I subscribe to a lot of magazines, because, let’s face it I like getting something other than bills in the mail. So you can imagine my disappointment when several of my glossy monthlies have arrived this month on the super thin side. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. Better Homes and Gardens was a bit slimmer than usual but I figured maybe they were a bit strapped in the content department this month, no big deal. Then, In Style arrives and it was considerably smaller than normal. Something is definitely going on in the world of print publishing and its not good for writers or their readers.

Looking back on the year, it hasn’t been that good for magazines as a whole. Two of my favorites, Jane and Blueprint, were killed and now some of my other ones are being stripped down to bare bones. I’d like to be optimistic and think it is a passing trend that will resolve itself in the next issue or two. But the pessimist in me is screaming that the magazine publication industry is sitting on a fault line that is very active as of late. With all of the online content, magazines are taking a backseat. Subscriptions to print magazines are at an all time low.

But is it really the industry that’s to blame or is it the state of our economy? With the housing bubble burst and the rising cost of oil, do people really have that much expendable income to shell out on magazines? Have magazines become the first casualty to suffer?

I don’t have any of the answers. All I know is that when In Style goes from being 300+ pages on average to their January ‘08 issue being less than 200 pages, something is just not kosher.

Has anyone else noticed their magazines being sized down lately?