With magazines dying, I am curious...
 

If there was a good MONTHLY performance boating magazine, would you pay $60-$70/year for it? This could allow it to breakeven and make its profit via SOME advertising maybe...

It would need about 25,000 subscriptions to accomplish this...

I will start....
 

Definite yes from me...I like reading an actual magazine and can get hours of enjoyment out of that $5-$6 per month...what else can you do for that amount of money that you enjoy so much?

forums killed magazines, What are you going to read in a magazine that won't get shown here 30-60 days before that magazine ships?

I would buy it. But not if all I am going to see and read about the boats I can never afford or the big runs I will never be able to go to. Need to have a readers ride section and a resto/classic section. Do some stories on smaller pokerruns not just Miami to Key West and Desert Storm. Need to target the average boaters interest not just the ballers.

I'd subscribe!

I would for sure.

X2. I would rather read a 3-4 page article on a resto project that was done over a few years than poker run that took place in Europe.

I agree. Mag's like Grassroots Motorsports is one of those that still cater to the "do it yourselfer".

They need travel tips, if their gonna feature an event, list all the popular places to stay, where to buy fuel (race and otherwise), popular places to eat, boat ramps, storage, event fees, etc.)

They need to have articles showing how to rebuild a B1, upgrading your Garmin GPS, installing Captains Call, simple motor upgrades (i.e. cam only, exhaust, blower vs. pro-charger, etc.)

A magazine like that I would keep volumes of as reference for the future.

I like to dream as much as the next guy, so YES, I wanna see that new DCB/NorTech/Frisini. But not more then one of them per issue.

Readers rides, where a guy can show off his floating turd to the whole world.

Tech questions/answers submitted to a worldly known builder/repair facility that will shoot you straight up replies.

Inland waterway trips. Excursions of sorts, showing interesting sights along the way, places to stay that cater to boaters, places to eat, etc.

Of course regatta's, poker runs, get togethers of all types and sizes. A place a group can post their event on a calendar with contact info.

I would be into it, but i love mags. I subscribed to hot boat and powerboat for years, and miss them both. hot boat especially, before they got sold and went family friendly in their last year or so I thought it was the greatest boating mag ever! forums and the web are great, but theres something about holding that paper in your hands, and I miss that with the good performance boat mags being gone.

Ummmm, no

The Professor gets it!

Had to vote no. Used to get magazines, much prefer forums and real peoples reviews of what they use.

Sick and tired of every performance boat article telling how great it was, what nice features it had and how they liked the layout of two bolsters and a rear bench (Wow, that is different) on every boat. Never saw a review that was neutral or negative.

Get online and read up, you find a lot of crap but a lot of real world experience also. This is going to sound odd, but I trust sorting through the BS in a forum to get a better idea about somethign than reading a magazine review on it.

Brian

Video Killed The Radio Star
 

These are perfect examples of insurmountable advantages of electronic information delivery, and the pipeline is becoming more ubiquitous every day.
What is the average age an american kid gets his first smartphone these days?

Leaving the content issue aside, the costs associated with publishing- capital investments in bldg, presses, trucks, postage, etc are what is really killing the industry. You need ad dollars to support that infrastructure and when revenue shrinks and is not coming back, the only answer is to cut staff. Quality drops, creating further exodus of ad money and the cycle continues. We are watching the death throes of the industry in real time. It's fascinating to me. I watched with interest as the music industry tied itself in knots for a few years until Apple finally got it right with 99c download bidness model. I remember those exciting times in the early dayz of napster- downloading thru dialup on a compaq laptop with a 133 pentium. haha. Start a couple dozen before going to bed and hope for a 33% success rate when you get up the next morning. :cartman:

The forums are today's version of chatrooms- aggregators of like-minded enthusiasts, professionals, etc. I agree- the maturation of the medium has accelerated the migration, but the internet is a constantly evolving thing and we have seen first-hand in this forum how a herd mentality can sometimes dramatically shift perceptions and click habits.

The publishing industry isn't going away, but it is being changed dramatically by technology. And technology is always evolving- I'm having the time of my life observing it.

Forums didn't exactly kill magazines, but they didn't help the cause.
I think facebook is a real threat to small forums, maybe to all of them.
Look what it did to Classmates with the addition of one little app, and it's doing a number on the dating sites as well.