Autosport magazine to stop printing magazines at the end of the year

[midgetman]

Presumably that's to stop Boaty McBoatface winning.

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[S griffin]

Today’s Autosport had a good feature in top 25 shocks in motorsport. So there’s still some good stuff in there, just a shame about the price

[redshoes]

I was expecting the price increase to top the list of biggest shocks in motorsport.

[S griffin]

Was it really that much of a shock though?

[Fiorentina 1]

Originally Posted by redshoes

I was expecting the price increase to top the list of biggest shocks in motorsport.

It should have!

That issue is complete junk btw. I read it at the newsstand in 3-minutes like the old days before I actually had money to waste on a weekly magazine. I use to read them and buy maybe 10 issues a year. Now, I buy them as habit; until the 11 quid nonsense obviously! And to be honest with you, I have 1/2 dozen issues sitting on my desk that I haven't actually read yet, going back to late 2018 (F1 in 50 years or something, Kubica, Women in motorsports, some Alonso/ McLaren b.s, 917 tribute, etc, etc. I'll read them during Christmas holiday.

So, at the end of the day, these fool are actually saving me money.

[chillibowl]

£10.99 is Can$18.46...for that price i better be getting some carbon offsets with it. at least a tree planted in my name!

[thetool]

Originally Posted by Fiorentina 1

It should have!

That issue is complete junk btw. I read it at the newsstand in 3-minutes like the old days before I actually had money to waste on a weekly magazine. I use to read them and buy maybe 10 issues a year. Now, I buy them as habit; until the 11 quid nonsense obviously! And to be honest with you, I have 1/2 dozen issues sitting on my desk that I haven't actually read yet, going back to late 2018 (F1 in 50 years or something, Kubica, Women in motorsports, some Alonso/ McLaren b.s, 917 tribute, etc, etc. I'll read them during Christmas holiday.

So, at the end of the day, these fool are actually saving me money.

Even before the price increase I can't understand how people were still buying it. The last issue I looked at ran to only 74 pages, compared to back when I was reading it regularly and it was a minimum of 110 pages and often upto around 132. When you factor in the magazine still has the roughly 20 pages of classified ads, etc, and I'm sure they haven't reduced to amount of advert pages inside the magazine, it's an even bigger cut proportionally. I'd love to see a comparison in word count from the magazine in the mid 90s to the magazine today. I'd bet on there being less than 1/3 of the words in it!

[Rob29]

Was in local coop this morning-thought I would look at magazine rack-no Autosports to been seen-what I found was one copy of 'Motorsports News' which I had not seen in years £3.60-same articles results-ads-publisher exept no F1

[Fiorentina 1]

I bought some issues of Autosport (1995, 1997 and 2000) from Auto Book in Burbank for a $1 each and they are 100 times better than today' Autosport. I think I'm more upset that I kept buying this mediocre garbage these last couple off years, rather than the crazy price increase. I'm getting use to life without Autosport magazine. Autosprint, which comes out in digital format on Monday afternoons, is my go to F1 news and after GP source.

[S griffin]

There was a nice piece about Greg Moore in today’s issue, otherwise not much else. That said I am enjoying going onto ye olde Autosport’s twitter feed everyday

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Fiorentina 1

I bought some issues of Autosport (1995, 1997 and 2000) from Auto Book in Burbank for a $1 each and they are 100 times better than today' Autosport. I think I'm more upset that I kept buying this mediocre garbage these last couple off years, rather than the crazy price increase. I'm getting use to life without Autosport magazine. Autosprint, which comes out in digital format on Monday afternoons, is my go to F1 news and after GP source.

I remember how the Autosport’s in the ‘80s were 100 times better than those from 2000.

[hoffman66]

I was the same, stopped buying it in the late 90's when it became largely an F1 fanzine, far too much f1 and not enough anything else.

Sadly thousands of people still bought the thing. So it never thought about changing

[bella]

Originally Posted by S griffin

There was a nice piece about Greg Moore in today’s issue, otherwise not much else. That said I am enjoying going onto ye olde Autosport’s twitter feed everyday

came here just to mention that twitter account too! great use of social media.

[MikeHoyer]

Autosport have now announced that the price of the print edition will be returning to £3.99, and are "commited to continuing our weekly print magazine as long as we can, while it is financially viable".

https://twitter.com/autosport/status...74073693167616

[Peter Mallett]

Hmm.

[S griffin]

Wow, what made them see sense?

[dwh43scale]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Hmm.

Quite ...

[Aysedasi]

Did they only sell two copies of the last one.....?

[KA]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Wow, what made them see sense?

At a rough guess, sales figures plummeted through the floor overnight, and online subscriptions didn't increase by anything like a corresponding amount because readers did what I did- thought "S*d them" and got our motorsport news from elsewhere, rather than turning to Autosport.com?

[Fiorentina 1]

I had a feeling that was going to happen after October 31st. No one signed up on their lame online platform and they had no choose. My feeling is someone dropped the ball on promoting that website and then they had 30 days left before the deadline so raising the price to 11 quid was a do or die technique that failed. What they should have done was raise the price of the mag 1 quid to cover their 'publishing increases' and lower the on-line nonsense to 3 quid a month including the digital copy. Give everyone 30 days free trial and watch the on-line numbers sore! If 1 person buys the on-line copy or 10 million, it costs Autosport the same amount. There's no per unit cost like a paper magazine.

[hoffman66]

And in the meantime probably made thousands of people either realise they don't want or need the thing anymore and no doubt also put off a similar number.

These people are so dumb it is painful, how on earth can anyone be running a business like that?

[MagicBoy]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

Did they only sell two copies of the last one.....?

There was a stack of unsold copies at the weekend in the local WH Smiths. Usually all gone on Thursday.

Last years numbers : https://www.abc.org.uk/product/2469

[thetool]

Originally Posted by MagicBoy

There was a stack of unsold copies at the weekend in the local WH Smiths. Usually all gone on Thursday.

Last years numbers : https://www.abc.org.uk/product/2469

Only 4,629 copies a week actually sold in shop as of last year. That's got to be very close to dropping it out of the range all but specialist shops like WH Smith keep surely? Not many supermarkets will be stocking sub 5000 a week circulations I wouldn't have thought.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by thetool

Only 4,629 copies a week actually sold in shop as of last year. That's got to be very close to dropping it out of the range all but specialist shops like WH Smith keep surely? Not many supermarkets will be stocking sub 5000 a week circulations I wouldn't have thought.

Apart from taking up valuable display space, it doesn't cost the vast majority of retailers to stock newspapers and magazines as they will all be on a sale or return basis. Every night, retailers bundle up all unsold dailies and magazines at the end of their currency, and leave them where the distributors deliver the next day's delivery who then takes them back to the warehouse.

[andy97]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Apart from taking up valuable display space, it doesn't cost the vast majority of retailers to stock newspapers and magazines as they will all be on a sale or return basis. Every night, retailers bundle up all unsold dailies and magazines at the end of their currency, and leave them where the distributors deliver the next day's delivery who then takes them back to the warehouse.

The supermarkets / WH Smith’s do charge for shelf space.

http://magazineworkshop.co.uk/start-...like-retailer/