Magazine editors stay up at night worrying about who or what to put on a magazine’s cover to make it sell at the newsstand. The trouble is nobody knows, and a cover winner can turn into a cover loser within months. Last year Sarah Ferguson, Britain’s “Fergie,” was the best-selling cover for Prevention magazine in February, but she was the worst-selling cover of the year for Ladies’ Home Journal by June. Go figure.

When it comes to the celebrity weeklies, love in bloom does just fine. The best seller for People was the July 12 issue, which featured “Britney Spears Engaged.” Jennifer Lopez’s marriage to Marc Anthony on June 21 moved copies for US Weekly. But a mate-less “Britney Spears (Out of Control)” on January 19 was US’s worst of the year. Renee Zellweger was a flop for both Elle in November and Glamour in August. Renee, we could have told you that dark hair was a big mistake!

Jude Law was the worst of the year for Premiere in March and Vanity Fair in October; maybe Chris Rock was right in dissing Law at the Oscars. Other losers include Arnold Schwarzenegger, who did nothing for Men’s Journal in January and Howard Dean, who – not surprisingly- didn’t move copies for Rolling Stone in February, just around the time he was losing the Iowa caucuses.

For those magazines that don’t use celebrities on the cover, certain subjects have special appeal. The bestseller for Woman’s Day, as usual, was the Christmas issue. For Men’s Health it was in January, when readers were advised to “Jump-Start Your Life.”

Steve Cohn of Media Industry Newsletter, who works hard to make all those editors admit the best and the worst, told me, “I don’t think the worst selling covers are really mistakes. Sometimes, they are great stories that editors should be proud of. But they just may not have the mass appeal. And sometimes it is beyond the editors’ control, especially with newsweeklies. When their covers reflect a compelling moment they always sell well. I’m sure this week’s covers about the death of the Pope will be bestsellers.”

Still, week after week, editors keep trying to be creative. At the end of March, for example, Entertainment Weekly sent out their weekly issue with five different covers, featuring the various stars of “Desperate Housewives” and asking readers to pick their favorite. Entertainment Weekly then followed that the next week with covers of six different “Star Wars” characters. An EW spokeswoman says, when they have multiple covers, they simply can’t keep track of which sells best. They just hope they all sell. Personally, I’m partial to Lynette and Yoda.

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You’ve heard of “American Idol,” now be prepared for “American Best Seller.” The result of a unique multimedia collaboration that merges television, books, and viewers’ voting in an entirely new way, it’s the brainchild of Carrie Cook, a former ABC senior producer. “I have always been drawn to people’s stories,” she said. “I know that many people have amazing, inspiring stories that could be of great interest but very few of them have the connection to find a publisher or a national audience.”

To remedy that, Ms. Cook – with the help of agents Richard Pine and Matthew Guma of Inkwell Management – teamed up ABC’s ” Good Morning America” and Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The result is “The Story of My Life,” a complex, six-month-long partnership, which will end with the publication of a memoir currently being chosen by the GMA audience.

The collaboration began in November, when GMA viewers were invited to submit 600-word entries that told the story of their lives. Ms. Cook and a group of friends winnowed down the 6,000 entries to 50 then finally down to 15. Those were read by a panel of big-name judges, including best-selling authors Mary Higgins Clark, Mary Karr, and James McBride, who picked three finalists.

The finalists underwent background checks to make sure their sometimes incredible stories were true. Then they were paired with professional writers who, in six weeks, turned their stories into book-length manuscripts. “We had to have to manuscripts ready even before the finalists told their stories on TV and viewers voted,” Ms Cook explained. “That’s because we wanted to have a book in the stores as soon as we announced the winner. We didn’t want any time lag. And, yes, it is hard to have even one manuscript written in six weeks, but we managed to have three done. And they’re very good.”

Ryan Harbage, the Simon and Schuster editor, said, “James McBride said that the project has a circus quality to it, and he’s right. But when I read the manuscripts I was delighted. The stories are amazing and inspiring. They stand on their own.”

During the last week of March, the finalists – Betty Ferguson, a mother who forgave her daughter’s killer; Mercedes Florencia Brudnicki, a woman whose brother was trapped in Castro’s Cuba; and Farah Ahmedi, an Afghan girl who lost her leg to a landmine – told their stories in five-minute segments on GMA. Voting continues online until April 8 and the winner will be announced on April 22.

On that day,175,000 copies of the winning memoir will be in the stores, and the winner will appear on “20/20” to tell her story and promote the book. It is a publicity platform and a print order that would delight even well-known authors. “Nobody has ever done anything like this before,” Mr. Harbarge said. But he believes in the future there will be more cooperation between publishing and reality television. “Everyone in publishing is looking at ways to move faster,” he said. “Information moves faster than ever and publishers have to adapt.”

Finalist Betty Ferguson told me that she’s been very happy to take part in the contest: “It has been wonderful to have to story of my life written down so that my family can read it, and my children can understand my life better. So, win or lose, I already feel like a winner.”

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Most magazine publishers don’t have to put their money where their mouth is. But Larry Warsh, the publisher of Museums Magazine, the magazine that reports on the museum and art gallery scene in New York, has done just that. He sold part of his art collection, which included works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francisco Clemente, and Keith Haring, to help start editions that focus on museums in cites around the country. This spring marks the relaunch of the Museums editions that focus on Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Texas, and San Francisco.

“I was always interested in art,” he told me. “I hung out with a lot of artists downtown in the early 1980s and began collecting their work. And the works went up in value. I also was always interested in educating people about how to view art when they went to museums and galleries. That’s why I started this magazine.”

The magazine was bought in 2004 by LTB holding, which also owns Art & Auction. A new advertising director, David Fine, has recently come on board. Mr. Warsh said, ‘We think this magazine should be very attractive to advertisers who want to reach that upscale audience that regularly visits museums and galleries.” It has a controlled circulation of 125,000 that is sent to museum mailing lists. Recently the magazine has brought in ads from “new advertisers that include Wachovia, Cadillac, UBS Paine Webber, and American Express.”

The current New York edition highlights the Basquiat show at the Brooklyn Museum. That exhibit contains pieces that were formerly owned by Mr. Warsh, who still has one of the largest Basquiat collections in the United States. His tip for today’s collectors: “I am really interested in contemporary Chinese art, work by their very top painters. Now, I think, that would be a very good investment.”