Yachting Monthly

[Sandyman]

Afraid I'm with the majority here. I used to subscribe, but got tired of articles such as "How to winter lay up" being recycled (well, that was my perception - if not recycled then re-examined frequently). YM are not alone though. Hill walking magazines such as 'Trail' have also lost my support owing to similar characteristics.

Tales of incompetence are also tiring after a while...

However, credit where credit's due. The Crash boat series was innovative and educational. Excellent work IMHO.

I have never understood, why IPC don't try push ahead with new forms of publishing. They don't appear to capitalise on these fora at all - a huge asset going to waste. Instead we have an uninspiring, 'out of the box' vanilla forum, that appears to be very much run on a hobby basis. I want to be able to watch / listen to and read high quality content via e-readers, tablet pc's, podcasts etc - not just on printed media. I'd like to comment on / discuss articles in-situ. I believe paper magazines are in permenant decline - and unless the incumbents adapt quickly to properly embrace new technologies and a new audience, they'll get left behind.

I would suspect the reason for that is in convincing advertisers to pay for space on an on-line publication. Also folks reluctance it would seem to pay for on-line subscriptions which for some reason they seem to think they should get for free. No one seems to have found a satisfactory way of doing this yet.
The old days & ways have gone. Money men & the advertisers rule.

 

[Boomshanka]

The didn't have to pay for my pork pies back then!!!

Fair point

 

[Achillesheel]

I too mourn the passing of the textured cover, it felt like a quality magazine back then.

I guess its all a question of why do you buy a mag at all? Is it because you need to know how to lay up your boat for the winter/service your outboard and a magazine is your only means of accessing such knowledge,

or is it because you want to have something to read each month of general interest to you as a sailor?

I feel that YM fits the latter category very well, I enjoy the cruising articles, and the "disasters" -although I try to hide these from SWMBO. I often get something from the skippers tips, and the longer "how to" articles. I am less enthused by the equipment tests, I don't think I have ever seen anything tested until,after I have bought it.

 

[KREW2]

I have been buying YM every month for about 35 years.

I have accepted the slow change from truly beautiful photos on the front cover in the 1970s/80s to very average ones now.

Maybe, if Snooks goes off galavanting again, we can get Lakesailor to provide a few cover shots.

 

[fireball]

+1

The clutted up front is self defeating advertising. The element of mystery on the old mags made me pick up and take home , now i know whats inside the comic , no reason to buy .

It's like all the documentary shows where they tell you whats coming up, then show you, then summarise it - so you're only watching new content for a 3rd of the length of the proggy ..
Well - we don't worry much as it's usually recorded so we can just skip it ..

I agree with the sentiment - too much verbage a) spoils the picture and b) tells us too much of the content.
With a bit more mystique to the content at least we're more intrigued by the mag.

Go on Snooks - tell em to stop scrawling over your nice pictures ...

 

[A1Sailor]

What a lovely picture of a lovely yacht!
1. Is that Ben Nevis in the background?
2. Who took it?
3. Did the yacht owner get paid image rights?

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

The cover photo has to have room for the coverlines, it's a fact of life. If I want my images on the cover of magazines I have to accept that some wordsmith will write all over them. Luckily they don't get to write over my images which are on our walls at home

The facts of life can change.

Perhaps the wordsmith should be told that sailors would be attracted by the photo and would then open the cover to see what was inside.

 

[NealB]

The facts of life can change.

Perhaps the wordsmith should be told that sailors would be attracted by the photo and would then open the cover to see what was inside.

But not SO many pictures inside, please!

I used to buy the mags to read.

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

It's like all the documentary shows where they tell you whats coming up, then show you, then summarise it - so you're only watching new content for a 3rd of the length of the proggy ..

Go on Snooks - tell em to stop scrawling over your nice pictures ...

Actually it is only a quarter as the first part is showing you what you saw last time, and the last part of the programme is showing you what they are going to show you the next time.

