Marvin Shanken looms large on the spirits and stogies landscape.

Does it seem that the story of almost every successful newsletter entrepreneur begins with someone who wasn't happy with his or her job?

In 1973 Marvin Shanken was working on Wall Street and didn't like it. What he wanted to be, he thought, was a wine writer. So when he heard that Impact, a business-to-business newsletter for the wine, beer and distilled industry, was for sale, he jumped.

Began with $5,000 that he didn't have

"It had about 200 subscribers at a price of $48 a year, so revenue was about $10,000 annually, and that was the asking price," Shanken told NL/NL in a telephone interview.

"I offered them $5,000 and they took it. It had been owned by Oppenheimer, the investment firm, and I later learned, they told me, that if I had offered they would have given it to me for fulfillment, as they were about to fold it. Of course, at that date I had no idea what the term 'unfulfilled subscription liability' meant.

"Actually," Shanken added, "I didn't have the $5,000. I borrowed it from my sister."

From that point Shanken began to expand the business in what have become "conventional ways" but weren't necessarily that common 30 years ago.

He began compiling information from the newsletter by specialized topics and selling this as annual research reports for wine, beer and distilled spirits priced at $75 each. Today they are very pricey, at $895 each or take all three for $2,235.

Similarly, the subscription price for Impact is now $595 in the U.S. and $695 international. (For comparison, the U.S. Cost of Living Index has increased about 4.33 times since 1973.)

Fancy conferences

In 1976 Shanken held his first industry conference. After 27 years, the Impact Annual Marketing Seminars have become large annual affairs known throughout the industry. Beginning in New York City, they've been held in London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo in various years.

Today the registration fee has reached $1,575. These conferences are also known for the (really) big-name speakers Shanken brings to the table. Past featured speakers include Henry Kissinger and Walter Cronkite and, Shanken said, "for next year I have already signed General Tommy Franks."

First acquisition

In 1979 Shanken expanded his operation by purchasing The Wine Spectator, a consumer newspaper. "It was failing." he said, "Revenues were about $40,000 and the owner was willing to give it to me but I paid him $40,000 for it. Again, however, I didn't have $40,000 so the deal was $8,000 a year for five years with no interest."

Today it would be difficult to go into any wine merchant's store in the U.S. without seeing several types of wine displaying tags indicating they have received a high rating in The Wine Spectator.

In 1992 Shanken followed with the launch of the glossy and classy Cigar Aficionado magazine, known for its cover photos of famous people smoking a cigar. "Like newsletters," Shanken said, "the newspaper and the magazine are niche publications, but they are significant in their niches."

Founding member of NEPA

Marvin Shanken was a founding member of what was then called the Newsletter Association in 1977 "with Shirley Alexander and Al Goodloe and those people," he said. He is also a 30-year subscriber and reader of The Newsletter on Newsletters.

"As I said, when I got into the business I was very unsophisticated about publishing and I learned much about circulation and production. Though the years I gained many nuggets of information and ideas that benefitted me."

Today, in addition to the titles already mentioned, Shanken publishes two other magazines, Food Arts and Market Watch, as well as Cigar Insider newsletter. "If you aren't interested in cigars, you wouldn't have heard of it."

Vertical growth

"Five or six years back," Shanken continued, "I made a decision that I didn't want my company to grow further horizontally, adding more titles and moving into new markets, but vertically by expanding our presence in the markets we know and making our current products better."

The internet

The internet has made major changes in Shanken's operation. "Not on the business-to-business side, but consumer," he said, referring to www.thewinespectator.com. "The Wine Spectator website gets several million hits a week." He speculates that "it might be 80 to 90 percent of the total 'wine traffic' on the web."

Not only is M. Shanken Communications Inc. able to generate many print subscriptions from the web, they also sell what they call a "full access subscription" where, for $49 subscribers receive a weekly e-mail newsletter giving them advance information on new wine ratings, etc. before they appear in the newspaper (so readers can get to the store and buy while supplies last).

The website also generates "significant revenues" from advertising, Shanken said. He has a similar operation for the Cigar Afionado title, but on a smaller scale, at www.cigarafionado.com.

Hobby as well as a business Some years back The New Yorker reported that Shanken was one of the aggressive bidders (but not the winner) in an auction for a bottle of wine owned by Thomas Jefferson.

More recently, at the auction of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's effects, Shanken did purchase JFK's cigar humidor at a reported price of just a couple of Coronas short of a half-million dollars.

"I worked for Jack Kennedy in his campaign when I was a college student, Shanken explained. "Of course, I still have the humidor, as well as the bill for it."

M. Shanken Communications, 387 Park Ave. South, 8th Fl., New York, NY 10016, 212-684-4224, fax [phone], www.mshanken.com