Editors’ Page: Looking Backward

With this issue we slide seamlessly, almost silently, into our third year. Although we are a success, it is time not for bugles or trumpets but for quiet reflection.

The stats? We already have over a hundred thousand readers. But magazine publishers know that’s different from the bottom-line question: How many paid subscribers? They know that each copy is read by more than one person. So how many paid subscribers? About 55,000. Very good for a little intellectual-niche publication like ours.

As many of you know (because you subscribe to it), we also publish Biblical Archaeology Review, which is observing its 25th anniversary in 2000. This naturally invites comparisons: Subscribers to both magazines are fiercely loyal; both have almost the same remarkably high renewal rates. Although BAR, as it is known, has almost four times as many subscribers, the response rates to our appeals to subscribe are about the same for both magazines.