How do large retail bookstores such as Barnes & Noble or Borders
choose which magazines to carry?  Is there a master list which comes
down from the head office and titles they are required to carry or do
they have the ability to decide for themselves at the store by store
level?  Also, who decides which local magazines to carry?

This may be of interest to you:

"First, B&N has designed its magazine section as a major in-store
destination to enhance customers? in-store experience. The section is
always to the right of the front door, close to the café, where it
will encourage browsing and lingering. It has proprietary, high
quality, fixtures. B&N offers a broad and deep selection tailored to
each store (between 1700 and 3,000 titles per store chosen from a base
of 5000). It also aggressively cross-merchandises: computer magazines
next to computer books; cooking magazines next to cookbooks, and so
on. It also uses highly visible promotion fixtures.

Second, B&N has created a powerful direct delivery system that gets
delivery direct to each store from specialty wholesalers and uses its
own in-store merchandisers.
 
Next, B&N aggressively leverages information for operational and
competitive advantage. It combines scanned point-of-sale data with
local market intelligence and feedback from each store. This enables
B&N to customize each store?s layout, optimize adjacencies, optimize
assortment store-by-store, manage draw levels at a store and chain
level. B&N is one of the only leading retailers that successfully uses
POS data to drive an automated replenishment system. The results of
this careful thought and planning are impressive: magazine sales at
B&N have marginally outpaced overall growth; out-of-stocks are
extraordinarily low; sell-through levels are the highest in the
industry, at levels to make you salivate. Barnes & Noble is truly a
leader in this industry. Their model may not work in other classes of
trade, but there are elements that other retailers should emulate."

http://www.magazine.org/press_room/Speeches/11332.cfm?TYPE=printthispage

hello....i used to be a "periodicals clerk" at borders- i can tell you
that at that time (about five years ago), there was a master list of
magazines that all borders stores were required to carry. you could
futz on the number of issues received each month depending on how well
they were selling, but none of those particular titles could be
deleted. the list included the usual suspects- time, people, national
geographic, forbes- pretty much all the mainstream titles you could
think of- and if i remember correctly, the list of titles numbered
around 200.
as far as the lesser-known titles go- there was a little room for
discretion. if one of the major suppliers carried a title you thought
would work well in that particular store, you could get permission and
order a few copies. also, i seem to remember my store carried two or
three co-op titles- delivered and picked up each month by the
independent publishers. those were more "regional" in nature...

sorry! just wanted to clarify- that was 2,000 titles, not 200...thanks!

Almost all bookstores (including the biggies) buy magazines as a
package from a magazine distributor. The distributor chooses
magazines, and develops several different "packages." Some large, some
small, some only well known magazines, some with lesser knowns ones,
etc. Then the bookstore (chain or otherwise) choose which package they
want to carry.

Kriswrite