Helen McCabe says covers like Oprah Winfrey are important to compete in ‘brutal’ market
The Australian Women’s Weekly editor-in-chief Helen McCabe has stressed the importance of securing high profile cover talent and exclusive interviews as a way to compete in a “brutal” and busy market.
Speaking to Mumbrella on the October issue of the magazine which features Oprah Winfrey on the cover as part of a “world exclusive” interview with the Weekly’s Caroline Overington, McCabe said she doesn’t take “big sales for granted”.
“I’m always conservative and worried, I never take big sales for granted. I think it’s much harder to wow audiences in modern publishing because of the sheer volume of stories and the number of platforms people are consuming their information on,” she said.
“We had a good strong sale out of Maggie [Tabberer] last month, and that was a surprise factor, no one had seen her on the cover of a magazine since 2006 so there was a bit of a wow factor from that. Also a bit of a wow factor of choosing a 78-year-old icon of Australian fashion to grace the cover of a magazine.
