Byline: SARAH GONSER

KATE WHITE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF COSMOPOLITAN , SOUNDS VAGUELY - MAYBE NOT even sincerely - apologetic. It is another frigid Manhattan morning in late January as she stands before a packed conference-room crowd of ASME editors, many of whom grin as she explains that she may have distorted the truth, if just a little. "On the brochure that went out, we said we were going to reveal the three questions to ask before picking a cover subject, and the two colors that always drive up newsstand sales. That was a bit of a tease," White acknowledges, "sort of like those coverlines we all use."

And so, with the confession of an itty-bitty fib, begins the oversubscribed ASME program. White has seemingly set exactly the right tone. Covers serve many functions, but chief among them is the come-on - or, more accurately, the come-on-in, the content's fine. If this sometimes requires the creation of a cover that distorts the truth, well, what magazine hasn't gone there? It's brutal out on the newsstand. Do you know a magazine editor who hasn't twisted himself (or herself) into knots trying to concoct a cover that is all at once powerful, enticing, gorgeous, and honest?

As it turns out, the first directive White imparts is immeasurably more cryptic than anything the ASME literature has promised. "I once had an assistant who gave me this little pearl of wisdom about creating covers that I've never forgotten," she tells her audience. "She said, 'I know that a magazine cover works when I look at it and I feel the urge to lick it.' "

Okay, well, we all have our personal demons to deal with.

When it comes to creating covers, some editors rely on that kind of strong visceral reaction, while others swear by ritualistic checklists. Some tweak their way through 30 iterations; others scrape it together seconds before the close. Whatever the process, the objective is the same. "Everyone is looking for anything that will help them stand out in a sea of magazines," says Marlene Kahan, ASME's executive director. "Everyone is looking to improve newsstand sales." Fall out of favor on the newsstand, and your magazine is doomed.

As a measure of a magazine's vitality, newsstand sales now trump all else. Editors' contracts are renewed or allowed to lapse based on newsstand numbers. And so in war rooms across the industry, editors and their art directors obsess over cover treatments. "You always have to be looking at where you're going," says White. "After you've had that huge seller, that's when you have to start the refreshing process. When you're at the top of your game, you have to start to think about what you'll do next."

Though cover trends may be fascinating to observe, one has to bear in mind that there are no hard rules by which to live. Weeklies can't really adhere to the same guidelines as monthlies, and what sells amid the fashion set would sink a business book. But editors at the top newsstand magazines say there are some shared characteristics among their recent best-sellers. Here's the latest intelligence on what it takes to create a blockbuster.

COVERLINES

Coverlines are the deciding "buy factor," say editors, and they can account for as much as 90 percent of a cover's impact. "Even with the wrong model and colors, it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference if the coverlines are great," says Catherine Cassidy, editor-in-chief of Prevention. "It's when we're firing on all cylinders on the coverlines that we have the big newsstand successes."

While no one really agrees on a magical number of words - Forbes editor William Baldwin averages 10 for a cover story, Woman's Day editor-in-chief Jane Chesnutt uses about four - the consensus on the preferred mix is: short and punchy.

"Now I go with the three-second sell because that's what I've got - three seconds to catch you," Bonnie Fuller, editor-in-chief of US Weekly, told the ASME attendees in January. "There's so much competition on the newsstand, so I go for coverlines with two, three, or four words - short and concise. There's no time to be clever." You have to fight the urge to write coy coverlines, she says. "We get bored, so we get playful, but clarity is so important."

"Coverlines need to be transparent. You need to understand them instantly," says Ellen Levine, editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping. "Too cute, too esoteric, is a big mistake."

Today's two-word coverlines are a "sign of a confident publication," says The Atlantic Monthly art director Mary Parsons. "Plus, the more type you have, the less impact you're able to convey with your image."

The effort to de-clutter is notable among the recently redesigned women's service books Family Circle, Ladies' Home Journal, and Woman's Day. All three are creating cleaner, airy looks for themselves. "Everybody was packing bells and whistles, starbursts, and wows. We thought, if you can pack in 12 messages, you can sell more copies," says Family Circle editor-in-chief Susan Ungaro. "But over time, that lost its uniqueness and actually made coverlines harder to read. Now we've determined that clean definitely works better than clutter."

Avoid questions in coverlines, adds Fuller. "They tend to be too long. Declaratives are short and authoritative. They show that you are an expert, and the reader expects you to be an expert."

