Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Will the internet be the death of the gun rags?

I agree with Ken as in a good hunting mag the editor should be pretty knowledgable on the topic of the mag.

If he can't seperate the wheat from the chaff as it relates to what a 1 time writter gives him then he prob shouldn't be doing the job. A 1 time writter is ok in my book as more than likely he had to beat out the other guys to get his in the rag and must therefore offer SOMETHING above the norm.

I don't know - I read all the articles and figure out what makes sense with what I already know - I don't skip one unless the writter has already turned me off with a series of articles but I wont begrudge a writter because he hasn't had the chance to yet.

Or in the case of JB - the thing that made me follow him was he likes Rugers. It was a complete change (for me) from the writters that said "unless its a pre-64 Win M70 or a Rem 700 it don't kill." That attitude has changes some lately I think but when I first stumbled onto JB it wasn't - a case where a writter I had not heard of saying something that made sense givin my expirence.

Magazine paid circulation has been decreasing for a couple of decades. Even Readers Digest lost 1,000,000 readers last year- they still have ten million left though. The advertising industry notes an accelerated drop starting in about 1999. The gun magazines are falling off very rapidly. The only one-aside from the NRA Publications- left in the top 200 is Guns and Ammo and it has dropped fromt 600,000 in 2002 to 452.000 in late 2003. It has also moved form the mid 150s in rank to 179 on the list of the top 200.

In 12- 2003 the Audit Bureau of Circulation listed several gun titles and their circulation:
GUNS AND AMMO 452,473 Down 18,000 from June 2003
SHOOTING TIMES 171,620 Down From 200,000
AMERICAN HANDGUNNER 107,361 Down from 171,000
HANDGUNS 128,641
GUNS MAGAZINE 71,607 Down from 100,000

These figures are six months old and the numbers will be lower at next audit. The total circulation of the NRA magazines - Rifleman, American Hunter and First freedom total the membership of the organization. They all out-circulate all of the gun magazines audited by this company with the Rifleman being number 58 of the top 200.

A few years back (1999) was complaining that a magazine devoted to full auto and semi-auto "assault rifles" had a monthly circulation of 190,000. The magazine has since died from lack of interest.

On the other hand, the paid circulations of RIFLE, HANDLOADER AND SUCCESSFUL HUNTER are rising.

MD

and Outdoor life Field and Stream and some of the hunting magazines are doing pretty well too.

Actually OL and F&S have dropped considerably in recent years.

When I went to work as a staffer for F&S in 1987 paid circulation was close to 3 million. It's down to around a million now. Part of this is due to competition from speciality magazines, but part of it is deliberate--or so they claim:

Dropping circulation allows them to charge less for ads. This might seem stupid, but only a few companies can afford to pay the ad rates charged by the really large-circulation magazines. Mostly these are automotive, liquor and tobacco firms. By dropping circulation and ad rates, F&S makes their ads affordable to more "endemic" advertising, meaning guns, fishing tackle, etc.

One of the things many large magazines have worried about for years is the possible outlawing of advertising for alcoholic beverages and, particularly, tobacco products.

MD

That is some stupid reasoning-cutting your business by two-thirds so you can charge less for ads. I think I've heard it all now...

John Lott tried to correlate gun ownership with crime with gun magazine readership. He found some figures from the audit bureau of circulation for 1999 that seem to relate to subscriptions rather than total paid circulation. The NRA magazines are fairly close to what they are now.- adding up to the NRA Membership. Guns and Ammo was at 590,000 and dropping, Petersons Handguns was growing at the time and had 148,308 subscribers -much higher than the 12/2003 total paid circulation. Both of these were bought out by primedia and the industry rumor was that they were up for sale at that time. The prediction was that the news stand sales would plummet due to loss of support from the hugh number of periodicals fielded first by peterson's publications and then by primedia. Apparently the sale did not happen but the numbers fell way off anyway.

American Handgunner, at that time was claiming 190,000 paid circulation and showed total subscriptions at 147,100. Now they are claiming (12/03 171,000) AVERAGE paid circulation while their auditors put the total number at 107,000.
Their use of the term "Average" seems to be a attempt to get around the current reality and make it appear that the actual circulation is larger.

In the early 1990s there were a few more titles out there. Shooting Times had a Handgun magazine that folded due to low numbers, Larry Flint was into the game with Modern Gun which also folded. Myron Fass had a number of Magazines with changing titles and his creditors finally caught up with him.

Sounds suspiciously like my old quip "I planned it that way carefully after it happened" � except that I'm joking when I say it.
I used to have my own "Deep Throat" at the NRA who sent me in-house memos on the sly. One that I remember was from the then-new top-squat in charge of the NRA publications to the magazine staffers, instructing them to position and fill their magazines with material that would attract ad revenue from the three most lucrative ad-revenue streams � liquor, tobacco, and automotive.

