land rover world gone bust?

[Daan]

I was reading land rover world, and the editor was writing his farewell story, as this was the last ever land rover world to be printed.

It did strike me that 4 land rover magazines is too many, they are all writing the same, and most land rover owners I know tend not to read them.

Anyone know the story?

Daan

[Jon White]

They're joining force with LRM apparently.

Frankly I'm amazed any of them are still going.....

Jon

[Nigelw]

I still mourn LRE

The trouble is that there just isn't the content in them anymore, and as it happens when I was corresponding with LRO about a possible job with them they have made me feel like the balance of a good all round magazine is very hard to bring to print in terms of new content and bringing tech and feature articles each month is hard work with such limited offerings and trying to please every reader is just not possible.

The publishing world is dying a very slow death as just about everything is internet based now too.

Shame though, LRW was a nice simple read on the train or sitting in the digger.

[bill van snorkle]

I haven't purchased or read any Land Rover specific Mags for over 15 years, and they bored me witless even back then.

[reb78]

I haven't purchased or read any Land Rover specific Mags for over 15 years, and they bored me witless even back then.

I'm afraid I'm similar, although for me I haven't read them for about eight years. I recently gave all of my old copies away. Alongside the poor content, they are all full of ads - and I mean you have to search for the articles in amongst the adverts. Ads for overpriced junk accessories, britpart nonsense everywhere and pages of insurance ads - phone half of the companies that advertise in there and they won't even insure most variants of defender!

As for LRW and LRM, I stopped reading them for two reasons, first the content and second because the English grammar and spelling was so poor! I mean, FFS, at least get a proof reader!

LRO have the forum, there's more info on there than there is in the mag these days. They are stuck really though, there are plenty of great free forums (like here) so they can't charge for forum membership like a mag.

[mmgemini]

So not just me that doesn't buy Land Rover magazines.

Richard. Yes professional writers make me blanch.

At school I had an English mistress, by she was a tarter. Six of her best, which was very painful, from her for small things. If you started as sentence with AND. That was a trip to her desk for the cane

I didn't, I still don't, understand English. I think that was one of the subjects I was in the bottom three at the end of my last year.

[Les Brock]

I usually only read Dave Luvvers Column in the news agents

[Turbocharger]

that was one of the subjects I was in the bottom three at the end of my last year.

"one of the subjects in which I was in the bottom three".

Michael, approach the front desk!

[honitonhobbit]

LRW have been bought out by LRM - and LRW will cease to exist

Basically LRW were more competitive on advertising, so LRM bought them - business tactics

You need to remember, you'se guys who do read the mags are simply numbers that sell advertising space; advertising is what runs a mag. LRW was the last truly independent LR mag for the bulk of the owners so was seen by certain advertisers as being the best option despite the lower sales numbers. Real world readers are the guys with third hand Disco's, dreams and b*gg*r all money - sort of the LR version of a TOR reader.

LRW was a good mag - especially under Simon WH. I will miss it

Interestingly Petersons 4x4 had a weekend only deal on the other night - 2 years subs to UK for less than a year of subs for LRO or LRM....

There will be a new LR mag coming out soon - it will be FREE and will be published by the owners of TOR and paid for by advertising. It should be interesting.

Les - thank you. I can't tell you how good that makes me feel; a). you read my column; and b) you don't pay for the mag!

I hope to be publishing the full Masterclass series in an e-book later this year. Original , un cut and not messed about with by others. It will feature the original supplied pictures, not replacements that don't suit the prose; added to which I hope to go into more depth about why and how, with more piccies. It will be very cheap...

[tuko]

There will be a new LR mag coming out soon - it will be FREE and will be published by the owners of TOR and paid for by advertising. It should be interesting.

Dave,

can you elaborate more on this, sounds very interesting. Will it be an electronic version vers paper?

/Todd.

[tuko]

Possibly this is what Dave is talking about: http://www.thelandy.co.uk/

/Todd.

[UdderlyOffroad]

I too don’t read the mags anymore, frankly the quality of the journalism is through the floor (with some exceptions such as HonitonHobbit).