If you are going to use a question as a coverline, be sure the answer isn't obvious, says Sally Lee, editorial director of Parents. "Someone recently suggested this coverline: 'It's 2 a.m. and the Baby's Sick. Should You Call the Doctor?' No one is going to buy the magazine to figure that one out," she says. "A better line would have been: '8 Scary Symptoms That Should Send You Running to the Doctor.'" And be sure the language is straightforward and conversational - not formal. "You have to strip away the artifice and get back to how we really talk to each other. Go for emotional appeal, and tell it like it is," she advises.

Immediacy is critically important in coverlines, adds David Zinczenko, editor-in-chief of Men's Health, also a panelist at the ASME forum. "'Have Better Sex' is a good coverline. 'Have Better Sex - Tonight' is better. And be sure the reader can visualize a coverline promise," he says. "If you say, 'Get Fit,' the reader can't relate. But if you say, 'Lose Your Gut,' he can see that."

Most editors say they stick to the 80 percent rule - 80 percent of your coverlines should appeal to 80 percent of your readers - but they also recommend gambling with the remaining 20 percent. "You have to deviate sometimes," says White. "One of my favorite lines came from Redbook. It was: 'Irregular Periods: When to Worry.' There's something about that line that signals this is not the same old mix of things."

"The 80/80 rule is important, but you should take one line and have fun," says Zinczenko. "We'll run lines like: 'The Safest Stall in the Men's Room' or 'How to Tell If She's on the Pill.' Cheeky coverlines like that run as the very last line to show the tone and attitude of the magazine."

Lee says she's also learned a lot from the tabloids. "Stories like 'I Said I'd Give Birth to My Best Friend's Baby - and Then I Had Quads' are intriguing enough to draw in new readers," she says. "And I try to invite younger staffers to coverline meetings. Younger staffers' references are much more contemporary. An older editor might suggest a coverline like 'The Crying Game' for a story on deciphering your baby's cries. But let's face it: The newsstand buyer is generally younger, and you have to be 40 years old to remember that movie."

IMAGES

When choosing an image, forget about who's hot and who's not, suggests Martha Nelson, managing editor of People. The secret is newsworthiness. "When you have the big news, you have the big sale," Nelson says. "Look closely at the subject. Are people talking about it? Will it surprise them? Is it poignant, engaging, fun?" She recommends avoiding anything that appears dutiful.

It all comes down to timing, says Fuller. "I have to click into what [readers] are wondering about. If we do something too late, like hold a wedding for a week, it doesn't sell. That's why Julia Roberts ruined our Fourth of July weekend. We had to get that story immediately, in as much detail as possible, by that Monday at 6 p.m."

How many faces to feature? The cliche "three's a crowd" holds true on covers, say many editors. One face is best, two is okay, but group shots have a tendency to "look like a group of kindergarten kids," says Forbes's Baldwin.

Using more than two people just doesn't work, agrees Barbara O'Dair, the managing editor of Teen People. "Unless it's a rock band and you can get them to fall all over each other, it can just sort of implode," she says.

Above all else, the image has to be instantly recognizable, says Fuller. "One month we were putting Christina Aguilera on the cover. We shot her, but we were also playing with paparazzi shots of her at the American Music Awards. We put them up around the office and people thought Dolly Parton was on the cover, so there went that one."

"I don't so much nix subjects as I do treatments," says Woman's Day's Chesnutt. "I want clear images, pretty images, where we won't have to cover them too much with coverlines."

The image has to match and reinforce the magazine brand, says Real Simple managing editor Carrie Tuhy. "I'm aware that our cover needs to be commercial and that it's a page to sell the magazine. But because our mission is about serenity, our covers are intentionally quieter. In fact, when we're shooting a cover, we continually take things away just to reinforce that concept."

Says Zinczenko of Men's Health, "Our cover image has to have three elements: He has to have a great body, a great face, and a great attitude. Our audience comes to the magazine for control, and if the guy doesn't look like he's in control, it doesn't work." But you also have to be sure the image changes enough from issue to issue so that it screams "this is new," he says. "We'll do a head shot one month with a big smile, and the next we'll pull back with a body shot."

Finally, whether the cover image is animate or inanimate, honesty is an important consideration. "The reader is smart," says Family Circle's Ungaro. "If you exaggerate because you're trying to impress, readers will know. If you want them to keep coming back, be honest." If your coverline promises a super-easy, super-light cake but features a shot of an intensely detailed, chocolate-fudge masterpiece, readers just won't buy into it.

