Kissing lands is an old phrase passed on from 1960's and 1970's bench shooters. Because they do not care about velocity, only accuracy, most loads were moderate and with their custom chambered and throated barrels, many had no leade at all some leade and everything in betwen s they specified, resulting in bullets commonly found to shoot when lightly pressed against the rifling.
Sporting rifles are not chambered that way and most handloaders go for broke when determining maximum loads so the pressures are different, sometimes dramatically.
When bench shooters are determining OAL, they do it in the manner I described. There are some common factors such as Barnes recommending a longer jump to the lands for their TSX bullets but ultimately you will still read about some people who say Barnes bullets will not shoot in their rifles so they use another brand.
The truth is that any bullet can be set up for a fine tuning of accuracy potential by the method I described, that being the seat out if the groups are open and seat deeper if you get 2 togetehr and the 3rd bullet out of the group.
Sometimes these changes only need to be subtle which is why I recommend that a 1/4 turn on the seating depth be made incrementally.
Although I hate to say it, and JB opened the door on this on a recent thread, the reason you have never heard of these things is that many writers are in the "boys club".
This results in rifles being taken out of the box and photographed and never being shot, scopes being added with finger tight mounts for the photo session and generic loads being offered in the loading data. (Don't you get sick of seeing a single group? What about the other groups and then average out the accuracy results? Guilty of that one myself, because good groups make great photo's)
I have rejected and returned rifles with mechanical defects that were passed onto another writer who wrote glowingly of its accuracy without it being repaired. I have also had distributors tell me of the above scenario's they witnessed first hand all too often.
There are a few very good writers and you all know enough to sort them out and that will as JB stated, ultimatly have influence on magazine sales.
Hope this explains this practice better.
John Woods