Seen in one of the mags recently: ‘If you don’t have B+E entitlement on your licence, you can’t tow a trailer heavier than 750 kg’ Wrong!

Also one of the columnists appeared to claim ‘he was welder not a fabricator’ and that he was fixing a jeep, though he wasn’t sure what type but it was, but it ‘looked like one out of M*A*S*H’. He got paid to write that!

They appear to have hired a college student to do the layout/graphic design too. For instance, HonitonHobbit wrote a column about the rear storage arrangement in the back of his 110 – with by the sounds of it some interesting ideas. But do you think they could be bothered to illustrate it with even one photograph or graphic. Could they f**k!

That said, some of the American mags are available on Google Play for £0.65 a month, if you are happy to read it on your Android device. Seems like a fair price.

[Dave W]

The Landy comics have all been far too slow to react to the realities of modern publishing. They've been struggling to find a way to convert to digital media for years and none of them have been brave enough to make the transition either through lack of vision or lack of understanding. Finding a business model that makes the transition work is getting easier every day, particularly as print and digital use more and more common data, repurposing that data, particularly from print to digital, is simple and quick these days and mobile devices give easier access to revenue streams but the landy comics (as with most magazine publishers) seem to be stuck in a time warp.

For content they rely so heavily on advertising revenue that they do their readers a disservice by actively promoting companies that they know to give poor service simply because they are paying the bills. Anyone that's been around the Land Rover "scene" for a while will remember how scrap iron racing effectively owned the magazines for years, ensuring that their sub standard and shoddy products and business practices got rave editorial reviews by buying up half the magazine in advertising. I had "discussions" at Billing many years ago with a number of "staff" regarding the problems of maintaining ethics given their apparent promotion of companies that they knew to be dodgy as **** and got the impression that nobody was happy with it but it was just "the way things are".

The other problem for content, as perfectly illustrated in the "new" magazine linked above, is that there is little new content to sprinkle between the ads. Look at the articles "featured" on the front page - "building a better bobtail", because nobody has ever printed an article like that before have they ? The comics have managed to stick to the same formula of regurgitated stories and cookie cutter "ultimate xxxxx build" articles for years, trying valiantly to compete against each other to become as mediocre as possible so they don't upset their advertisers. I do miss the early LRW "ultimate trialer build" series though where they built (if memory serves) a series of 3 different trialers, built for different staff members, each of which was intended to be "the ultimate" and none of which ever actually got finished or was in any way any better than thousands of trials motors that were competing every week !

I don't think any of the current landy comics have any real credibility when it comes to editorial content, it's a real shame but that's been the cost of moving from a subscription based model (LROi prior to EMAP involvement) to an advertising revenue based model. Look at other publishing sectors and most of them are managing much better because they have real content to "sell" to the readers either through paper sales or online subscriptions. The Autosport model, for example, looks like a good balance using high content ratios to drive traffic and subscriptions while keeping the advertising low key.

Finally, you have to wonder, given the bad press Britpart get on this particular forum, how this new magazine is going to approach that particular thorny subject when it relies on Britpart for it's distribution...

[tuko]

Finally, you have to wonder, given the bad press Britpart get on this particular forum, how this new magazine is going to approach that particular thorny subject when it relies on Britpart for it's distribution...

Not just this forum but nearly all of them if not ALL have sometime or another had threads about Britpart and their *cough* quality. Where is Bearmach and why are they not taking advantage of this opportunity?

Well I for one have subscribed to the new FREE magazine, fingers crossed that it's a good read.

Todd.

[UdderlyOffroad]

Finally, you have to wonder, given the bad press Britpart get on this particular forum, how this new magazine is going to approach that particular thorny subject when it relies on Britpart for it's distribution...

I wouldn’t have thought that’s a problem. With a free magazine funded by advertisers, no one in their right mind is going to expect complete editorial impartiality.

I’ve noticed a lot of the workshop-type articles in the paid-for magazines are done in Britpart’s in-house workshop? Wonder if those will stop.

