Formed in the early 1990s with the mission to extend the reach of Time Inc.'s magazines into books, Time Inc. Home Entertainment has evolved into a "multi-platform, multi-channel publisher," said Rob Gursha, president of TIHE. The most recent example of the company's evolution is Friends 'Til the End, the official commemorative book of the television show, which became a national bestseller in May.
Friends was published in cooperation with Warner Bros., a company that is part of the Time Warner family but not of the Time Inc. division where TIHE has traditionally focused its efforts, Gursha noted. Partnering with Warner Bros. reflects TIHE's commitment to "entertain projects from third parties," said Richard Fraiman, v-p, new product development.
The book follows TIHE's business strategy in two other ways. The edition of Friends that hit the bestseller charts is the $24.95 trade paperback edition, which sold about 150,000 copies mainly through traditional bookstore channels. Four weeks before it released the trade paperback on May 7, TIHE published the "bookazine" edition, which sold for $9.99 and has 450,000 copies in print. The bookazine, which, as its name implies is a combination book and magazine, contained less content and fewer photos than the book and was sold primarily through newsstands and mass merchants.
Second, the Friends trade paperback was distributed by the Time Warner Book Group, while the bookazine was sold by Time Distribution Services, which controls nearly 70,000 checkout pockets in supermarkets, drug stores and other mass merchants. "We have lots of assets to leverage," Gursha said, noting that TIHE also distributes its products through direct marketing and by a special accounts sales team.
Gursha said TIHE will publish approximately 42 titles this year and estimated that the company will distribute more than 11 million bookazines and ship over one million units through direct marketing. Fraiman noted that TIHE looks for products that will work in all of its distribution channels and in both book and bookazine formats. And with rare exceptions, TIHE will only publish books generated from established brands. Finding brands is not a problem for TIHE, since Time's magazine division features Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, People and In Style, and TIHE has published books in conjunction with all of those publications. (The company released 400,000 Ronald Reagan: A Life in Pictures bookazines on June 11 in conjunction with Life.) The newest magazine to join the fold was In Style; TIHE released its first In Style book last fall and Secrets of Style: In Style's Complete Guide to Dressing Your Best Every Day has over 100,000 hardcover copies in print. There were also 300,000 bookazines of the same title in distribution, and 10,000 copies were sold through direct response channels using In Style's subscriber list. TIHE's second In Style book will be released this fall.
Other fall titles include Real Simple: The Organized Home, Will & Grace: Fabulously Uncensored, Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary and Life Christmas Around the World. The company is also adding to its list of almanacs. TIHE has been publishing Time for Kids Almanac for four years and has sold 300,000 copies since 2003 through all four of its distribution channels. Time for Kids World Atlas was released earlier this month, and Popular Science Atlas for Kids will be shipped in July. In addition, TIHE has been the U.S. distributor of the Guinness Book of World Records since 2001.
To complement its books and bookazines, TIHE also distributes calendars and is expanding its DVD/video line, using TW's CNN as its primary partner. America Remembers, produced in response to September 11, has sold 300,000 copies and is TIHE's biggest title to date.
The expansion of TIHE's list from solely doing magazine-related annuals to a broad publishing program (combined with the collapse of its direct marketing sweepstakes business) has so dramatically altered TIHE's sales pattern that the company now generates 65% of its revenue from the retail market. And as the retail market has grown in importance, so has the bookstore market. Fraiman noted that TIHE "is increasing our commitment to the trade."
