Yachting monthly Feb

All thse pictures, wise words of advice & product tests etc for 50p/page-ish. seems quite reasonable to me. Plus I have bought the mags purely for the ads in the past - less likelyto now, thanks to t'interweb & googlies.
 
Dont know whether this applies to the likes of YBW but I once got into a long conversation with a guy who was producing a motorcycle magazine. I was very surprised to be told that the cover prioce of the mag did no more than cover the distribution costs ie the margin of the wholesaler and retailer and reuturns etc. His magazine was completely non viable without a lot of advertising.
 
I read it in the main library in Bristol where they keep current plus 12 months of back issues. Or just have a quick glance through in W H Smiths and be selective about which issues you buy...
 
Worst ads:articles ratio I have seen in 20 years of reading YM.

My own fault ,over the last couple of weeks,what with all the snow ,I have been so bored that I looked at some mags, from 1995-2001 and enjoyed them so much that I stupidly went out and bought Feb 2010.
What a load of rubbish. A race prepared contessa 32 against a off the shelf Bavaria.was the best part .The rest hardly worth reading ,yet i enjoyed the old mags What the hell gone wrong with YM ?

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My own fault ,over the last couple of weeks,what with all the snow ,I have been so bored that I looked at some mags, from 1995-2001 and enjoyed them so much that I stupidly went out and bought Feb 2010.
What a load of rubbish. A race prepared contessa 32 against a off the shelf Bavaria.was the best part .The rest hardly worth reading ,yet i enjoyed the old mags What the hell gone wrong with YM ?

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Symptomatic of the saturation advertising and dumming down that's endemic in so many things in this day and age and all you can do is have as little to do with it as possible...:)
 
There isn't any :) which is why I cancelled my subscription. Too many adverts with too little decent editorial. I shall miss reading Libby Purve's 7 Tom Cunliffe's columns which were the most interesting of them, but as for the rest it is getting worse and worse. IPC seem to be losing the plot very quickly, which is a great shame because their yachting titles used to be authorative, interesting and relevant
 
The Daily Mail costs £19.20/mth, the Times twice that. Is the ads/editorial ratio any better - no its worse!
 
Quote/ Dont know whether this applies to the likes of YBW but I once got into a long conversation with a guy who was producing a motorcycle magazine. I was very surprised to be told that the cover prioce of the mag did no more than cover the distribution costs ie the margin of the wholesaler and retailer and reuturns etc. His magazine was completely non viable without a lot of advertising./Unquote

True - that's why all the specialist mags are having such a hard time of it whilst advertising is so sparse in this recession.

I remember times when the ads/ed ratio was 60/40 back in the days when the chandlers took 8 pages each!
 
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A fairly frequent topic of discussion here. My answer is that they have abandoned their traditional audience of cruising sailors and have tried to head upmarket to the expensive marina dwellers who are already perfectly well served by Yachting World.

Yachting World is much better value in terms of editorial quality. Don't know about the ed/ad ratio but I suspect it could be close to the YM issue quoted which is closing up on 50/50. When I was editing magazines, a 60/40 ratio was considered acceptable because, as has been said, without the ads the enterprise would not be viable.

Speaking as someone on the edge of the three score and ten age range I guess we can bang on about things not being as good as it was "in the old days." But,just like another poster here I have a stock of older copies of YM and PBO that I occasionally leaf through and the evidence is clear, the quality of the journalism ( with some notable exceptions) has deteriorated.

All the bright, trendy and snappy artwork and layout does not conceal the fact that the quality writing delivered by ( among others) the late Geoff Pack is not there any more, at least in YM and PBO. All too often an article promises much, but fails to deliver substance -- a lightweight skim over the subject that leaves many questions begging answers. I still think that Yachting World , despite its emphasis on up-market and superyachts and racing, still fields the best yachting editorial around.
 
The adverts. are often the best bit, boats for sale changes every month, but I despair of companies like Jimmy Green who has been running the same two pages since I can remember. If they changed their ad. occasionally it would be looked at.
I think PBO is the best of IPCs stable, their boat tests are more rigorous and enquiring and the technical stuff is usually quite well researched, a good example to compare are the reports on that French boat that did not heel, PBO were the only one to explain exactly what was going on.
The editorial content today, is probably not much different either, though there is nowadays a bit more of a problem with not checking facts, they do their best. Journalism is not the career it was, so is not going to inspire excellence. The difference is that nearly every one on here 'has been there, done that' so we are now a lot harder to impress, some of even know more about some things or places than the journo. who spends two days on it. Another problem is the long drag to publication which means that they can no longer tackle news or current issues except in the most general way, their info on things like E borders or tax on diesel is usually out of date before it hits the streets.
Young sailors now don't learn from boats or magazine articles, they have to go on courses where they can be taught. We need a return of innocence, to the time when we were still learning to tie a bowline from a PBO booklet, then we could be impressed. I am heading that way and as the memory fades all the stuff will suddenly be fresh and new and hopefully interesting again, like it was 40 years ago.
 
The adverts. are often the best bit, boats for sale changes every month, but I despair of companies like Jimmy Green who has been running the same two pages since I can remember. If they changed their ad. occasionally it would be looked at.
I think PBO is the best of IPCs stable, their boat tests are more rigorous and enquiring and the technical stuff is usually quite well researched, a good example to compare are the reports on that French boat that did not heel, PBO were the only one to explain exactly what was going on.
The editorial content today, is probably not much different either, though there is nowadays a bit more of a problem with not checking facts, they do their best. Journalism is not the career it was, so is not going to inspire excellence. The difference is that nearly every one on here 'has been there, done that' so we are now a lot harder to impress, some of even know more about some things or places than the journo. who spends two days on it. Another problem is the long drag to publication which means that they can no longer tackle news or current issues except in the most general way, their info on things like E borders or tax on diesel is usually out of date before it hits the streets.
Young sailors now don't learn from boats or magazine articles, they have to go on courses where they can be taught. We need a return of innocence, to the time when we were still learning to tie a bowline from a PBO booklet, then we could be impressed. I am heading that way and as the memory fades all the stuff will suddenly be fresh and new and hopefully interesting again, like it was 40 years ago.


If what you say is correct ,why do the mags from 10 years past still interest me ive "been there done that " spent two weeks going through all these back copies and enjoyed. This Feb one was ****


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Why do people spend £4:30 just to read advertising when you can go online, get far better choice & far cheaper prices.
 
Why do people spend £4:30 just to read advertising when you can go online, get far better choice & far cheaper prices.
Because you can read the printed ads more or less anywhere - on the loo, on the train, in bed, you name it - without having to lug a laptop around.
 
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