To summarise:-

What you saw
What you will see soon
You see it
What you have just seen
What you will see next time.

Dumbing down broadcasting for people with the attention span of goldfish.
Cheaper to film though.

 

[RivalRedwing]

I was so depressed after my mega exposure in PBO that they decided not to put the image of the fat old bloke river sailing a rubbish boat with bicycles bungeed to the foredeck

I am sure that it would have flown off the shelves
this is the image they missed

http://www.keepturningleft.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/P1040966.jpg

You are probably not the sort of customer the mag is trying to attract... er... hang on a minute... what is the magazine called....
The lack of lifejacket was probably the final straw..

 

[fireball]

Actually it is only a quarter as the first part is showing you what you saw last time, and the last part of the programme is showing you what they are going to show you the next time.
<snip>
Dumbing down broadcasting for people with the attention span of goldfish.
Cheaper to film though.

Ah - yes, sorry, my mistake ... forgot the "last time/next time" slots ... it's like picking up a part read book and reading the last page of the previous chapter, reading for a bit, then the first page of the next chapter ...
not as bad as SWMBO though - she always reads the last few pages of the book before starting at the beginning ... she likes to know how it ends up first ... daft!

 

[snooks]

Maybe, if Snooks goes off galavanting again, we can get Lakesailor to provide a few cover shots.

Wot? Like this?

 

[snooks]

But not SO many pictures inside, please!

Somone else to scrub off the Chrissie card list....

 

[snooks]

What a lovely picture of a lovely yacht!
1. Is that Ben Nevis in the background?
2. Who took it?
3. Did the yacht owner get paid image rights?

Thank you
1.No, it's the mountains around Kylesku, right country though
2.Me
3.Well I got paid for the image as it was taken while I wasn't working

If the boat is in a public place, like out on the water it can be photographed and used for editorial use. If it was your boat and you wrote into YM, (if they owned the copyright) you'd usually get a high res image to do anything with but resell If it was taken by someone else (say we got the image from a picture library) we'd put you in contact wit the photographer/library.

 

[NealB]

Somone else to scrub off the Chrissie card list....

Don't get me wrong...some pictures are great.

In my opinion though, I like reading something in depth...I don't need every little thing to be illustrated.

 

[dylanwinter]

making on-line pay

"I have never understood, why IPC don't try push ahead with new forms of publishing. They don't appear to capitalise on these fora at all - a huge asset going to waste. Instead we have an uninspiring, 'out of the box' vanilla forum, that appears to be very much run on a hobby basis. I want to be able to watch / listen to and read high quality content via e-readers, tablet pc's, podcasts etc - not just on printed media. I'd like to comment on / discuss articles in-situ. I believe paper magazines are in permenant decline - and unless the incumbents adapt quickly to properly embrace new technologies and a new audience, they'll get left behind. "

"I would suspect the reason for that is in convincing advertisers to pay for space on an on-line publication. Also folks reluctance it would seem to pay for on-line subscriptions which for some reason they seem to think they should get for free. No one seems to have found a satisfactory way of doing this yet.
The old days & ways have gone. Money men & the advertisers rule. "


having spent the past three years attempting to make on-line sailing content pay....

I can confirm that it is an uphill struggle.

people think that everything on-line should be free

and nothing wrong with that sentiment because there is lots of great stuff on line for free


but getting people to click on the pay button is a bit tough given the millions of ways of not paying


then there is advertising of course - I used to get a enough money from the amazon link referral fees to cover the costs of batteries and make a contribution towards the costs of drowned cameras

but ad-blockers have put paid to that - amazon revenue is down from £50 a month to about £8.

