I was not impressed with Esquire's E-ink cover idea, but Joel Johnson at BBG has interviewed the Esky overlords and changed my mind a bit. Surprisingly, Esquire expects us to buy these mags and hack them. Second, Ford advertisements, also in E-ink, displaced some of the cost of production. That's good news for us. I still think its wasteful when they could do the same thing through Amazon or Sony's e-books for far less, but this interview goes a long way towards convincing me to buy one when they hit stands. A lot more at [BBG.]

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I love stupid gimmicks, don't get me wrong. But this cover is one of the worst ideas I've heard from a publication in awhile. Said the editor to the NYTimes: "Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years," Mr. Granger said. "I have been frustrated with the lack of forward movement in the magazine industry." Maybe you should like, invest in putting premium content on your website, or in E-books sold on Amazon instead of spending six figures to design a battery small enough to fit into an magazine cover that will only last 90 days, without any major refreshing of content. They might as well have used one of those hologram stickers found in 25-cent vending machines in the 80's.

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