COLORS

When it comes to cover colors, there's only one certainty: Nothing is certain. "There's no one color that always works," says Us Weekly's Fuller. "I find that when I start to follow what I believe to be a rule, it stops working."

Therefore, brand, reader demos, and personal taste often determine a cover palette. In the case of Teen People, neutral hues set the wrong tone. "Any type of puce, ocher, eggplant, or mauve just doesn't sell well to teens. They think it's ugly," says O'Dair. So she keeps her covers bright, with vibrant logos, lots of hot pinks, and bright blues.

For highly visual magazines, such as homemaker bible Martha Stewart Living, the team follows a very specific, customized seasonal selection of colors. A cover color is often repeated - quite inconspicuously - throughout the magazine on napkins, kitchen towels, items on a mantle. From frequent reader polls, Living knows that its readers connect the magazine with the very creative use of color. So it plays that up.

At BusinessWeek, reds, yellows, blacks, and whites are the favored colors. Brown is avoided, and, when possible, bright covers take precedence over dark ones, according to editor Stephen B. Shepard. At The Atlantic Monthly, the logo is limited to white, off-white, red, or black. "It's a narrow color family," says art director Parsons. "But it's part of our branding, a reliable look." Some books, such as Outside, never vary logo color, believing that constancy can be a virtue on crowded newsstands.

Ultimately, it comes down to one critical question: How will the book look against its competitors in the wire racks? "We design the cover in our offices, in total isolation," says Woman's Day's Chesnutt. "But that's just not how it's sold. It's sold with all kinds of things going on around it." Which means, of course, that one can never be sure if a cover will trigger whatever neural connections must take place before a shopper will reach for your mag - and then his wallet.

TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST

There are two types of editors, those who can't get enough research, testing, and collaboration and those who believe in isolationism. Each side can speak convincingly about the pros and cons of going with your gut versus going by the numbers, but, ultimately, you have to choose the path that best allows you to sleep at night. Comforting, right?

For Jacqueline Leo, editor of Reader's Digest, this means enlisting the services of a longtime colleague in direct marketing for an outsider's take on her covers. "I send him the blank coverlines - no copy, no images - just the coverlines on a sheet, by fax," Leo says. "He responds to these cold. It keeps our lines as sharp as they can be."

Teen People's O'Dair says she uses both testing and good old-fashioned reporting to feel her way around the "so-five-minutes-ago" world of teenagers. "If I just took testing at its word, I'd be steered wrong because it's just one slice of reality," she says. "Our readers change their interests monthly, weekly. There's a lag time with research, so we need to rely on our own community - which includes a large number of teens - to keep our finger on the pulse."

"I make use of the fact that my staff shares the same demos as our readers," says Us Weekly's Fuller. "It's always good to take their temperature. And, they'll call their cousins and friends to ask, 'Are you interested in this person?'"

At BusinessWeek, Shepard says he goes purely by instinct. "We think our job is to lead the readers and give them things they don't necessarily know they want," he says. "If you test, you're really creating a magazine that's a lagging indicator. People are buying our judgment about what's important."

No magazine is more cover-driven than People, and its top editors, led by Martha Nelson, capture the thrilling uncertainties of the cover game perfectly. "When we're finishing a cover, we run a cover pool where people place bets to see how our instincts work out on the newsstand," Nelson says. "And the results are all over the place. We're aware that when we send our covers out, it's like rolling dice in Vegas. You gamble. And that's why you need a certain amount of nerves, and a certain amount of fatalism, to play a big newsstand game."

It's a crapshoot that ultimately features serious dollars and an unforgiving marketplace, which can drive otherwise sane professionals to odd behaviors. Some, as we have learned, have a compulsion to lick magazine covers, and hey, that's okay with us. Others are satisfied to simply sell the bejesus out of them. Either way, creating covers always comes down to covering one's bets. And it's never, ever a sure thing.

I WROTE THE LAW. MOSTLY, IT STILL STANDS

BY RICHARD B. STOLLEY

In the late 1970s, after I had edited People for a few years, I looked back on which covers had sold well on the newsstand, which had not, and why this was so. Out of this sometimes painful examination emerged a set of rules that came to be known in magazine publishing as Stolley's Law of Covers.

How does the Law stand up today? Let's consider it line by line.

"Young is better than old." If anything, that is more true today than it was 25 years ago. We surely are more youth-obsessed than ever.

