I've been wondering what's going to happen to magazine sales.
There are 4 different monthly Land Rover magazines, for instance. These have all survived for a surprisingly long time, but how long before one of them goes?
And one could be forgiven for thinking that supercars these days are made primarily to be lent to the motoring press and featured in magazines like Car and Octane.
I have wondered for some time what proportion of exotic cars remain within the wider motor industry - e.g. retained as demonstrators, 'placed' with celebrities or owned by movers and shakers in the motoring world. A lot, I'd imagine.
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Hopefully not but there will probably be less around though I hope not because i like the variety. I also prefer paper, far less tiring on the eyes. I find it very difficult to read an extended article on a P.C screen. People said that the book is in its death throes when these ebooks like the Amazon Kindle came out but i can't see it. A well looked after hardback book will last for literally hundreds of years whereas these devices will become obsolete (remember all your files on floppy disc).Paper and archival ink s the only really foolproof storage medium.All my diaries, notes and agendas are on paper. Then there is the possibility of files getting lost corrupted. I'm sorry but I like paper in my hands, the pleasure of taking a book of the shelf and feeling paper in my hands. I think we can take this technology too far. I admit I am a Luddite. I was given an ipod for Christmas but after hours mucking about my sister kindly took it back for me and got me a camera instead, the only digital thing (apart from my laptop) that I have time for. Give me a CD anyday!
P.S i am only 31 as well!
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You can't use a laptop in the bath - unlike a good mag !
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Depends on how much content goes on the net. Most magazines have an online presence but they have to balance getting people onto their sites with how much they "steal" from the magazine on thr shelf. Nothing worse than paying a few quid for a magazine then realising the same stuff is on the net for free.
I still like magazines as you can pick then up and put them down easily, you mave have a table or two of data you can wuickly flick between. You can scribble notes.... I too hope that magazines survive.
I don't buy every weekly motoring mag going though - for me it depends on the content and some weeks both Autoexpress and Autocar have nothing of interest. I find What Car? seems to be shrinking and Top Gear borders on the fantasy sometimes with very little real-world road tests. Just my opinion.
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I love reading magazines, it's just that they cost too much. I can buy ten decent books for a tenner online, which will keep me going for ages, a decent dvd or cd for £3 or £4. We go the kids showing at the cinema on Saturday morning and it costs £3.50 for 4 of us.
I just can't justify buying a £4 magazine which I will read through in less than an hour.
I can only forsee mags becoming more expensive and many closing as people start to cut back and advertising revenue falls.
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"People said that the book is in its death throes when these ebooks like the Amazon Kindle came out but i can't see it."
That's never going to happen, there is no substitute for having a printed product in your hands. After 20 years in publishing design I'm yet to meet anyone who finds it comfortable reading large volumes off a screen.
As for paying 4 quid or more for a magazine that's a third ads, a third price lists, a third photos and the remaining 10% editorial - no thanks, never again. I used to stock up on car mags at the airports, now the only big glossy I buy is "Empire" - pricey, but solid reading. Frankly I'd rather read my wife's gossip mags, they're only a quid each, the BBC needs to rethink its pricing policy.
You're dead wrong on the ipod though mattbod, you're really missing out. Give it another go.
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Guy I know has a sort of underwater ipod thing which he listens to while swimming at the club I go to. I, conversely, treasure the short periods of utter silence it allows. All day every day, things seem to clamour for our attention and a short spell of being awake but undisturbed is a precious time for me.
Doesn't your rubber duck get huffy if you read in the bath PU? I do quite like listening to the radio in the shower though.
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I still buy Car Mechanics (more out of habit) but have issues with their approach on some of the recent servicing articles - and the letters/problems page seems redundant and limited - contrasted with posting a problem on a web forum.
I used to read Diesel Car too - in the days when seemed more technically oriented. I think its called `What Diesel` maybe now? with what seems like lots of lightweight car reviews. I don`t even lift it off the shelf to glance at it these days.
I`ve stopped buying Formula 1 and racing mags - as several web forums cover it in more detail - and without the time lag.
Edited by oilrag on 04/01/2009 at 15:58
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Read my dad's 'Feb 2009' issue of 'Which Car' over Xmas - not a great read for £4 odd, particularly the dumbed down article on 'home servicing' which had a picture of a happy couple outside a barret-box with a collection of new tools - I pity the Seat Leon they were just about to murder!
As an aside I think motoring and many other magazines used to be much better, the articles were more indepth and the reader was not treated like an idiot. My favourites from the past were 'Motorcycle Mechanics', 'Which Bike?' and the cycling magazine 'Winning'. I still enjoy re-reading these 1980's magazines.
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Maybe i'll give the ipod another go but I was trying to transfer my cd albums to the thing and I was told that I have to rip them in media player and then download some software to convert them into MP3 (half the space) and then drag in and then set up a playlist. I also found the volume on the ipod too quiet. I don't like to blast but i'm told that apple has limited it a bit too much after complaints. I will probably try again with an iphone.
