Your redesign is beautiful, user-friendly, newsy, viewsy and busting with great ideas.
Many thanks to everyone for all the work and effort that visibly went into the production of the new and improved PW. It's a PW which makes me proud to be in the publishing business.
I look forward to seeing you at BEA. Thanks to PW (and the big sale at DSW), I'll be wearing wedge heels—reminded to do so by the clever writers of Dress Your Best!
Lucine Kasbarian, Progressive Book Publicity Teaneck, N.J.
When I received my May 2 Publishers Weekly, my first reaction was that I was glad I got it, as our mail service is not always the best. My second reaction was, What is this? Is it PW? I put it aside. I was so afraid to look in it because I thought I would hate it and I have loved PW for years and years.
Finally, after having it in my home for several days, I went to bed and went through it from cover to cover. And I was surprised, and this is what I wanted to share with you: I like it! Yes, I actually like it. And I don't usually like any change. Maybe if I had been warned in advance the shock wouldn't have been so great.
Anne Salazar, Huntington Beach, Calif.
As with the redesign of the PW Daily e-mail newsletter, the new design of Publishers Weekly magazine is just abysmal.
PW is a trade magazine. The redesign looks as if it would love to be mistaken for a consumer pub. It employs all the trademark design elements used to engage the fickle public afflicted with ADD. Short blips of info scroll across the bottom of the page as if it were CNN. The color scheme and font are so bland and lackluster that it's difficult to tell where one section ends and the next begins. The three-column layout and liberal use of brackets and tooling lines are visually disruptive.
The bestseller lists are the only real improvement, nicely done with callouts that illuminate particular titles. But the tan and red banner across the top—which unfortunately appears throughout the entire magazine—detracts from its impact.
The reviews also suffer visually and are difficult to scan. Once again the "traffic lanes" on each page are distracting and the large drop caps, while charming in fairy tales, are quite ridiculous here. The entire section has been dipped in manila and it is a chore to discern which books are being highlighted.
It is obvious that all the changes reflect new opportunities to sell and serve advertisers (which is fine in principle, as I have been one of them), but you have left the readers in the dust in your zeal to offer more prominent positioning for higher ad rates.
We need advertising and it is an important part of the magazine, but to sacrifice the design for the sake of greater ad visibility seems to be a mistake.
Cara Coles
I've been a loyal PW reader for the past few years and wanted to tell you that I love the tone you bring to your editorials—you're inclusive, chatty, and make me, a small publisher way up in Vermont, feel as much a part of the overall publishing world as any house in New York. You are a breath of fresh air, and I love it!
Lauri Berkenkamp, Nomad Press/Nomad Communications White River Junction, Vt.
I have been a PW subscriber for close to 30 years. Congratulations to your team on the redesign. The May 2 BEA issue is brimming with new clarity and focus, and the enhancements to content only add to the overall upgrade.
Hats off to one and all. You have pulled off an extremely delicate and difficult task with considerable grace and aplomb.
Jack Jensen, Publisher, president, Chronicle Books
