It's just that, you see, luxury publishers sometimes like to have a nice little chat with their editors.

"I'll have a client and they'll say, 'Hey, by the way, do you know that there's a new watch we're launching in January of '09 in Geneva,'" said [Stephen Kong, the publisher of Modern Luxury magazines]. "And I'll say, 'Oh, really? What's the watch?' That information I can bring back to Rich and say, 'Hey, by the way, I heard about this really hot thing, you may want to check it out.' But it's really for the best when you do not have the pressure of being so tied to the editorial."

In the early days of his publication, Mr. Semilof hired editors with "great résumés," but they sometimes could be a pain, so he found a new method for recruiting. "Basically, we have a couple that come in as interns and they start working and then we see their writing, and then Stephanie works with them and then I review them, and then they start moving forward. We just brought a young lady on that was an intern, and now she's working, and one worked at Teen Vogue, and another one worked for her school newspaper."