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Re: [GWL]: garden writing

Title: Re: [GWL]: garden writing
I think the fact that British gardening magazines are on sale here in the US is misleading; they are certainly not being imported on a large scale. The best selling gardening magazine in the UK is BBC Gardeners' World, whose audited sale for the period Jan-June this year is 370,171 - not huge by US standards but by far the market leader in the UK. Of that, 6,682  copies a month are sold in all countries outside Britain - there are a great many in Canada so perhaps about three thousand in the US. This is not a great threat to US gardening magazine publishing.

In my experience two things are contributing to the deline in editorial space given to gardening in newspapers. First, the ad people are incapabale of selling gardening ads - and ads = revenue. This is not necessarily because the sales people are incompetent; it's partly because they don't necessarily understand the unique structure of the gardening industry and partly because the cost of ad time on HGTV etc compares so favourably with the cost of ad space in print.

The other factor is not that garden writing is repetitive - as has been said here, new people are always coming to the subject and people who are occasional gardeners need reminders - it's more a case of the quality of the writing being so pedestrian. When papers hire people who know their subject but can't write (and they hire them because they're cheap) it's the equivalent of a garden writer being hired to run a nursery... nine times out ten it won't work. The writing is poor, fewer people read it, the paper's own research (formal or 'hearsay') shows that people don't read it, so the ad team is then without a good story to pitch to potential advertisers. So poor writing is actually another reason for poor ad sales. And especially in these hard times, the gardening gets cut or dropped.

Ad budgets are also being cut. In Britain we have recently lost four gardening magazines... closed. They would probably have been OK on their modest sales if their ad revenue had held up; but in hard times what ad spend there is tends to go to the market leaders and the cost per thousand 'viewers' is scrutinised much more carefully and responses analysed more carefully too.

These are tough times for us all.

Graham Rice


Hello Barbara,
    Look beneath your signature at the http address.... that market was not
there to write for only a very few years ago. The internet has not make
reading obsolete as so many had predicted. Certainly made some changes, but
if one can adapt there is more market, not less. HGTV may be ok for many,
but if it sparks an interest in gardening , more power to them. Perhaps
those  gardeners will eventually want something with more tooth to it, like
one of your articles at nationalgardening.Again, just one more avenue to
travel. I am usually slow on the uptake, but I am sure I have see a minimum
of there, perhaps four, gardening magazines over the past year that are
published in England, distributed here in the US. If we are so short of
market, how come people are importing to us on a large scale?
    I am watching many of the national gardening mags trying to re-invent
themselves over the past few years. Some sure seem to be having born-again
pains right now. Any one emailing the editors and talking about these
changes? The address are in the front of the magazines. Do you have an
alternative on hand when writing.. like about 2500 words with side bars and
photos available. Are you making their jobs easy(er)?
    Barbara, I really do feel that more reading is going on about gardening
today than has ever existed in the past, and it will continuer to grow....I
purchased two gardening related books this week... one a gift to me, one a
gift to my wife.....
    Gene E. Bush
Munchkin Nursery & Gardens,LLC
genebush@munchkinnursery.com
Southern Indiana     Zone 6

----- Original Message -----
From: "Barbara Martin" <martin@pa.adelphia.net>
Subject: Re: [GWL]: garden writing


> I think most people do not read very much any more. HGTV is where it's at
if
> they are getting information or ideas, not the written word. Reading is
too
> much work and the format is just so limited in comparison to video and
audio
> combined on tv. Sad but I fear true.
>
> Barbara M. Martin
> Current Mid-Atlantic Garden Report: "Is It Winter Yet?"
> http://nationalgardening.com/regional/report.taf?regionid=13

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