Who would publish a luxury magazine in these times, especially focused on guitars? Regardless, we wish the team at Guitar Aficionado look luck!
One might assume that the new magazine Guitar Aficionado is a spinoff of the 17-year-old Cigar Aficionado. Both have covers with celebrities holding the featured prop (the chef Tom Colicchio with a 1963 guitar, Jay-Z with a stogie of a presumably more recent vintage). They both carry stories about alcohol, watches and men’s fashion, and ads for cigars and speakers. Also, both titles include the word “aficionado.” But the advertising picture for luxury magazines is bad. For instance, ad pages at American Express Publishing’s high-end magazine Departures fell 43 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to Publishers Information Bureau. And some magazines largely dependent on luxury ads have ceased operations recently, including Condé Nast Portfolio, Private Air and Trader Monthly. – from NYTimes