Alf":3f7tqkzh said:
Now why is it we pick on GWW like this? Partly 'cos TPTB for it are on the forum of course, but also because it's the one that has the least distance to go to become really good.
My thoughts exactly.
Some other random observations. As readers, its natural that we're all focussed on the readership of magazines, but no mag can survive/thrive without advertising (unless you want to pay £10 or more per issue). Now it's possible that there's an international, English-speaking readership as some have suggested, but there isn't an advertising base.
The fact that a mag might have 10,000 readers in France and 15,000 in Australia and a few thousand in South America is of no interest to the likes of Axminster or NMA, and of very little interest even to the big multinational companies like Bosch and Black & Decker.
The big advertisers want to sell localised product, at localised pricing, through a localised distributor/dealer channel.
The Internet issue is a big challenge for all magazine publishers, but especially so for the magazines that are (or have been) essentially product based. Websites and forums like this will always be quicker and arguably better at answering questions about tool x versus tool y, or one technique versus another. Magazines should both inform/educate *and* entertain, and I think most of the product-based magazines have lost sight of the entertainment angle. Perhaps it comes down to good writers who have something interesting to say, and can say it in an interesting and entertaining way. Alf's point about Mark Corke's column applies, as do Alf's own reviews here.
To put it another way, it's exactly the point I was trying to make about the reading I get out of the US mags versus the UK titles. For me, FWW and Popular Woodworking just seem to be more readable and entertaining.
Finally, in defence of GWW and some of the criticisms made here, here's how magazine publishing works. The biggest single cost is paper, and its much more cost-efficient to go up and down in 32-page sections (which is why you see a lot of 100-page magazines: 3x32=96+4 covers). It's relatively expensive to print 16-page sections, and very expensive to print 8- and 4-page sections. For technical reasons, those are the only choices you have.
So, weeks before an issue goes to print, they have to sit down and work out how many ad pages there will be, and how much editorial content. Then a few days before printing, the ad team announces that they haven't been able to sell enough pages. Now it's too late for the editor to find another four pages worth of content to fill the space, so they stick in all those other Future magazine ads that Wizer mentioned.
That's also why it's difficult or impossible to let a feature run an extra page or two, because you need another four or so pages of advertising to justify the extra 16 pages you'd have to print, and another 8 or 10 pages of content (which has to be paid for) to fill the rest.
Sorry for the length of this ramble, but hopefully some will find it of interest.
PS: Of the £3 or £5 you pay for a magazine, WH Smith or whoever gets to keep about half, and another large chunk is kept by the distributor (the people who ship all those copies from the printer to the thousands of newsagents around the country). By contrast, American magazines get most of their money through subscriptions, which means the publisher gets proportionately more profit.
). But at 60.00 a year for subscription its a little high. even for us greedy types. 
