We here at Radar have long been fascinated with the question, "How do you create a successful magazine cover?" Our answer: Put someone's head on someone else's body. It seems other magazines, however, have differing philosophies. WWD posed the question to a variety of leading editors and discovered the following:

Kate White, Cosmopolitan: Cleavage! But not all cleavage. "It's not about big breasts like it used to be. It's just about showing off your breasts, whether they're double As or whatever." As for the proprietor of said funbags, White says it should be "someone that you'd love to drive cross country with, you're not going to end up arrested with, and with whom you're not going to get bored." And how does she know if a cover will sell? "If I dance with it, or if I feel the urge to make out with it, then I'm like, 'Wow, it works!'"

Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair: "There is no science to this."

David Zinczenko, Men's Health: Surprisingly, rock-hard abs and giant pecs are not high on the Zinc's list. He claims a cover subject should be shirtless "if the guy's in the water, or there's a good reason to do it, but as we become a more lifestyle-oriented magazine, it's sometimes better to show that off with a guy who is wearing a shirt."

Kristin van Ogtrop, managing editor of Real Simple: "Bathrooms don't do well."

Linda Wells, Allure: Hair. "Not only abundant hair, but the blowing hair is good for us." Length is not important, but if Wells were to use a photo of a girl with "really tight, pulled-back style or a hat," she might as well be committing "career suicide."

Ann Shoket, Seventeen: Pieces of flair. It seems ADD-suffering teens are like fish drawn to the glint of a metal hook, and so "every cover has to have the doodad"—a piece of jewelry, a hat, scarf, or accessory that grabs the reader's attention.

Larry Hackett, managing editor of People: It was founding editor Dick Stolley who created the set of rules that still dictate cover selection today: "Young is better than old. Pretty is better than ugly. Rich is better than poor. Movies are better than music. Music is better than television. Television is better than sports ... and anything is better than politics." Today, Hackett says that People relies on "Cans of navy bean soup" to get through slow news weeks—packages like "The World's Richest Teens" or the "Half Their Size" franchise. But too much re-packaging is no good: "When they see those roundups, they say, 'Hmm, they really don't have anything this week.' You have to make them yummy enough that people want to buy them."