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People Royals — the gossip mag’s new quarterly publication focused on “all things royal” — could not have debuted at a worse time.
On March 5, just two days before the world was abuzz over Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey detailing the royal family’s dirty laundry, the high-priced quarterly hit the stands with a cover focused on a smiling “Kate the Great.”
In a February sneak peek, the Meredith-publication said of their inaugural issue cover story : “At the 10-year mark in her royal career, Princess Kate has firmly established her voice. If the current Queen, 94, has embodied the very English stiff upper lip throughout her long reign, the millennial Queen-in-the-making, 39, has chosen a modern path: feelings are to be validated, mental health is to be prioritized, and laughter is to be encouraged.
That would seem to stand in stark contrast to the picture painted by Meghan and Harry in a two-hour special that aired on CBS March 7 and in Britain on March 8.
Instead of embracing their royal life, the couple dangled claims of racism and said that the palace, which Markle derisively called “the firm,” offered no help at all as she wrestled with mental health problems that left her entertaining suicidal thoughts.
The People Royals cover, which costs $12.99 on newsstands, boasts a secondary story on Harry and Meghan “What Their New Life is Really Like,” but it doesn’t have the exclusive first-person interview that earned Oprah’s Harpo Productions a reported $7 million by CBS.
People’s regular weekly edition had up-to-the-minute breaking news on how Buckingham Palace went into crisis mode after the interview appeared. But high-priced quarterly bookazines are planned long in advance, usually with evergreen material often written by freelancers that can sit on newsstands for months without looking dated.
Meanwhile Meredith’s arch rival Hearst is set to rake it in with its new Oprah magazine, a joint venture between Winfrey’s Harpo Productions and Hearst.
O the Oprah Magazine published its last regular monthly edition in December and Media Ink can exclusively reveal that the new version, which will be printed quarterly instead of monthly, will be renamed O Magazine.
Its first issue hits March 30, with a $12.99 cover price. And unlike the previous version, it won’t rely on ads.
On Tuesday, oprahmag.com, which usually covers wellness topics, had four excerpts from the explosive interview with the disgruntled royal couple splashed across the top as part of it free offerings as it seeks to encourage readers to start paying for the content.
Meredith isn’t the only publisher in an awkward spot following the Oprah interview. Ben Harris, former head of the defunct Harris Publications which shut down abruptly in April 2016, is back in business with a new company called Centennial Media. And his latest bookazine, entitled Kate, also focuses on the ten-year anniversary of Kate Middleton as a royal.
Barnes & Noble was featuring it prominently on Tuesday in its Union Square store, but sales figures are not yet available.
Meanwhile, People Royals had yet to arrive in Barnes & Noble flagship store as scheduled for March 5 and was not yet on sale at a nearby Walgreens.
Sources said the People Royals title was on sale at Barnes & Noble stores in other locations, however, including on the Upper East Side and at the Books-a-million chain. About 400,000 of the debut issue were heading to newsstands nationally with an on-sale date of March 5.
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