Recently, Jon Fine (the husband of mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby) wrote about the myriad woes of magazine publishers for BusinessWeek, pegging Rodale‘s profits last year at “less than $25 million” and suggesting that gave left the company “without much apparent margin for additional spending at a time when competitive vicissitudes require just that.” Portfolio blogger Jeff Bercovici has sources within the company who says that number’s wrong, and reports that “Rodale’s book division—which includes both trade and direct-marketed titles—generated more than $20 million in profit on its own, on $186 million in revenue.”
Could the magazine division’s losses on its two start-up publications have been big enough to offset the book gains? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?