The iOS app, pending improvements, still might catch on, but if it doesn’t, we’ll have to figure out how to try to keep those subscribers as we fold them back into the original distribution system. We’re also in talks with an established indie publishing house, trying to figure out whether doing a handful of print and e-book Emily Books originals in collaboration could make financial sense for both us and them; I’m hopeful, but when I look at the profit and loss statements they’ve given us for reference, I get less so. The idea that print availability is the only difference between selling a few hundred and a few thousand books seems like a stretch. Then again, we have a built-in base. “Two hundred people who love you are more important than 2 million people who like you,” some startup guy or other once said. Startup guys say a lot of stuff, though.

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As scandals engulfed the National Football League, The New Yorker magazine’s cover that appeared on newsstands last week showed a player being chased down the field by police officers.

During the height of the demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., last month, its cover depicted protesters with their hands raised, illuminated by the harsh glare of floodlights.

And early this year, as the Winter Olympics got underway in Sochi, Russia, the cover lampooned Vladimir V. Putin as a figure skater being assessed by five judges — all of them Mr. Putin.

Those three images, among others, signal a shift in The New Yorker’s cover art toward the topical and provocative.

For most of its existence, the magazine specialized in covers that its current editor, David Remnick, characterized, with some notable exceptions, as “a lot of abandoned beach houses, bowls of fruit and covers reflecting the change of seasons.”

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