Birmingham News, Mar. 1, 2002

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Hoover Man Finds Success Publishing New Magazine
By Jon Anderson, News staff writer

A new magazine headed by a 22-year-old Hoover man is making a mark in the publishing world, gaining national exposure and ringing up newsstand sales that far surpass industry standards. Hoover native Will Pearson is running the publication from an office at his parents' Hoover home, communicating through e-mail and conference calls with staff in New York City, Delaware and North Carolina. He and four fellow Duke University graduates launched the magazine straight out of college last spring.

Together they've produced Mental Floss, a magazine designed to make people "feel smart again." With three issues off the presses, it's getting rave reviews.

Pearson negotiated lucrative deals with bookstores to display the magazine prominently, which has helped it rack up astounding sales figures, particularly for a new magazine.

Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi who is regarded as one of the nation's leading magazine experts, named Mental Floss one of the 30 most notable magazine launches of 2001. It debuted in June.

While the magazine industry is facing its worst time in more than a decade, Mental Floss has recorded excellent sales, said Husni, who has been described by the Associated Press as "a maestro of magazines." Tapping expertise:

For the first two issues, Pearson served as publisher and editor-in-chief, but he and other staff members realized they needed to bring in people with more experience to move the publication forward.

Pearson persuaded Jerrold Footlick, a former senior editor for Newsweek, to take the reins as publisher in January. He also hired Neely Harris, an associate editor with iSource Business magazine, as editor-in-chief.

Pearson will remain as president of Mental Floss LLC, focusing more on the business end of the magazine than on content. Mangesh Hattikudur, the other primary founder, is executive editor. He also serves as the magazine's "idea guy."

Pearson and Harris are in the Birmingham area, but Footlick works from New York and Hattikudur from Wilmington, Del. Other staff members are in Durham, N.C. The plan is to move most of the staff to the Birmingham area and start renting office space by June, Pearson said.

The magazine is making enough money to continue publishing, but none of the staff is paid a salary, Pearson said. They all have other jobs to support themselves. Pearson teaches standardized test preparation classes at the Kaplan Center in Homewood. "Everybody just understands that's what it takes," Pearson said.

Staff members have been courting more investors and this month reached a tentative agreement with a Cleveland group that will provide financing for the next 1½ years, Pearson said. They hope to close the deal within two weeks, he said. The kitchen sink:

Part of the magazine's success could be attributed to its unusual content. It contains an eclectic mix of stories, arcane facts and trivia on topics ranging from the Dead Sea Scrolls to sumo wrestlers, jazz, evolution, poetry and the histories of beer and sex.

"The idea is to educate people about a wide variety of topics they've always wanted to know about, but in a fun and simple way," Pearson said.

Husni said Mental Floss established a niche for itself. There were 702 new magazines launched in 2001, and "for any magazine to be able to cut through the clutter and rise above the rest is a very good sign," Husni said.

Mental Floss has been featured in publications across the nation, including the Chicago Tribune and newspapers in St. Louis, Seattle, Houston and Phoenix.

Peter Carlson, a reporter for The Washington Post who writes a biweekly column on magazines, called Mental Floss "a delightfully eccentric and eclectic new magazine."

Carlson said he doesn't know of any magazine like it. "It doesn't have any particular topic," he said. "They write about anything that interests them. I kind of like that."

The third issue, which hit newsstands around Valentine's Day, is called "The 10 issue." It features articles on the 10 dates that changed baseball, 10 great military quotes, 10 great advertising campaigns and 10 famous poems that nobody understands.

Readers can learn the origins of the GI Joe action figure and discover how dogs bark for hours without losing their voices.

Negotiation skills:

Mental Floss' success also relates to Pearson's ability to tap into other people's expertise and negotiate deals to get the magazine noticed. He assembled an advisory board filled with prominent people in the magazine industry, including: Husni; Susan Tifft, a former editor at Time Magazine; George Hirsch, publisher of Runner's World; Brian Harkness, founder and vice president of the Magazines.com subscription fulfillment agency; and Joe Edelman, founder and president of UselessKnowledge.com.

Working with a national distributor, he got Mental Floss placed in several major bookstore chains, including Hastings in Canada and Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble Booksellers and Borders in the United States.

He even negotiated a deal to get the magazine premium display space next to cash registers in the more than 200 bookstores run by Books-A-Million for the last three months of 2001.

The magazine printed 15,000 copies of its first issue but, because of demand, is up to about 30,000 copies for the third issue. There are about 4,000 subscribers.

The average magazine today sells about 34 percent of its newsstand copies, and the average new magazine sells 23 percent, Husni said. Mental Floss sold 72 percent of the newsstand copies of its first issue and 65 to 80 percent of the second issue, which came out in October, Pearson said.

Financing is key to survival, Husni said. Half of new magazines don't survive past the first year, he said. For now, the outlook for Mental Floss is positive. "For those kids fresh out of school they've done a good job," Husni said. "They have the dedication. That's what really counts." For information about Mental Floss or to subscribe, go to mentalflossmag.com.

Copyright © 2002 Birmingham News.