Today I received the “last chance” to participate in a great deal from one of my magazines. I can renew my subscription and they will give me two subscriptions free. What a deal! I suppose this may be a good deal for some but I just don’t think it’s a good deal if I pay full price (or close to it) for me and two other people get their subscription free. I don’t plan to give subscriptions for Christmas gifts (would my beloved husband love to receive a subscription to Ladies’ Home Journal? I think not.)
I know why they do it. The publishing business must be going through tough times. Not only is the economy lousy but with Kindles, Nooks and iPads, the younger folks do a lot of their reading on-line. For magazines, I love the feel of the paper; the beauty of the color photos; the articles on new products that will make me look younger (I wish!) and the whole experience. I always get excited when a new issue comes in the mail.
I don’t feel like that about books because I only read most books once. Then I have to find a place for them (hopefully in someone else’s house). In fact, I have bitten the bullet and asked for a Kindle Fire for Christmas (will Santa bring it? Maybe!)
Back to magazine publishers…please do not expect me to bankroll subscriptions for my neighborhood. Just send me a renewal with a fair price and I am all yours! Oh, and while I have your ear, please stop the redundancy. Except for beauty care articles for 60-plus-year-old women (I have to believe there is something out there that will work), I don’t want to read the same topic in each magazine.
Maybe a magazine specifically for 60-plus-year-olds that concentrated on beauty (of course), health, exercise, finance in this faltering economy (ouch!), reasonable healthy recipes with ingredients I have heard of and some feel good articles would be good. Drop the Depends ads too. I can get that stuff in AARP. You can also eliminate child raising articles, that ship has sailed (without me) and don’t tell me what 20-year-olds should do for their face. For goodness sakes, they don’t need to do anything! They are wonderful as they are (said with a tad bit of envy).
I am available to consult with any magazine publisher seeking this client base.
Views and Mews by Coffee Kat 
I fly for work once or twice a month and it’s a short flight. Only 1 hour in the air. I take my Nook with me but I need a magazine for those times when evidently just having my Nook on endangers the lives of everyone on the plane. I have been surprised that I can read all the articles in my magazine by the time I complete the trip. Evidently there are about 10 articles, 142 pages of ads and 97 subscription cards.
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Oh yes, the subscription cards that fly all over the house when you move the magazines. Forgot about them!
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MORE magazine is at least for the “over-forty” woman, and they usually stick to it. But over sixty would be better. We could call it “EVEN MORE”.
(Also…just FYI…magazines make their money from advertisers. Advertisers pay by the number of subscribers. So even a free subscriber is a subscriber for advertising sales purposes. But a newsstand copy is not. So magazines will give away 2 free subscriptions for every paid subscription so that their numbers go up.)
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That’s interesting. Now I will want a better deal! I did try More once but I am in for Even More if you find someone to start it up. Why, I will volunteer to model!
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Great post! There’s nothing like getting 6 months of “this is your last chance” to subscribe offers in the mail. They make it sound like if you let your subscription lapse they won’t happily take you back at a later date. Puh-lease.
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Oh yes, the subscription for the last magazine expires in 2013.
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You’re preaching to the choir! But right on!!!
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Nice post. You’d think with all the boomers hitting 60 the magazine publishers would take that into account. I would appreciate more ads using mature women who have not been digitally or surgically altered.
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I think the response to the baby boomer explosion is to call all products age defying or wrinkle defense or something like that. It’s probably the same old formula! I agree about the models. I don’t want to see anyone under 40 or less than a size 6.
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Hip…Hip….Hurray!
I am totally in agreement with you Kate!
First of all, if you really look through any one of these magazines, you will find that we are paying to read ADS!
AND the models on behalf of even twenty somethings are TWELVE years old!
It makes me sick.
Us envious? nah! just fed up. ha ha
GREAT post!
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I read an article recently that had beauty and hair tips by decades. There were two pages for the 20-year-olds (heavens knows why) and two pages for the 30s, 40s and 50s. When it came to the 60s there was like two paragraphs. Guess there is not much we can do to look better. I am not yet buying grammy jeans!
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Right on, Kate.
Today for the first time in YEARS i am wearing a belt because it is so hard to buy jeans and slacks (that are somewhat fashionable) that you don’t have to keep hitching up. They are all low-riders. Mind you, at our age we often have to hurry to rip them down to tinkle, but come on….at church the other day it was killing me not to hike them up in front of everyone. So ta-da….a nice cheap slim belt.
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