The other advertisers such as Salty John bring in about £20 a quarter

the advert for the folding dinghy has brough in $8

In-line adverts inserted into the videos come in at about $1 per thousand

currently KTL films are being watched at the rate of about 3,000 a day

$3

as for the IPC experience

the biggest hitting crash test boat film was 30,000 hits

or $30 - not enough to cover the petrol costs for snooks let alone all the other hacks and safety blokes.

let us scale things up and assume that a fictitious on-line video mag such at PBO might have ten films a month on the web

circulation of 30,000 for the mag so assume the same for the films (big assumption)


300,000 hits a month (in their dreams) giving an income of $300

so that does not go very far towards snooks pork pie allowance



it is one of the reasons why I am throwing in the towell on the subscriptions on KTL

I am slowly moving all the films over to free services (youtube and blip] and will post them on the website.

The few remaining subscribers who are interested in High definition can continue to download the films for a subscription that will help to cover the server costs.

that way I can greatly reduce my server and bandwidth costs and also give some money in to Google/youtube who behave as though they are short of money.

It will also mean that people can blame google for their slow landlines rather than me.

Interestingly after the PBO item website traffic at KTL doubled for a short while but no new subscriptions bought - most people came to the website - looked at the free films and then went away.

I did sell about 50 dvd sets off the back of the PBO item - netting me around £500.

PBO paid me £400 for the four page item about river sailing


So it seems to me, on my limited experience, that the connection between print and on-line is very tenuous

but the link between print and DVds is slightly stronger

Of course it might be because the market for films made by an ugly bloke in an ugly old boat are very limited and other DVds might sell much better.

YMs best hitting film is 200,000 of a ship hitting a bridge

http://youtu.be/Hdok8Aa-eH8


the next biggest hitter is some moody boat porn at 70,000

http://youtu.be/0yUaQ0sxpTI

you do make decent money when you get up to the millions of hits

$1000 per million

so this film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDyx0JyHelo

would have netted the owner $17,000 dollars

although it didn't

Dylan

 

[dylanwinter]

I could walk

You are probably not the sort of customer the mag is trying to attract... er... hang on a minute... what is the magazine called....
The lack of lifejacket was probably the final straw..

the nene is never more than three feet deep at the top

so I can walk to the shore - actually probably jump ashore

you are right though....

to make up for it I always wear a life jacket in bed

Dylan

 

[RivalRedwing]

the nene is never more than three feet deep at the top

so I can walk to the shore - actually probably jump ashore

you are right though....

to make up for it I always wear a life jacket in bed

Dylan

I have a fond memory of watching a chap calling for a radio check when they were motoring along the middle reaches of the River Deben, which struck me as a little unnecessary.




For the pedants... yes I appreciate he was probably heading out to sea about an hour later and a radio check is a key part of some peoples safety protocol...

 

[temptress]

We keep buying them.........

I have been buying YM every month for about 35 years.

I have accepted the slow change .....this months edition is very close indeed to stopping me buying it again:
......

Well I too have been buying YM for longer that I remember. I stopped my subscription when I could get the latest edition from the newsagents BEFORE my subscription edition arrived a few weeks later (even in the UK).

However I still buy both YM and PBO almost every month and at least one every month despite the content often being largely the same . I occasionally buy YW, a no-longer IPC title and a never-owned by IPC one as well.

Otherwise what would I read. I sometimes buy Australian and even US yachting mags but they just don't seem to do it for me. If we don't buy them then we will not have anything, Snooks would be out of a job and we would lose this forum.....

And so we carry on regardless.

 

[temptress]

Thank you
1.No, it's the mountains around Kylesku, right country though
2.Me
3.Well I got paid for the image as it was taken while I wasn't working

If the boat is in a public place, like out on the water it can be photographed and used for editorial use. If it was your boat and you wrote into YM, (if they owned the copyright) you'd usually get a high res image to do anything with but resell If it was taken by someone else (say we got the image from a picture library) we'd put you in contact wit the photographer/library.

Some years ago YM used a picture of my boat taken on a particularly windy day form an unusual angle to illustrate an article. I LOVED SEEING MY BOAT IN PRINT. I wrote to YM and now have a great high res action photo in a frame and on display.