Taunton's titles stay close to homes
NEWTOWN, Conn. -- It says a lot about the world we live in that the first ad you're likely to see inside a shelter magazine is for a car. Tires spinning and headlights blazing, they roar down empty roads, not another vehicle in sight -- and usually no houses, either.
Keep leafing through the pages and you'll see come-ons for computers, credit cards, shoes. So what do any of these have to do with ''shelter"? Nothing. In the language of publishing, these are ''nonendemic" ads, with no relationship to a magazine's content. They're there to bring in money, period. That you may not like being marched through an automobile showroom or electronics store while looking for painting tips is beside the point.
Magazines that don't play this game are beyond rare. One of the few is Inspired House, introduced by an outfit called the Taunton Press just a year-and-a-half ago. Beyond the welcome absence of car ads, there's also a distinct shortage of pumped-up mansions and grinning stars -- and it's not because Julia Roberts won't return their calls.
''We're not about celebrities and the kind of lifestyle that you can only imagine," says editor Jan Senn, 49. ''We're about helping to enhance your life, the way you really want to live, the way you really do live."
Simple words, but they run counter to what most shelter magazines are selling, literally.
While Inspired House has yet to set newsstands on fire -- its circulation is holding at 165,000, a fraction of that of heavyweights such as House & Garden and Metropolitan Home -- it's doing exactly what its publisher wants: bringing ''the Taunton sensibility" to the shelter world.
To understand what that might be, you have to go back nearly 30 years, to a house in this tiny rural town. Paul Roman, then 43, had been told by
Though they had only $2,800 in the bank, Roman wasn't going to cut corners at the expense of quality. Instead, he turned the standard magazine-publishing model upside-down. Rather than hiring staff writers, he found expert woodworkers and persuaded them to be his authors. Instead of relying on professional photographers, he took pictures himself. Roman wanted readers to keep old issues for reference rather than just chuck them, and to achieve that he felt that everything in the magazine -- ads and editorial -- had to have value to readers. That meant that as tight as money was, they would actually turn away the wrong kind of ads.
Astoundingly, it worked. Fine Woodworking became profitable with the first issue, and within three years had a circulation of more than 100,000. It created an entire magazine category by itself, and has been the foundation for everything Taunton's done since then.
Fine Homebuilding, the macro to Fine Woodworking's micro, debuted in 1981. Over the next 13 years Taunton brought out Threads, Fine Gardening, and Fine Cooking, and followed them up with Inspired Home in 2003. While there have been some misses along the way (Kitchen Gardener, for people who grow their own vegetables, had erratic sales and was soon ploughed under), Taunton now publishes six magazines, with a total annual circulation of more than 1.3 million. While that's less than Country Living sells on its own, Taunton -- still family owned and directed -- is happy with its corner of the publishing world.
''They're masters of the 'elite mass approach,' looking upscale and yet feeling downscale," says University of Mississippi professor Samir Husni, who follows the magazine industry closely. ''It's a marvelous case study for how the new magazine publishing model should be in this country. They're not an advertising-driven entity. They're in the business of selling content."
A quick comparison between one of Taunton's offerings and a competitor's is illustrative. In the January/February issue of Metropolitan Home, there's an eight-page spread on a lavish Brookline apartment. In it are 10 photographs, two of them full page, all of fabulous interiors. A same-sized article on a contemporary farmhouse in the April issue of Inspired Home includes 14 photos of the house's interior and exterior, plus the equivalent of a full page of floor plans and sketches. There's even a fascinating sidebar on the form's aesthetics: ''A house is a farmhouse when. . ."
''Taunton has always gone the extra mile to educate their readers, not just entertain," says Senn.
What Taunton's magazines don't do is speak from on high, telling the readers what is or isn't right. Instead, they want to help people achieve their goals, whatever they may be. Because their readers are all over the political and social spectrum and range from beginners to experts, this has lead to more than a few controversies along the way.
''We did an article a few years ago on installing vinyl siding," says Kevin Ireton, editor-in-chief of Fine Homebuilding. ''We even featured it on the cover, much to the horror of some of our readers, who said, 'Vinyl siding doesn't belong on a fine house.' But a lot of them are professional builders, and, whether they like it or not, they may be working for somebody who asks them to install it, and our mission was to help people install it the right way."
Ireton, 48, is typical of many of Taunton's editorial staff, a distinctly atypical group in the publishing world. Formerly a working professional, he's both passionate about the field he covers and aware that there's much more to building a home than just picking what kind of siding you want.
''Our agenda isn't out front other than to try to provide people with good, useful information," Ireton says. ''That said, the magazine, its editors, and its community of readers definitely has a soul and a conscience. So we do whatever we can to try to promote quality work, green building, and environmentally responsible con-struction."
Asa Christiana, 38, managing editor of Fine Woodworking, sees a deeper value as well. ''What we're trying to do is inspire people to approach their life in a more hands-on way," he says, eyes alight. ''We want to get people away, get them off their rear ends, get them doing things."
An essential part of this is delivering content that readers can count on, not just filler between advertising. For a Fine Woodworking article on a particularly gorgeous piece of furniture, the author often has to make another one, and the process is documented as he or she goes. An article on the construction or renovation of a house goes no faster than the project itself, and it's nothing like ''Extreme Makeover" would have us believe. When Fine Cooking's editor, Susie Middleton, 42, says that her magazine's recipes are ''really, really well tested," you get the distinct impression it's more than just talk.
And all along, the magazines' staffers do what they call the ''art-edit dance," slowly turning a pocketful of ideas into a rack full of magazines -- and not inexpensive ones, either.
For example, while a copy of This Old House is $4.50, Fine Homebuilding charges $7.99. You get a cut with a subscription, but nothing on the order of their competitors: 10 issues of This Old House are $15.96, while Fine Homebuilding charges $37.95 for eight.
''Taunton charges their customers for very high quality but delivers on that promise, and people appreciate it," Christiana says.
The same mixture of substance and polish is found in their books, which come in so many shapes and forms that a full set would challenge even the best-constructed set of shelves: primers for total beginners, project guides for pros, tool handbooks, technique guides, ''idea books" for those thinking of projects. There also are dozens of standalone titles that walk the line between coffee-table confection and practical guide, such as ''The Handplane Book," ''Colonial Style," and one of Taunton's bestsellers, ''The Not So Big House," by the architect diva Sarah Susanka.
''It's sort of useful beauty we're kind of striving for," says senior editor Peter Chapman, 50.
There is no shortage of competitors out there, of course, but Taunton's offerings seem to have a way of rising to the top. Matt Dufour, assistant manager at Rockler Woodworking in Cambridge, is particularly fond of the ''Build Like a Pro" series. ''I can always recommend it and be confident," he says. ''Some of the other companies have good books but they're not as consistent as the Taunton stuff."
As far as they've come, one of the things that makes Taunton unique is that they're not about to forget their past. In preparation for their 30th anniversary, executive editor Helen Albert, 51, is considering reprinting ''Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking," a three-book series by the legendary Rhode Island School of Design professor, who played a central role in the creation of Fine Woodworking.
''We shouldn't design without giving consideration to the construction of a piece," she says, paraphrasing Frid. ''I think that's true of a lot of our books. There's attention to detail, good construction practices, good materials. That forms the aesthetic, the craftsmanship that goes into everything."
Leighton Klein can be reached at lklein@globe.com. 