Interesting development, using the ‘Metro’ free newspaper funding model. Have signed up for the pdf version

[mickeyw]

I too haven't bought a comic for many years.

I got fed up reading articles I knew to be technically incorrect (LRO especially). I also got fed up with searching for articles midst all the advertising.

These days, if I do buy the occasional mag, it sits around and doesn't get read anyway! Might as well save the pennies for a pint and a bit.

Most of my LR based reading is now centered on forums and FB. Even that can get pretty tiresome - reading an arguement about towing law between individuals that don't bother to check out the written truth before typing b0110cks.

Maybe I'm just turning into a MOG....

[ejparrott]

Dave, unless I misunderstand you, LRM is avaliable as a digital subsciption/online edition, has been for a few years....

[Dave W]

There's a BIG difference between digital publishing and simply delivering a printed publication in a digital form. Sending out a PDF, for example, of your printed magazine is not making a transition to digital media as a business it's simply delivering printed media in a different format.

As a simple example, can you as a "digital" subscriber go to the LRM web site and pull up every article that mentions or is concerned with a "bobtail Range Rover" in the last 10 years ?

Other than the convenience for you of delivery and storage and the saving of postage and printing costs for the publisher what additional benefit does the "digital" version give you as the end customer over the printed version ?

It's a bit like businesses that produce a "mobile app" that is actually just loading their web site, on the surface it's delivering a "solution" but it actually adds nothing that a browser bookmark doesn't already provide and makes no use of the unique advantages of the particular device.

I know Autosport isn't the most comparable publication because it has real "news" all the time but it is a printed magazine I used to buy religiously because of it's insight and quality of articles. I now subscribe to it online and as part of that subscription I have unlimited access, not just to current content but to content going back to the 1970s. On top of that people who don't subscribe also get access to those articles and can view so many per month without subscribing. They're not just bundling up a printed magazine and shipping out an email containing a "digital" version of it, they are making the transition to a digital business model, shaking off all the bad habits and mindsets that beset the print industry and moving on to join the rest of us. You can still buy the printed version and you can also get an enhanced digital version that includes video delivered to your mobile device weekly. For the publisher of course it also means that when I view an article from the 1970s they get new revenue from advertisers so that revenue stream is available forever not just for 1 month.

http://www.autosport.com

A better comparison might be FourWheeler network which is an amalgamation of a number of traditional 4x4 magazines by the same publisher. They seem to be going for more of a traffic oriented business model although they have the option at any time to change to something along the lines of the Autosport combined subscription model. You can still subscribe to the printed version but a lot of the content is available on the web site and because web space is less limited than printed space the web version of articles contains a lot more images and occasionally video.

http://www.fourwheeler.com/off-road-magazine/

I'm frankly amazed and more than a little gobsmacked that this new "Landy Magazine" seems to be ignoring everything that's going on in the world of publishing and going straight for yet another traditional print media publication with no real digital offering. It looks more like a "spoiler" than a serious offering although I'm not sure who it's targeted at if it is a spoiler. If it was me that was publishing it I'd be launching it as an online offering as well as a printed offering, do the work once, get two revenue streams.

[bill van snorkle]

It is not only the Mags that are lacking interest lately. By their very nature, single brand forums will have covered just about every technical angle to saturation point. If ones interest is model specific such as Series, or Range Rover Classics for example, it's virtually all been done before, so a quick browse through the relevant sub forums and move on to other web sites or interests. There are only 3 or so sub forums I am particularly interested in here, and I am finding that I am spending a lot less time here than I used to, unless I am responding to another of O'Teunico's crazy ideas . But it's not only LR4x4. Even Pirate that covers virtually every brand and type of offroad vehicle and their applications is becoming repetitive and boring lately. Or maybe it's just me, and the almost 60 year obsession is wearing very thin ?

[Michele]

I must be the last of a dead breed, being in love with printed magazines.
I like going through the pages to the content I want without turning the laptop on.
Oh, laptop is on 18/24...so I need to pry my eyes off the screen every now and then,

and I could never give my old mags and books away.

