The Press: Glowing Sunset

Sunset magazine is a sort of Western-accented Better Homes & Gardens. A monthly, Sunset tells readers how to 1) barbecue pig in their backyard; 2) cook such exotic edibles as poi, geoduck and abalone; 3) build their bedrooms around the swimming pool; 4) keep a riding horse in the backyard.

This week the magazine gave in to its own sales talk, and moved from a drab San Francisco office building to a new, $500,000 ranch-house building in suburban Menlo Park, with glass partitions, barbecue pits, foot-thick adobe walls, floors of Indian-made tile, beams, acres of gardens. The staff, who mostly moved with it, prepared to welcome 10,000 friends at an open house that included a barbecue in their plant’s radiant-heated patio.

Sunset could well afford to move; it is by far the most successful U.S. regional magazine. Circulation has hit 500,000 (most of it in Pacific coast states), and is still growing. Sunset expects to earn $350,000 this year before taxes.

Dark Morning. For its rosy glow, Sunset can thank the super-salesmanship of a rangy Kansan named Laurence William (“Larry”) Lane, 61. In the ’20s, Lane was ad manager for Meredith Publications (Better Homes & Gardens) when he came across Sunset, then a money-losing literary magazine with about 60,000 readers. Lane bought Sunset for $60,000, and turned it into a regional how-to-do-it magazine on gardening, building, decorating, food, travel, etc. Sunset ignored Hollywood, fashions and the movies. Says Lane: “We couldn’t compete with the national magazines on things like movies, and they couldn’t compete with us on our regional how-to-do-it articles.”

Lane’s idea paid off. Sunset went into the black in 1937, and has stayed there. While Lane keeps an overall eye on the magazine, son Bill Jr., 31, is assistant managing editor, and son Melvin, 29, is production manager.

High Noon. Sunset prints three editions, often with different copy, for the northern, central and southern parts of the coast. It has also started republishing Sunset articles in book form, and has sold more than 1,300,000 books.

Not all the how-to-do-it ideas are so successful. Once, the garden editor recommended a chemical for cleaning fish pools, but neglected to say that the fish should be removed first. Sunset desks were heaped with angry letters from owners of dead fish. Another article suggested a cleaner for waffle irons which, it turned out, removed the finish. When his magazine errs, Lane makes it up to the victims. Says he: “I’ll bet I’ve bought more goldfish and waffle irons than anyone else in the country.”