From The Hollywood Reporter
Larry Flynt Unveils New Hustler Website (Exclusive)
Foreseeing a day when the print edition exists no more, the publishing legend revamps the property’s digital imprint.
Hustler has unveiled a soup-to-nuts rehaul of its website, a digital revamp that comes as Larry Flynt‘s porn empire celebrates its 40th anniversary.
To lure potential paid subscribers to the all-new HustlerMagazine.com – which, rest assured, remains as workplace-unfriendly as ever – Flynt is offering up an archive of every issue in the magazine’s history. Annual subscriptions are priced at $5.99 per month, while month-to-month access will cost $9.99.
“We’ve known for 25 years that the Internet was going to take a toll on publishing,” Flynt, 71, tells The Hollywood Reporter of the reasoning behind the shift to online. “Not just to my genre, but I was reading the other day that Conde Nast and Time Inc. both are down about 30 percent in the last three years.”
Flynt, who admits to being something of a “dinosaur” when it comes to his own media-consumption habits, says he foresees a day when he will have to shut down production on Hustler‘s print operations completely. But he’s hoping to hold that moment off for as long as possible: “In 30 years, we’ve lost about 80 percent of our circulation,” he says. “But we’re very careful about how we publish. We run a very tight ship and the magazine is still profitable.”
