Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Vogue Magazine's Future





The offer in the photo above turned up in my email recently. Did you get it? What did you think about it if you did? 

I stopped buying knitting magazines quite a while ago. I don't often have time to knit patterns other than my own. I also have a space problem. I have kept all of my old magazines and I don't have room to keep on collecting new copies. When the magazines cut back on technical articles, the new issues became less valuable to me. I get new knitting books, especially technical resources from the library and that allows me to evaluate and decide if I will buy a copy for myself. I also follow other knitting blogs to keep up with the industry.

Essentially, Vogue is willing to give us digital copies for free. This tells me all of their revenue is coming from advertising. More subscribers mean more advertising dollars, which is why they want to lock you into a subscription. I've noticed that the three major U.S. magazines all have their own teaching/market events as an alternate source of revenue. As consumers switch over to digital downloaded patterns, the magazines may no longer be viable. What do you think, will you miss the magazines or do you think they will disappear in the future?

3 comments:

  1. I very RARELY buy a magazine, but I do love them. Just like a book, I very much enjoy paging through a magazine, I just don't have time usually. I have space issues like you, but I also have budget issues, and knitting magazines seem a luxury in my life right now.

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  2. I subscribe to Vogue Knitting and Interweave knits. I read through them and only keep the ones that have something that I want to knit. I have gone so far as to cut out a pattern and throw the issue away; storage is a problem. Nevertheless I love getting them.

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  3. I still prefer print vs. digital whether it be books or magazines. I like the feel of a book to curl up with before bed. I am much more selective now about which magazines I purchase since I was generally buying them more for the technical information than patterns. With the exchange not in our favour again, I think even harder before making a magazine purchase. Just hard to justify its cost and let's face it, I could put the money toward yarn LOL!
    ~Marilyn

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