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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

IT'S HOT IN THAILAND, OR IS IT HEAT?

Hot Magazine, an English language celebrity fortnightly magazine that hails from Malaysia, has started making regular appearances on the bookshop shelves in Thailand.
Claiming to be Asia's 'New Favourite Celebrity Magazine', Hot has been selling in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines since its launch a couple of years ago. It sells in Thailand for 100 baht.
To me Hot is almost identical to Heat Magazine from the UK, both in terms of design and content. It doesn't appear there is any formal arrangement between Hot Potato Publishing, the publishers of Hot, and the UK publishers of Heat, despite the apparent similarities. Hot Potato is also responsible for an English licensed edition of the global Hello! Magazine.
The celebrity magazine market, so far as Thai language magazines are concerned, is saturated, but Hot is in English and has an Asian focus. That makes it different but I'm still not convinced there is a big enough market for this kind of publication in Thailand, especially when we get the global English editions of Hello!, Heat, Grazia and the like distributed here already.

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