It’s no secret that publishing is a tough place to be in right now. Amidst lower subscriptions, circulation and ad revenues, magazines have been looking for a way to stay afloat. Towards that end Condé Nast recently hired McKinsey & Company to take a look at their entire operation. The innovative Maghound subscription service launched last year but has found limited success.

I believe that a new path may lie with the magazine ordering option launched this week in the UK by The Economist called “Economist Direct.” The option will allow consumers to order the latest issue of the magazine via an SMS message; eventually orders will also be taken via Facebook and Twitter. The option is meant to attract non-subscribers who are in interested in the current week’s issue.

I found it interesting that this service offered a certain immediacy and convenience, while allowing for readers who are not interested in subscriptions. This approach is quite different to the Maghound service, which entails a subscription model, as well as a long waiting period between ordering and delivery. After choosing their magazines, Maghound subscribers then wait until the next publication cycle to receive an issue. Ordering the current issue is not an option, even though paradoxically the publications are advertised on the site with the current issue’s cover.

I believe that Maghound is missing an opportunity. A single issue’s value holds over weekly or monthly basis. A publisher has that entire period to conduct the marketing, sales and delivery process. If Amazon can deliver a book within a week, Maghound should be able to deliver an issue as well.

By fulfilling orders for current or specific issues, Maghound’s would effectively offer a magazine-on-demand service. Customers could peruse current issues online and order them for priority delivery. Maghound could also email their customers on a weekly basis, informing them of any upcoming issues they could potentially be interested in.

While this sort of on-demand service might not be viable with weeklies it could certainly work with monthly publications. I also concede it would be far quicker for a consumer to buy a current issue at their local newstand, but but Maghound offers 304 publications. Chances are that their local stand or 7-Eleven won’t stock all those titles. By offering this on-demand service only to existing customers, Maghound could also offer the issues at a discount, below the newstand price.

There are many ways this service could be implemented. Perhaps the priority delivery could be free for three issues per month. Perhaps even the three issues would be free, if the customer already had three existing subscriptions with Maghound. In any case, I believe that the Economist Direct service offers a certain value that Maghound lacks, an option well worth looking into for U.S. magazines.

Update: The Economist has now launched their Economist Direct service in New York City.