With its ultra-slick fashion journals and influential news weeklies, New York has a deserved reputation as the world leader in magazine publishing.

But unbeknown to many Southern Californians, an astonishing number of magazines call Orange County home. More than 250 separate magazines are based here, a figure that includes entertainment guides, magazines published for club members or for onetime events, and some tabloids, according to James Hamilton, a Costa Mesa management consultant who maintains one of the largest magazine databases in the state.

The range of publications is best viewed at the offices. Because magazine journalists are often enthusiasts in the very topics they report on, their workplaces tend to take on the personality of the subject matter. At Irvine's Cat Fancy magazine, cats have been known to prowl the halls, at times leaping quietly but alarmingly onto editors' desks and scattering papers.

And, virtually every writer at the Orange County surf magazines is a hard-core surfer. Visitors to these offices find surfboards propped against walls, innumerable surf photographs tacked onto bulletin boards and enough sand in the carpets to fill a bucket.

Indeed, Orange County journalists quietly produce an estimated 15% of all magazines in the western United States. Combining to form a $200-million industry, more than 100 county companies publish magazines as their sole business or as an adjunct to their business.

The county owes its sizable publishing industry in part to its proximity to the mammoth publishing scene in Los Angeles. Hundreds of support businesses such as typesetters and color separators have set up camp in Southern California. Also important is the region's overflowing talent pool of writers, photographers, graphic designers and illustrators.

"Publishers in Orange County find it easy to hire people who have good experience, because many would rather work here than in L.A.," said Allan Halcrow of the Western Publications Assn., an industry group representing 650 magazines in 14 western states.

The county's magazines are as diverse as the readers they target.

There are the high-visibility newsstand titles such as Road & Track, Orange Coast and Surfing. And there is Entrepreneur, whose bright red logo on its building next to the San Diego Freeway in Irvine is seen by thousands of motorists each day.