"Pretty is better than ugly." Still works. One current example: When Eminem appears on covers today, he looks fairly normal - tattoos muted, scowl relaxed, all scrubbed up. Maybe not pretty, but not ugly, either.

"Rich is better than poor." We continue to be more interested in Daddy Warbucks than in Little Orphan Annie. But editorial compassion sometimes dictates poor people on covers, as long as they're interestingly destitute.

The priorities in the next two lines changed in the '70s and continue to do so. Back then, it was: "Television is better than movies. Movies are better than music." For a while, music got hot, and we scored with covers on individuals and groups. Today I suspect movies are better than television, partly because its stars are more mysterious and partly because TV men and women are doing their best work these days on the big screen. Music, I fear, is chancy, except possibly if it's pubescent blondes or pretty country singers.

The next line, that "Movies or TV or music is better than sports," continues to be valid for general-interest publications. Supermarkets are where magazines are bought, the majority of shoppers are women, and women don't buy jock covers - except for a few extraordinary female athletes like the Williams sisters and the world soccer champs.

The original final line, "Anything is better than politics," is on the mark still - even for the newsmagazines. Except in times of national emergency, Bush cannot compete with back pain.

But the final line was amended to this: "And nothing is better than the celebrity dead." I did not understand this when Elvis died in 1977, a blunder not repeated when John Lennon was murdered in 1980. That cover was People's best-seller until Princess Diana's death in 1997.

The top 10 People sellers of all time also include the unexpected deaths of Princess Grace and John F. Kennedy, Jr. For any magazine, cover success with this grim but fascinating subject is as inevitable as ... well, you know.

COOPER TAKES ROCKWELL OVER CRUISE

Art Cooper had to wait a long time to get Fred Woodward onboard as GQ's design director - 12 years, to be exact. But according to Cooper, Woodward was well worth the wait.

"It's the best thing that has happened to me and the magazine," says Cooper, who has been the top editor at the men's monthly since 1983. "What we've never had - or maybe we've had it a few times - are covers that capture the true personality of the magazine, or as my wife says, 'The whiff of testosterone on the cover.' And now we've got that."

Woodward's distinctive covers have been creating buzz in the business ever since his first issue hit newsstands a year ago. And readers are responding: Newsstand sales for the second half of 2002 were up 5.5 percent from the previous year, reports Cooper, and total paid circulation was up 6 percent.

Not bad for what, in retrospect, have been some rather risky covers. Case in point: Last August GQ put the then relatively unknown Vin Diesel on the cover. Fortunately for Cooper and Co., Diesel's film XXX was a hit. The issue was up 25 percent on the newsstand compared with the same issue a year earlier; it was also GQ's best-selling issue on the newsstand in the past three years.

In another seemingly risky move, GQ put the actor Sam Rockwell on the cover of the February issue. It's classic Woodward, with bright colors and sharp photography by Mark Seliger, but the image of Rockwell's face is so small that - even if the actor were your next-door neighbor - you might not recognize him on a newsstand. Conventional wisdom would say the issue's single-copy sales were doomed.

Cooper, however, is not concerned. "If you're not taking risks, what's the point in doing the job?" he asks. "What you try to do is take a risk where you have great upside potential. Is [Rockwell] going to do what Vin Diesel did? I doubt it. But I'd rather send the message that we're going to put young guys on the cover and come up with the next generation of leading men rather than put Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise on the cover." - Geoff Van Dyke

'NATIONAL GEO' SUITS UP

On the cover: a shapely woman, partially submerged in crystal-clear water, wearing only several strategically placed seashells. And some string.

It's February, you think. Must be Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue.

Wrong. It's not SI. Nor is it Maxim's "real" swimsuit issue. This is National Geographic's swimsuit issue. Really.

Editor-in-chief Bill Allen, who came up with the idea, had kicked it around for years. "These pictures come up from time to time," he says, "and I realized that you can almost do a cultural history of the world by looking at swimsuits."

For those worried that NG has sold out ("National Geographic's gone swimsuit?!"), rest assured that there is more to the issue than super-thin models on exotic shores. We learn, for instance, what the natives on the Marquesas Islands wore (not much) and how the term "bikini" came about (in 1946, after atomic bomb testing at Bikini, an island in the central Pacific, a French designer hatched the idea for the teeny-weenie two-piece).

