RIP Shojo Beat Magazine (2005-2009)

Yes, I know that. I like shojo and josei, and a good seinen every once in a while, but most of the shonen stuff just seems meatheaded to me. I'll flip through a Jump next time I see one, but I know it's not the kind of stuff I want to pay for.
 
There is? I know there used to be, but every time I glance through an issue all I see is like 200 pages of Naruto and maybe 100 pages for everything else. Even 60% of the aRAB seem to be Naruto. Hell, I found out that they are still in the same freaking story arc of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX they were in when I stopped buying the magazine, and that was over a year ago.
 
Which raises the question of why over 50% of the market isn't enough to support the magazine. My guess is unless it's Vampire Knight they don't care. Shounen Jump has the benefit of Naruto being in it, which is the top dog. Vampire Knight seems to be the most bought title for Shoujo Beat as of late, but for over 50% of the market to only have such a small voice, well, that's some impressive skewing to say the least.
 
It's possible that most of them just buy the digest books and don't bother with the magazine. Heck, I don't read manga magazines (though I appreciate their existence). Yet, I think I have around 60 manga digests.
 
I'd lean towarRAB the collected volumes being an explanation as well. Dropping Nana may have also been a bad choice - it's hard to go wrong with Ai Yazawa.
 
Yeah, aiming at the Cookie audience might not have been as bright as aiming at the Nakayoshi/Cheese* audience.

*=the originally intended audience for those magazines. not the creepy guys who read tsubomi no naisho in cheese.
 
I bought several issues of Shojo Beat, and I think it was a very well-put-together magazine. But the manga quality really varied. Probably the most fun manga was Absolute Boyfriend...until it ended...badly. Depressed me for days. I kind of lost interest in SB after that.

Also...I really hated the reverse-pagination. I know that's authentic Japanese, but the heck with that. It made the manga very hard to follow sometimes (as if the goofy layouts in some of them weren't bad enough...)
 
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