The 300 feet of magazine shelves at Liberty Books & News offers more than a few odd titles.
The bimonthly Fire Apparatus Journal is dedicated to all things fire-related.
Cook’s Illustrated, a print spinoff of the PBS series America’s Test Kitchen, focuses on cooking techniques.
And the do-it-yourself Make targets the techie set.
"We cannot seem to keep enough copies in stock," said John Gaylord, owner of the W. Lane Avenue shop, which stocks 7,000 titles.
Despite the popularity of the Internet, magazines are enjoying a heyday: About 20 are launched each week in the United States, serving everyone from hopeful mothers (Fertility Today) to the owners of obscure pets (Modern Ferret).
More than 21,000 consumer and trade magazines are in circulation — an increase of about 5,000 since 1990, according to the American Society of Magazine Editors.
And advertising revenues for magazines reached an all-time high in 2005 of $23 billion, up from $17 billion three years earlier.
"When I go visit the newsstand, my mind is racing: ‘What new idea has been executed today?’ " said Samir Husni, aka "Mr. Magazine," a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi who publishes a yearly guide to magazines.
"Is it a magazine for hair extensions, or is it a new magazine for the soles of shoes? It’s that refreshing feel of continuous change."
Driving the industry are niche magazines (and, yes, Ultimate Weaves & Extensions is a real publication).
Obscure titles are thriving while general-interest magazines are gasping for breath.
Look magazine folded in 1971 after competing with Life, which ceased as a regular publication in 2000. (It reappeared as a Sunday newspaper insert.)
And, since 2002, Time and Newsweek have laid off employees throughout the world, having seen circulation and readership slowly evaporate.
"I’ll bet if you ask any person, ‘Do you read a general-interest magazine?’ they just wouldn’t understand the concept," said Nina Link, president of the Magazine Publishers of America in New York.
"I think . . . (the Time and Newsweek) platforms are evolving and people have expectations of getting news faster. You’re seeing the print magazine dealing with more analysis. Breaking news is how they’re using their Web sites."
Newsmagazines, said Stephen Lacy, a journalism professor at Michigan State University who studies media economics, will probably be the first magazines to make the switch from print to all-Web formats.
"I don’t see the function of Newsweek and Time and U.S. News & World Report going away," Lacy said. "That effort to provide depth will always be needed."
The transition to more nichebased publications represents a media shift toward specialized entertainment: Radio, recordings and television all offer hundreds of options but few individual offerings that command huge audiences.
Technology is bringing an end to the blockbuster and replacing it with a proliferation of specific products, concluded Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, a new book that proclaims the decline of mass appeal.
"Culture has always been diverse; we just didn’t have the vehicles to get it out there," said Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine.
"What a monthly magazine can do is serve as a sweet spot between the Web and a book," Anderson said. "It has the relevance of the moment of the Web but the depth . . . of a book."
Although magazines such as Wired are catching on with the Internet crowd, the fastestgrowing publications are found in the food, craft and homeimprovement categories, Husni said.
"We’ve managed in the magazine business not only to cater to every need but every want, lust, desire, sexual orientation — you name it. I mean, we have three magazines for transsexual people."
The industry, Link said, depicts the American search for identity.
"Magazines are a wonderful reflection of where society and individuals are," she said. "People kind of form communities, whether you’re a bass fisherman or a scrapbooker. There are more ways of hooking into these communities — which is where you’re seeing a lot of these niches develop."
Dave Roth found his niche in 1983, when he joined his wife in launching the Civil War magazine Blue & Gray from their Hilliard home.
"It was a hobby and, I thought, a hobby that wasn’t treated from a travel approach," he said.
Since then, Roth has turned his hobby into a career: The bimonthly Blue & Gray has doubled its initial circulation by reaching an average of 20,000 buyers.
Even with the rising pursuit of digital formats and the success of online sites such as Salon, Link said, print magazines have a "fabulous" future.
"There is no experience to match getting lost in the pages of magazines," she said. "(It’s an) oasis of just total engagement and involvement."
