Yep......I would agree with that. Print will never go away. My wife is in the publishing business.....has been for years. It's hard right now but they are always trying new stuff to enhance the business. You can't just have a magazine like the "old days".

got mine today. very disappointing, but understandable

This website is the reason.... I'm sure blogs and forums have taken away market share from printed media. I get the Wall Street Journal(in print) and I find some of the articles on Google News before I even look at the paper. There are just so many good websites with information, and they are easily searchable.

The mags are/were mostly glossy pictures and not much technical information. After a while, I almost felt stupid for looking at them.

I get better photos and inside stories from offshoreonly than from the mags. And here, you can get a dissenting opinion.
Before this website I could only see T2X on the television, now I can send him a person question.

Certainly, forums and websites all of kinds have cut into readership (or viewership if you prefer) of magazines, but that's not what has put several magazines out of business and others in survival mode.

It's display advertising cutbacks. And again, it's not that the those dollars are going elsewhere, meaning online, in any significant way. Look at this site and its competitors. Where are all the performance-boat company ads?

Three years ago, Powerboat was routinely more than 120 pages from cover to cover. What changed was that the high-performance powerboat industry went into the tank in a way it never has. Consumer magazines run on advertising dollars. Look at the latest issue of Powerboat in terms of who isn't advertising—and once was—and you'll get a clearer picture.

Lest you think I'm trying to protect my print "turf," I've made more than half of my living, for the past 10 years, creating and managing content online for Boats.com. And I'm still heavily involved online. So I am a big, big booster of the Internet. It is in my vested interest for it to succeed, and succeed big.

But I'm also big on separating myth from truth, and while it is true that many readers have opted to go online for information rather than print, it is a myth that advertising dollars have followed them, at least at present, in any significant way.

Agreed, one bathroom break, five to ten minutes later, read cover to cover. WTF

That is exactly what my husband said!!!!

The poor thing isn't even perfect bound but stapled! :eek:

THANKS MATT
It is thinn but we are all feeling the crunch keep up the good work
Rich

Anyone know the status of Hotboat magazine? I used to have a subscription and enjoyed the mag alot. Is it still around or out of business?

They are unfortunately done. Held out hope when they revamped it, but I think it was too little/too late, and in my opinion, the execution of the revamp wasnt very well done. I respect the effort, but the result left something to be desired in my mind

Thanks for the support, Richard and others. And for those of you who are pissed and disappointed ... I understand completely.

I have been with Powerboat for 15 years, 10 of those as a freelance writer. I loved it when the magazine was thick. I understand why things are the way they are, but I don't like it.