• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, October 8, 2013

The print advertising market isn’t exactly booming, but that’s not deterring publishers from rolling out new titles, according to MediaFinder, a property of Oxbridge Communications that maintains a database of U.S. and Canadian periodicals.

Altogether, MediaFinder tallied 138 new magazine launches in the first nine months of 2013, compared to just 45 magazines closing. Both figures are down from the same period in 2012, when 181 new magazines launched and 61 magazines closed.

The most popular categories for new magazine launches were food and regional interest, where new titles unveiled this year included Goodcents Cooking, Edible Long Island and Our Wisconsin. Other new titles include Celebrate with Woman’s World,Smosh, Conrad Magazine, Milieu, Imaging Edge and Popular Noise.

It’s worth noting that some of these new titles are custom publications sponsored by big brands: Conrad Magazine, for example, was recently launched by Hilton Hotels and Resorts, while Imaging Edge is produced by Bonnier for Sony.

On the closing side, the list of magazines shuttered in the first nine months of 2013 includes Maryland Life and Home Theater.

Among business-to-business magazines, 17 new titles launched compared to 25 in the same period of 2012, while 11 B2B titles closed, compared to 12 last year. New launches includes G-code Magazine, while the list of titles closing included AM News and Game Developer.

Another interesting trend has recently seen the revival (albeit often in limited form) of titles that were closed during the depths of the economic downturn. Prominent examples of big magazines brought back from the dead include Conde Nast’s young-skewing shelter title Domino and Rodale’s men’s lifestyle-fitness title Best Life.