But back to that cover. What gives? "First of all, we wanted the entire thing to be a surprise, a totally unexpected treat for the readers - something where people would say, 'What is National Geographic doing?' " says Allen. And the swimsuit on the cover represents the ultimate evolution of beach apparel, he says, from the knee-length bloomers of the early 20th century to the skimpy numbers of today.

NG's cover image, hopes Allen, will move units off the newsstand. The newsstand draw for what is labeled a "Collector's Edition" is about 500,000 issues, and NG is hoping to sell 200,000 to 300,000 of those copies. "This is something that is really going to be fun, and it's at least going to make people do a double-take," he says. "I want people to think a little differently about National Geographic. If they pick it up and buy it, great." - GV

SHE STRIKES A POSE - OFTEN

Other than Julia Roberts, which celeb cover subject is consistently tops at moving mags? Who has got that undefinable X-factor? On a reliable basis, maybe no one. But year after year, Madonna has inventively recast herself. And so, as a sort of malleable, all-season pop icon, she has become irresistible to editors. How have her covers performed? Very close to average, according to data from Source Interlink. But there are exceptions. In Feb. '01 she caused a riotous jump for Elle, though she had the opposite effect at People in Nov. Her most recent cover (Vanity Fair) was off slightly. She can blame that on hubby, director Guy Ritchie. But it may take Maddy awhile to recover from a box-office stinker like Swept Away. - Michael Learmonth

THESE COVERS SOLD LIKE CRAZY. HERE'S WHY.

Maxim

With this cover we had the dream combination: (1) a gorgeous A-list actress in (2) a sexy, revealing outfit tied to (3) a major Hollywood theatrical release. We also benefited from an unusually strong group of supporting lines: a summer blockbuster movie guide, a sex story about spotting one-night-stands, a true-grit story about a Nazi sub that tried to bomb New York in the waning days of WWII, and a Star Wars Episode 2 exclusive with George Lucas. What else could a growing boy need? - Keith Blanchard, editor-in-chief

In Style

The April 2002 cover with Ashley Judd was a wonderful combination of a stunning celebrity, coverlines filled with reader promises (i.e., "Getting Gorgeous," "Classic Clothes," "The Perfect Jeans for You"), and beautiful graphics. - Charla Lawhon, managing editor

Woman's Day

This [June 4, 2002] cover did so well on the newsstand for a few reasons - the colors, the photography, the coverlines. The entire package pops. Also, this pool scene, which is a cake, really jumps off and invites the reader in. - Jane Chesnutt, senior vice president and group editorial director of HFM U.S. and editor-in-chief

TV Guide

At TV Guide what we always want to do is keep an eye out for what's popping on television and in pop culture, what people care about, what they're watching. As NASCAR has exploded among sports fans, we married that excitement with some new technology - holographic covers - and used it to celebrate the legacy of the Earnhardt racing family. Our readers and sports fans responded, and the success of our NASCAR preview issue is a perfect example of the versatility of our product. - Steve Sonsky, executive editor

O, The Oprah Magazine

We managed to have a scoop for the March '02 issue with our exclusive Michael J. Fox interview, which was very moving. Coverlines about couples are also compelling, and anything that promises to reveal what makes them work, like "Cracking the Mystery of a Great Relationship," are intriguing. Other coverlines, including the names "Suze Orman" and "Jane Smiley," are interesting, and the provocative "How Do You Feel About Your Looks, You're About to Feel a Lot Better" is a great tease. Visually, we've got Oprah beaming at you in a completely engaging way, wearing a crisp white shirt ... against a gentle, luscious celadon-green background. What's not to like? - Amy Gross, editor-in-chief

Teen People

At the time, Josh Hartnett's popularity with our readers was on the ascent, if not at its peak. Coming off his success with Black Hawk Down, and preceding his teen film 40 Days and 40 Nights, Josh was in his prime, and our readers were hungry for anything they could get on him. Furthermore, Teen People stood out on the newsstand with not one, but two Herb Ritts photographs on a split-run cover - our first-ever black-and-white cover - featuring Josh in a young and sexy, moody-broody pose. It was gold. - Barbara O'Dair, managing editor

Men's Health

This was our Ode to September 11. It was the first time we didn't use a cover model - we used a real Marine - and the response was amazing. The top coverline, "The Better-Sex Diet Plan," sells two promises: sex and nutrition. So the reader gets the message, I'm going to eat this and have great sex. Imperatives work. Action words move the reader. Also, as a whole, the cover-lines did a good job of capturing the breadth of the magazine." - David Zinczenko, editor-in-chief

Cosmopolitan