In Praise of the Printed Page, Magazines

Because of the relatively cheap costs of printing and the ubiquity of decent editing software, there is now more or less a magazine for every interest however obscure, more than that, there is a plurality of magazines for obscure interests that have never been on offer before.

And I’m not talking about weird sexual stuff either.  Well, mainly not.  I’m talking about stuff like traction engines.  Now, I love traction engines, you love traction engines, everyone loves traction engines, except those stuck behind one on the road on the way to or from a steam rally, or somebody who wears loose clothing around one.  But until recently, there was only one traction engine magazine, and you had to get that mail order.  Essentially, people who built their own sex dungeons or had to get their hot tubs professionally sterilised after parties at their place were better catered for when it came to magazines covering their interests than the sort of people who enjoyed mechanised threshing in an outdoor setting.

No doubt there have been cases where a magazine has become magazines because of editorial disputes, and God knows that the world of hobbycraft can be a divisive one, one need only consider the Great Quilting Feud of ’06 and the Homebrew Wars of ’82 to ’87 to know that that’s true, but what the printing revolution has meant is that if somebody on the editorial board of doll collecting monthly does not like the direction that the publication is going in, with recent decisions not to exclusively cover dolls which are really creepy and are collected by adults that should be on some sort of watch list, then they can start up their own publication to cater for the creepy doll collector market.  Niche indeed.

G&P eulogises on a regular basis about fanzines, the privately produced publications of the 80s that were usually mail order and usually just one step up from a John Bull printing set or indeed a potato when it came to printing sophistication.  Now of course the internet allows lots of people with similar interests to get together and share hot tub cleaning tips and so on, but there’s nothing like a magazine to give a hobby legitimacy, and people love to read them.

I think a lot of it is fantasy.  I used to read ‘Canal and Riverboat’ because I like canal boats and can tolerate river boats.  Why not ‘Waterways World’?  Because that publication was a bit too racy for me.  I will never own a canal boat and indeed in reality have no real desire to own a canal boat.  But I like to read about them.  Which is bloody odd when you think about it, why would somebody who fantasises about owning a boat not buy ‘Superyacht Monthly’?  I stand about as much chance of ever owning a yacht with a helicopter landing pad on it as I do owning the sort of thing Rosie and Jim would live on.

I think that most magazines cater for the specialist mundane.  There are many magazines about modelling, not the top shelf kind, the scale kind.  There are magazines about all sorts of hobbies.  There are probably nearly as many magazines about knitting as there are about music.

And all of this while the internet offers endless free information about all sorts of hobbies.

Hobby magazines are supremely successful for a couple of reasons.  The first is that they address their congregation, they are produced for an enthusiastic and knowledgeable tribe who greatly enjoy learning obscure stuff about something they love.

The other reason is that a printed magazine about a subject lends that subject legitimacy.  This is the ultimate triumph of the printed word.  Anyone with the means can epublish, but getting something on a shelf requires talent and effort and is the result of hard work leading to success.

That’s why when browsing for magazines, I usually walk past the endless lifestyle mags all trying to look different and all looking the same, with a matte cover and understated font, and pick up something with a glossy front cover that has a colourful photograph of somebody looking truly ecstatic on a tractor.