Re: another garden magazine ceases

**Conrad Richter c*@richters.com**

On Mon, 17 Mar 2003 gardenwriters-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 23:09:37 -0500
> From: Duane Campbell <dcamp911@juno.com>
> 
[snip]
>
> I have for years pondered the question you bring up. I ponder a lot at
> this hour of the night. Why do gardening magazines have trouble
> surviving? Or perhaps, why are there no "good" -- whatever that might
> mean -- gardening magazines, good enough to survive. I peruse the local
> news stand and find six mags on professional wrestling and twice that on
> stock car racing, but there are more gardeners in this area than
> wrestling or stock car fans. And I don't think you can make the argument
> that wrestling and stock car fans are avid readers while gardeners are
> not.
> 
> I have some thoughts on this, but like many of my thoughts, they come
> from ignorance. I've never been in the magazine business. I don't even
> like to submit to magazines. I prefer newspapers, where the harried
> editor grabs my copy, waves it over his head, and yells, "COPY BOY,
> twelve column inches for page 12," and never even bothers to pull his pen
> out.
> 
> Are there some people in that trade on the list? Would you be willing to
> share your thoughts on why gardening magazines tend to be disadvantaged?
> 
> D

I can't offer any insights to this important question why gardening
magazines seem to be in trouble, but I can tell you that we thought of
starting a herb magazine last year but didn't.

Canada no longer has a national herb magazine in print and we gave
serious thought to putting one together.  We felt that we had the
connections and the people to do that.  But we were stopped by Canada's
ridiculous subsidy rules that conferred an enormous advantage on
established magazines.  Established magazines receive subsidies towards
postage and editorial costs.  The postal subsidy in particular was what
stopped us.  Under the rules, a new magazine does not qualify to apply
for the postal subsidy until after 12 months.  That may not seem like a
long time, but in this climate of razor thin margins it was the killer
for us.  The subsidy is substantial: it represents a major portion of
the cost of operating a magazine. We felt that we would have to take an
extraordinary hit of a huge debt the first year just to be competitive
with other established gardening and non-gardening magazines.  The
business model looked very bleak, taking years to get back our money.

So what we have here is a situation where the ecology of the business
favours a net decline in the number of magazines because the established
ones are generally okay -- though on occasion some will fail -- while
there are few new ones to take the place of the failures. 

We tried all angles with the subsidy agency but got nowhere with our
basic argument that the system is a powerful disincentive to starting
new magazines.  

Conrad Richter 

RICHTERS HERBS --- RICHTERS HERBS --- RICHTERS HERBS --- RICHTERS HERBS
------- 357 Highway 47,  Goodwood,  Ontario,  L0C 1A0,  Canada --------     
Tel +1-905-640-6677 --- Fax +1-905-640-6641 --- http://www.richters.com
HERB PLANTS, SEEDS, BOOKS & MORE! -- FREE CATALOG: catalog@richters.com

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