People dismayed by print's long slow death will be encouraged by this: The London Review of Books, which is the largest literary magazine in Europe (and almost certainly its best), just fêted its 30th anniversary here in New York. Perhaps even more encouraging than its three decades, though, is the fact that its circulation numbers have gone up every year since its founding. There's even been impressive growth since 2000—which, for those unaware, is right around the time print started imploding.
Here's a sample: In 2000, LRB's circulation was 37,778; in 2005 it was 43,469; and is currently hovering around 52,000. This growth is not astronomical, but it's nothing to sneeze at, either. This is, after all, a magazine that runs 6,000-word book reviews in a time when most magazines won't give that much space to an investigative feature.
I think that's a great point. There's still a lot magazines have to learn about how longform writing and the web can play nice together, but there is reason to be optimistic that it's possible we'll figure out how best to make it work. (On that topic, the publisher wrote an interesting column last week for Huffington Post about the questions a publication like LRB faces in an iPad-y kind of world.)
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