Looking Homeward Toward Success

“Living well is the best revenge,” said 17th-century poet George Herbert.

In the 1995 publishing year, living well and dining well also had their rewards.

Year-end figures released last week by the Publishers Information Bureau showed that Elle Decor and Metropolitan Home were among the big gainers in advertising revenue, along with the culinary magazines Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Eating Well and Bon Appetit.

Elle Decor (up 47.7% to $19.2 million for 1995) and Metropolitan Home (up 33% to $20.4 million), two upscale bimonthlies published by Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, continued their dramatic rebound from the recession, which hit so-called shelter books especially hard several years ago.

“We started Elle Decor in 1990 at a low point and saw that down the line there would be a trend toward people being more interested in their homes,” said John J. Miller III, Hachette’s vice president / group publisher of its shelter magazines. “We bought Metropolitan Home from Meredith Corp. in 1992 because, again, we saw a long-term opportunity.”

As media consultant Leo Scullin, of Scullin & Co., put it, “The upscale home category seems to have resurged. The upscale markets are spending again.” Certainly Conde Nast Publications is counting on that as the company plans to revive House & Garden in the fall. And Better Homes & Gardens advanced last year, by 24.2% to $274.4 million.

Bon Appetit bounced back from a down year, rising 38.5% to $31 million. Food & Wine, which had a negligible increase in 1994, enjoyed a 26.4% gain last year to $23.2 million. Cooking Light and Eating Well each had a great year once again as both bimonthlies increased revenues by more than 40% to $23.8 million and $6.3 million, respectively.

Health consciousness fuels interest in magazines such as Cooking Light, which attract ads for fat-free foods. “But there was something else happening in 1995--the big national food advertisers really found those magazines,” Scullin said.

The publications offered advertisers added reach, as suggested by closely studied industry data, compiled by Mediamark Research Inc., which showed that a large number of those who read epicurean magazines do not pick up the well-established women’s service publications such as Good Housekeeping.

Looking at the overall magazine industry, the Publishers Information Bureau reported that 1995 ad revenues increased 12% over 1994 for a total of $10.1 billion. Publishers are counting on this year’s presidential election and the Olympic Games to generate even greater spending.

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On the Racks: No-nonsense title of the week: “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations,” by comedy writer Al Franken, known for his work on “Saturday Night Live.” The hardcover collection of political pieces is published by Delacorte Press. . . .

Peter Travers, the Rolling Stone film reviewer, keeps his labors in the Wenner Media family by adding a monthly entertainment column, Take Two, that appears in Us magazine starting with this month’s issue. . . .

Hyperion has published “Nixon: An Oliver Stone Film,” which includes the annotated screenplay as well as essays by such Nixon observers as former White House counsel John Dean, Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt and broadcaster Daniel Schorr, who covered Watergate for CBS News.

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Afterwords: HarperCollins plans to publish Brenda Maddox’s “George’s Ghosts: A Life of W. B. Yeats” in 1997. (George was Bertha Georgie Hyde Lees, the Irish poet’s young wife.)

Meanwhile, earlier this week, HarperCollins was withholding detailed comment on a report in Variety that it has agreed to a deal with Jay Leno, worth more than $4 million, that calls for the TV host to write a humorous autobiographical book about working the comedy-club circuit.

“Yes, there is a deal, and an announcement will be made in the next few days,” said Steven F. Sorrentino, director of publicity. “Beyond that I can’t comment.”

* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His column is published Fridays.