Actually, magazines are doing fine in the U.S. Recent figures indicate there's even been an overall sales increase in recent years--which may actually be related to the drop-off in Internet use. It also involves book sales....
A professional association of book publishers conducts regular surveys to pinpoint market trends. One of the things they discovered in the past few years is that (contrary to the popular belief often read on, uh, forums) the sales of printed, paper books were increasing, while sales of e-books were declining. Responses to the survey indicated the reasons were pretty simple: Prices of e-books had increased so much they basically matched the prices of printed paper books, but perhaps more important, so many Americans make their living spending a large part of their day on computers that when they go home, they don't want to stare at yet another screen. Instead they prefer to "relax" with a paper book. (Less important reasons are that it's easier to share paper books--and for some of us, to make notes in the margins of the pages.)
This is evidently also part of the reason magazines are doing well. Yes, some have folded in the past decade or so, but others appear all the time. This is why overall magazine sales have gone up slightly in the past few years.
On a more personal note (also related to Phil's post), we have seen a steady rise not just in book sales on riflesandrecipes.com, but subscriptions to our on-line magazine, RIFLE LOONY NEWS--which is also offered in a printed, paper collection. One of our subscribers suggested a collection of the first five years, and we thought that was kinda nuts, since everybody who subscribes gets access to all the past issues. But when we asked other subscribers if they'd be interested in a paper copy, they were enthusiastic as well. So we printed the book, and many people not only order it but an on-line subscription at the same time.
