It's a specialty publishing company. Every month they do small book-sized magazine on topics of general interest (rather than news in particular); most of the articles are weak and shallow but are good conversation pieces. Each issue also includes a condensed version of a recently popular book.

They use the magazine subscription to advertise other things, particularly lotteries, but also to sell books, ranging from dictionaries to wildlife photography to DIY guides etc. The books are sometimes extremely good - of course for every book you like/are interested in, they offer you another 9 that you probably couldn't care less about.

Like another poster, I am nostalgic about them - I grew up outside the US, and found the magazine/books fascinating. By the age of about 15 or so I'd already grown out of them, but they were great for the 10-15 reading level, unless you like communism of course (in joke).

They were pretty big in their time, the fact that they're going belly up is a good indication that the writing is really on the wall for publishers.

It is similar to a small intestine.