Rack and Ruin.

Anime magazines are expensive. I bought 2 yesterday, OtakuUSA and Newtype USA. I’m really considering getting subscriptions and trying to write them off as a business expense. What makes them so pricey? Let’s take a look at what we get for our money.
As a comparison I checked an issue of Maxim.
A Maxim magazine clocks in at 49 full page ads in a 140 page magazine, giving you about 91 pages of content. That doesn’t include the Maxim Style section which is basically a section of fashion ads. That would drop the content count even further.
NewType USA
Price. US $12.98
Page count. 160 numbered pages.
Ad Page count. 50 full page ads. That’s including the inside covers and 1 fold out ad, 46 without.
Total pages of content. 114.
So Newtype isn’t doing too badly delivering content. On top of that, Newtype gives you a DVD with 2 episodes of anime and some trailers. When I say give I mean sell. You know the DVD isn’t free, it’s probably what pushes it over $10 an issue.
OtakuUSA
Price. US $9.99
Page count. 156 numbered pages.
Ad Page count. 10. Yes, including the inside covers, only 10 full page ads. Not counting the inside covers 8 full page ads.
Total pages of content. 148.
OtakuUSA also has a DVD. It contains 3 anime episodes, 1 trailer, some music and game demos.
All in all I’d say that if you can only afford to pick up 1 otaku magazine, then OtakuUSA is gonna give you the most bang for your buck. So don’t be fooled when it feels a bit thinner than other anime mags, the missing pages are apparently ads.
Anime, Manga, Opinion, Magazine, Comparison, Newtype USA, OtakuUSA

August 17th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Otaku USA is also approximately 99.8% cooler than Newtype…
August 17th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Yeah, I left that out of my calculations. It’s hard to put a monetary value on cool.
And by “calculations” I mean flipping through the magazines and counting ads. *L*
January 10th, 2008 at 10:39 am
[...] liked Newtype USA, even tough it seemed like an expensive magazine. I enjoyed reading it when I could bring myself to drop $12+ for [...]