rawlinson in a move that has surprised many in the book industry. With paid circulation down to 25,000, the magazine faces a major reorganization in order to make the content more appealing to a wider readership.

The question is: can what has traditionally been a trade magazine make the jump to being a popular consumer magazine? Recent downward trends in consumer magazine subscriptions don't appear to support the idea that book lovers want to read a weekly magazine to find out what book to buy; most of them go to the Internet. On the other hand, we think PW does a great job of covering the book biz and the decrease in subscribers can be attributed to the high subscription cost and the rise of the Internet -- not from a lack of interest from book sellers or publishers.