Not to mention it takes twice the time to scroll up and down a small screen to read an article, and photos are frankly unuseful.

I never bought LR mags on a regular basis, only when there was an article I found interesting, or photos I needed for reference.

LRW was nice though, nice quality paper and cover...well packaged.

The last incarnation seemed the anoressic version of it, though.

What can I say, I'm old-fashioned.

[tacr2man]

Where the mags went wrong was they started off with the writers being true owner enthusiasts , then they were usually bought out sold and the new owners were employing journos who were to be "enthusiasts" there was very little real knowledge/experience , and they became vehicles to sell advertising space , interspersed with mostly recycled drivel . That was a long long time ago and thats when I stopped buying them !

[Daan]

It is not only the Mags that are lacking interest lately. By their very nature, single brand forums will have covered just about every technical angle to saturation point. If ones interest is model specific such as Series, or Range Rover Classics for example, it's virtually all been done before, so a quick browse through the relevant sub forums and move on to other web sites or interests. There are only 3 or so sub forums I am particularly interested in here, and I am finding that I am spending a lot less time here than I used to, unless I am responding to another of O'Teunico's crazy ideas . But it's not only LR4x4. Even Pirate that covers virtually every brand and type of offroad vehicle and their applications is becoming repetitive and boring lately. Or maybe it's just me, and the almost 60 year obsession is wearing very thin ?

There is that, most people tend to just follow the heard; so if you like to go off roading, you build a 90 trayback and fit gigglepin winches. It's been done many times before so it gets boring after a while. Similarly, at pirate you see plenty of buggies with ls engines, spidertrax axles and a tube frame. They all are similar to each other.

I mainly read the stories of people who have the imagination and the courage to ignore all of this and come up with their own designs. Like the full hydro build on pirate, or our mr van snorkle with his own build portals.

It is interesting that the expensive builds are getting boring!

Daan

[Daan]

Where the mags went wrong was they started off with the writers being true owner enthusiasts , then they were usually bought out sold and the new owners were employing journos who were to be "enthusiasts" there was very little real knowledge/experience , and they became vehicles to sell advertising space , interspersed with mostly recycled drivel . That was a long long time ago and thats when I stopped buying them !

That is true to a point, but lro employs a few enthusiasts. Admittedly, I have not bought land rover mags for quite some time, but specifically bought lro because of the Tornado frame feature; I found it interesting, but again it is an advertiser. While at the newsagent I also bought LRW, because of the feature of redwinches, again an advertiser, that shows it all!

In addition of what Bill is saying, I was subscribed to LRO in my jonger years, where everything Land rover was new, so it was to gather information; now 20 years later, it is bound to be old news. Can you blame the mags for that?

Daan

[reb78]

In addition of what Bill is saying, I was subscribed to LRO in my jonger years, where everything Land rover was new, so it was to gather information; now 20 years later, it is bound to be old news. Can you blame the mags for that?

Daan

This is true and something I have thought too. It's not like the majority of hobbyists have moved much past the D2, so they are going to run out of material at some point.

[simonr]

One of the problems with digital magazines is advertising.

In a paper mag, people do willingly look at the adverts. In digital however, they tend not to, their style of browsing is more targeted as you just click on the article you want to look at rather than flicking through.

The response has been effectively forcing readers to look at the adverts as banners or inserts on the page - but I've found the response to these is very limited compared to paper.

Advertising on social media, similarly doesn't work well because people are not on Facebook etc to buy stuff and don't like being broadcast to.

Google works tremendously well - as many searches are related to finding something to buy, so a well targeted add is a positive thing.

My feeling is that if paper mags move to digital only, the advertisers will desert them and they will have to be providing something more worthwhile for a subscription model to work. If / when this happens, I suspect we will quickly be down to one or even none - Land Rover specific mags!

Long term it might be a positive for the readers as the editorial quality will have to be good - though not so much for small companies who want to get a foothold in the market through advertising.

Si