Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters How is the paper publishing business these days?

With all the action on the internet, how goes the magazine and book world for outdoor writers these days?

I still enjoy sitting down with a good book, and time to time a hunting or fishing magazine.

Guy

Our book business is doing quite well--partly, I suspect because most of our customers are traditional paper-book people.

Most of the magazines I work for publish both paper and Internet versions. How well each does apparently depends a lot on the magazine.

We've been looking into all aspects of e-publishing. It has advantages and disadvantages, so haven't made the big plunge yet.

The gun book business is slipping away. Just go to any gunshow and see what is on the tables. Military and "tactical" crap. As a friend puts it:" the average age of a classic gun collector is 105."

Most of the authors and publishers have gone and the few that are left are consolidating what is left to carry us until called up yonder.

Too many people and the shooting sports just don't mix. Look at England and you see the world our grandkids will be living in.

Glad to have grown up in the 50s, we had it made !

Yes we did

While I spend many hours a week in front of this screen, there is nothing that beats a good book in an easy chair.
An e-publication is fine if I can print it out to read it away from the screen.

Speaking only as a hobby gun writer, the shrinking size of most print periodicals these days means that fewer and fewer freelance articles get published, or that times from submission/acceptance to print stretch out appreciably longer.

I have something like five or six articles or product reviews awaiting print right now with no firm idea of when or even if they will see ink. I just had a piece printed that I submitted over a year and a half ago. It was a product review for something sent to me after the 2010 SHOT show. So the makers of that item haven't seen benefit from my work for two years. It is safe to say that they suffered a larger impact from the delay than I did.

For reference books on firearms (and any others for that metter), I only buy printed material. Easier to read and eaier to re-locate articles. I've got over 1,000 hard copy gun books in my library.

I still prefer books to digital media. A friend just sent me a book on Glocks to download to my iPad. I downloaded it but haven't been able to read it yet because the grandson that lives with us also lives with my iPad.

Rocky,

I've seen the same thing during recessions going back to the early 1980's. Magazine publishers cut pages (and even pay) when advertising starts to dry up--and start depending more on staff writers rather than freelancers.

Back in the old days, all but the smallest magazines paid on acceptance. This meant they had a backlog of articles on hand, and lived off that when tims got tough. These days even the larger magazines pay on publication, which makes freelancers more vulnerable--one reason fewer younger writers give the "profession" a try anymore.

But I dunno if paper magazines will ever get fatter again, even when the economy gets better. Most have Internet versions as well, and those are no doubt the wave of the future, even though the readers of shooting and hunting magazines tend to be older and prefer paper.

What is the fun in collecting plastic stocked rifles and metal that doesn't shine. I remember perusing the gun publications as a young boy and looking with envy at the Fajen stocked firearms that exuded class and dreaming of the day that I might own a piece of artwork like that. Can you imagine any young man looking through the typical gun magazine today and saying they can't wait to "collect" one of the black guns today? Why would anyone want to "collect" one. I don't even want to own one. I might be in the minority on that one. I personally think it was a conspiracy started when they sold the first plastic stocked rifle.

I agree completely, John. I often get asked how to become a gun writer, and it's very hard to be encouraging. A determined person can still get published, but it is more of an uphill battle for a first-timer than ever. And they'd better not be in it for the money!

I'm one of the older guys (about JB's age) and I buy fewer magazines now than when I was younger. Partly because I can find a lot to read online but also because there isn't that much that's new.

Might suggest you buy Double Gun Journal, African Hunter, Rifle and Handloader as there is still the kind of writing we grew up with as well as many, many interesting guns.
I was LMAO at the current issue of Rifle having to explain, to those not versed in reality, why the 280 Remington is heading for the scrapheap and why the 375 H&H has a belt and is superior (especially in nasty conditions) to any of the "modern" short magnums.

I still publish or reprint a book every couple of years aimed at the small part of our population who can construct a sentence without: "Awesome, like and you know".

Gives me $ to buy more and more ammo for "the day".

Read it Rocky.Quite interesting!!!

It's been so long, Huntz, that I'd forgotten how many shortcomings I found with that gun. So much for gun writers never saying anything bad about a product, huh?