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I have bought about 10 copies of selected CAR magazine for buttons on ebay and am still ploughing through them. Well worth seeking out, particularly interesting is the articles talking about the individual markets ie U.S, Germany, France. I believe Georg Kacher is the only one of the old guard still at CAR. But yes I agree about the price. If these mags were £2.00 (which is what I paid for Top Gear as a kid in the good old Blick days) more would be sold.
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The old mags were better reading, ~I agree. However, nowadays, as readership drops due to the internet, then the mags reduce staff and quality, so their quality drops, and readership thus drops further. A viscious circle is set up and the mags get worse and eventually fold. This is already happening with newspapers and other magazines.
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"I was told that I have to rip them in media player and then download some software to convert them into MP3 (half the space) and then drag in and then set up a playlist."
Sounds like gobbledygook to me. I use a Mac with itunes and it's as complicated as inserting cd and dragging the tunes into the library. You don't have to set up play lists but that is one of the cool things about it. For example, I've got a playlist for Saturday shopping, one for driving to M.I.L., one for crossing Europe, one for air guitar tunes, one for things wife likes, one for getting the kids to sleep, one for driving too fast on country lanes etc etc. It will change the way you catalogue and listen to music - brilliant in the car.
Dragging 1000 or so cds onto itunes is a huge ache in the cajones admittedly, I did a few every day for about 4 months. Haven't bought a cd for about 3 years now.
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This was a motoring mag thread so I emailed him directly to avoid discussion.... if he get an iPod (it was taken back) he now has a lot to go on... back to motoring magazines.
I used to get them then and now and via an offer get one weekly quite cheap. Still have it.
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Must admit I still get Auto Express by subscription, the direct debit automatically renews.
Usually can read it cover to cover, or certainly the bits I am interested in, in about an hour.
Being brutally honest it seems to work its way into one of the bathrooms and becomes the reading material for the week for myself and son!
Would I miss it if I cancelled it - probably not.
I used to like it for its product tests but then got suspicious that every "winner" seemed to subsequently have large adverts the following week.....
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Mea culpa but in my defence I was talking more generally about electronic media such as the ebook as well, my technophobia and how I prefer proper books. Sorry if I unintentionally hijacked the thread and thanks for the private tips Rob.
Edited by mattbod on 04/01/2009 at 23:40
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The only motoring mag I buy is Car Mechanics mainly because it of it's mechanical content, not that it's much use with a C5. The equipment reviews are useful sometimes. I used to get Practical Classics too (not that I own one) but eventually dropped that in favour of a modeling mag. The rest of the car mags don't interest me much at all, the usual reviews that seem a world away from my motoring desires and experience (obviously there's some exceptions).
Steve.
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The car mag that I liked was What Car, but I became bored with it. I feel that it has becoming increasingly predictable, frothy, and thin on information.
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Every winter I go up to the attic and dig into my decades-old collection of Motor Sport. Just reading Boddy and Jenkinson is one of the nicest ways I know to pass a long, dark evening. Hopefully I'll fall apart before they do (the magazines, that is).
It would be nice if I had bothered to keep all my old 'Cars' from the George Bishop/Setright era and 'Classic Cars' when Tony Dron was editor.
As for today's choice - forget it.
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Mike plenty of CAR Magazines from that era on fleabay for a couple of quid inc postage as not much competition for them.
I wonder daily why is everything more dumbed down than it was even ten years ago? I was horrified that kids don't even have to read a whole book for Eng Lit GCSE. There is a book out there called "Why is everything ****? " dealing with this subject: I just despair. Still some good books coming out though between the Hammond/Clarkson pulp (May is an exception), a Good one is Morris Minor: The Biography written by a guy whose name I forget but he is the Guardian's Northern writer. Vic Elford's biography came out last year as well (surely the one of the most versatile drivers ever) and it is a cracking read.
Edited by mattbod on 05/01/2009 at 16:51
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Like BillPayer I used to subscribe to Car but also thought it was the same every month and so cancelled.
I don't think anyone should really use the magazines as a guide for a purchase. They are all dominated by adverts and IMO they will not bite the hand that feeds them. Plus they only report on a short test (even their long term tests are very short) and report nothing on the actual ownership experience really. That is not just for cars but Hi-Fi, TV's etc etc.
When I want to use a guide for a purchase I use the Consumers Association and the HJ CBCB with test drive etc.
Generally I would say that a few magazines will go to the wall and the first will probably be Car.
Having said all that, I do enjoy the occasional read and when I fancy it I get a magazine out of the library and they happen to stock WhatCar.
Edited by Pendlebury on 05/01/2009 at 17:07
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That is why I liked the old CAR and more recently Top Gear in Kevin Blick's day(boy has it gone down since, Kevin now edits a Narrow Boat mag I think). If something was a nail they were scathing i.e Quentin Wilson on the Daihatsu Move: "What makes them think we will give this sort of c**p house room?". Now they have to suck up to the manufacturers to maintain advertising revenue.
Copy reduction has been reduced greatly as has been stated before. In my old CAR magazines the long term test summaries ran to about 4 pages.
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