The internet has caused me to lose interest in the standard gun rags. I don't need the press to tell me what's coming out or give me write-ups on new products, esp. since I don't really trust the reviews. However I always pick up a copy of "Handloader" and "Rifle", as these are a cut above the fray and actually give me in-depth knowledge I can use.

I don't like OL and F&S as much as I did thirty years ago. I liked the "me and Joe did this" articles instead of all the "how to" tutorials. To each is own, but there doesn't seem to be anything like Russel Annabell any more. David Petzal's artlcles also seem too brief and shallow compared with O'Connor's, which seemed longer and more in depth. Some of the specialized hunting magazines seem to have taken over this genre.

Petzal's articles ARE shallower and shorter than O'Connor's. This isn't so much because he writes them that way, but because that's what MOST magazine editors believe is the correct way to momentarily catch and hold the short attention span of the modern, TV- and Internet-oriented reader.

In the 30 or so years since I sold my first magazine article (on flyfishing in the winter to, of all places, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED) the average magazine "feature" has dropped from an average of 3000 words to under 2000. Some places (such as F&S) are running 1200 word "features."

This used to be the length of a column, and a short one at that. Some magazines run 500 words per column, which is just enough to say hello and then good-by. All of this supposedly attracts more time-stressed readers.

From what I can see it ain't working. RIFLE, HANDLOADER and SUCCESSFUL HUNTER all regularly run features of 3000 and sometimes 4000 words, and columns run 1000 words. According to the current publishing wisdom, readers should feel overwhelmed and/or bored with all those long articles, yet all three magazines are increasing in circulation.

MD

Do you have current (and past) circulation figures on Rifle and Handloader? People seem to appreciate those as being more technically competent than the other mags.

One editor advises his regular columnists to keep their features to 800 words with maybe a picture or two. Says the days of the 2-3,000 word columns, if not main features, are over. I don't know if it's attention span or a desire not to compete with the advertising space.

You're dead-center on-target.
"attention span" = excuse
ad space = money = reason

Many publishers fervently wish that they could eliminate editorial altogether and publish only advertising. Some magazines have eliminated paid subscriptions and news-stand "draw" in favor of free distribution (to carefully chosen recipients) solely supported by ad revenues, but soon failed miserably � in part because the lower quality and reduced space of their articles and columns failed to attract enough big advertisers. (One of my publishers tried this before I went there, and the aftermath of that humongous failure gave us misery for years.)

Magazines without ads have done better than magazines with too much space taken-up by ads. Reader's Digest was a giant financed by subscriptions long before it started taking ad money. But publishers (especially new ones) still believe that advertising is mandatory from Day One. One would-be publisher I worked for even went so far as to give free ad space to selected advertisers, to "prime the pump" and attract ad money to launch a new magazine. He published a grand total of one issue and virtually bankrupted his backer. The impact of that single issue was about half as loud as a feather dropped down a well.

engledrum took advertisments but no gun ads. Of course he was motivated. He had saved up his money and bought a mid 80s Smith 59 that didn't work. He decided to get the @$@s that were flooding the market with junk. It seems that shortly after his magazines started coming out, quality control got better across the industry.

The guy in florida took a different tact- advertisments were sparce and limited to really wierd stuff like reflective 3D stickers. He gathered in cash by getting distributors advances, having about 20,000 mags printed, telling the printer that he was awaiting revenues before paying and by the time 19,500 magazines got sent back from the news stands,he had already spent the advance money. This worked for an amazingly long time until his reputation became world-wide.

Mule Deer--

I agree with you that "it aint workin'" at least in my case "it didn't work" that way. So a world of sound bites, microwaves, fast food, the internet (well, here I am <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />) is also a world of word bites? This is the major reason I've left the mags I have, including Pete's Hunting. I would differ in saying that when a guy is really interested or passionate about something he wants depth and breadth

GDV

Proman-Yes Jim Shockey-Serious but humorous with lots of experience to back it up.If he wrote something an editor edited it would be a shame as from what I can tell he tells it like it is and not welcomed by some I suppose.But what is to him may not be politicaly correct to others.

I like the old home town approach where one may or may not be better equiped to write on a given subject but gives it with the humor that every hunt has or breaks down the scientific stuff from Rocket Scientist to the plain old Joe.Mistakes we all make and it's a plus to me to see these guys admit theres and are really human like the rest of us.

I hope the internet does not stop the good writers as the internet is a nasty place some times and most of them would take there knowledge and leave us without it and there experiences.

Just my opinion.......Jayco.

While the editors may think that short articles are best for us time-stressed modern readers, with me it works the opposite.

Hunting and shooting are an escape for me. When I go to that world, I want to stay there awhile. I have enough short-term interruptions in my job and don't need them in my hobby.

One magazine I like (you have to like target shooting) is Precision Shooting. The only ads are for shooting related things and sometimes are as interesting as the articles.