The Shrink

Rising paper costs and an impending quantum jump in second-class postal rates are forcing shrinkage in the size of many U.S. magazines. Such LIFE-size books as Holiday and Boys Life have already been reduced to virtual TIME size. McCall's will go to the smaller format with its February issue. Last week Esquire announced that it too would shrink, starting in September.

The reasons are more economic than aesthetic; postage matters more than paper to the mass-circulation magazines. For those in financial straits, it is a matter of shrink or sink. Some time this year, a new, privately run U.S. Postal Service will raise second-class mailing rates by at least 50%, and probably by 100% over the next five years, to make second class pay its own way. Rates are based on weight; smaller magazines costless to mail.

But there'll always be an adman. In a full-page newspaper announcement of the size change last week. Esquire Publisher Arnold Gingrich discovered that his magazine had a "big and bulky old-fashioned page size," and dismissed it as the "full three-masted rigging of yesteryear." Despite record advertising revenues and circulation (1,175,000), he decreed the switch to a "more modern size," promising readers more pages (presumably ones of lighter weight) and more color, and advertisers a better page rate per thousand. Gingrich hinted at a further fringe benefit in the smaller size: Esquire will be less "awkward to read in bed."

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