LAA magazine

Jonathan Holland · Post by **Jonathan Holland** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 6:22 pm

I have always worked on the basis that credit should be given when it is due and I just thought I would compliment 'Light Aviation'.

As a publication it does seem to be continually improving and now strikes a good balance of building, flying, engineering and news. Out of interest, is it sold outside of the LAA membership? If not, why not?

Bob F · Post by **Bob F** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 6:49 pm

There was an answer on the forum some time ago (by Brian, I think) about the mag distribution as regards members & being (or not) on general sale. I can't remember what the answer was, but I second Jonathan's view. The mag will stand scrutiny with the best.

Nigel Ramsay · Post by **Nigel Ramsay** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 7:30 pm

I think it's a question of production costs aggravated by the fact that unsold mags have to be returned and credited to the outlet if my memory serves me correctly. I'm sure Brian will enlighten us!

Ian Melville · Post by **Ian Melville** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 8:22 pm

I thought it was because it eroded the benefits of being a member, but what do I know

If they think the magazine is good, join the LAA. It only a tenner ish more than other flying magazine subscriptions.

macconnacher · Post by **macconnacher** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:25 pm

Ian

It is a members mag and for the enthusiast members who get little other than the mag the benefits of membership would be severely eroded. Cheaper to purchase the mag than join.

Selling on the high street means persuading the big distributors to stock like Smiths. As you say we would have to stand the cost of taking back unsold mags etc. Its not worth doing.

Putting the price on it is useful for when we do sell a few issues at a trade show etc It also makes you feel good that you get this £3.60s worth for free in your sub.

Yes it is a good read and when I finish working I will wind down reading it in my hotel room tonight.

Brian Hope · Post by **Brian Hope** » Wed Nov 10, 2010 7:36 am

Many thanks for the positive comments about the magazine, it is always good to hear the views of members whether good or bad. We haven't looked seriously at neswtand sales for a while but the basic problem comes down to income. Firstly we would only get about 50% of the cover price, £1.80 per magazine, the rest going to distribution and profit for the newsagent. That's why other mags try hard to get you to subscribe. Copies that are not sold get destroyed, so there is a lost cost there as well.
Second, we have around 4000 members who do not use our Engineering services, so in effect they are not tied to being members. I'm sure many are with us because they believe in what we do for recreational flying and want to support us, but there will inevitably be those who would rather buy the mag at the newsagent now and again rather than have a membership subscription. Even if they bought all 12 issues we would still be losing half of what we currently get from them in a membership subscription due to the distribution costs.
Thirdly it is very difficult indeed to get your magazine into WH Smith and Menzies, two of the largest chains, and if you aren't in them then you are on a hiding to nothing. There's a lot of competition out there for newstand space. The reason some of the smaller interest mags do make it is because they are produced by companies that have numerous titles, IPC for instance produce about 100 titles so they have massive clout but little old LAA would struggle.
And finally I think we'd have to make the magazine larger. We are only running 68 pages at the moment and we tailor that to advertising revenue. As you can probably imagine, selling advertising in the current climate is not easy, which is why we have had to drop from the 72 and sometimes 76 pages we were running 18 months ago. To compete with the likes of Pilot and Flyer we'd have to sell a fair bit more advertising to be able to increase the page count.
For now at least, I do not see that the option of becoming a newstand magazine is viable. Indeed if I am to believe what I get told by the computer age pundits there is no future for printed magazines anyway. Supposedly we will all be reading our magazines on the web or with our e-readers, having downloaded the latest issue. Mmmm, maybe. but not for a long while yet I think.

Nick Allen · Post by **Nick Allen** » Wed Nov 10, 2010 11:05 am

Brian, I'd like to echo the compliments -- the magazine is an excellent product. One thing that might be worth considering would be to expand the content that is available online, after the print has been and gone. At the moment the (excellent) Safety Spot articles are available, and so are "Articles of the Month", but this leaves quite a lot unexploited. For example, it seems to me that all of Frances' flight tests could usefully be made thusly available. In fact, apart from the short news items, I would say that all features have some lasting interest. Before you know it, you would have a useful online resource that you can point potential members to, and which existing members may well find useful too.

Nigelcot · Post by **Nigelcot** » Thu Nov 11, 2010 9:15 am

If you had selected titbits available to non-members on the website, as now, and point out membership makes the whole back-catalogue available + you get the monthly magazines circulation / membership might receive a boost.

Ian Melville · Post by **Ian Melville** » Thu Nov 11, 2010 9:51 am

I didn't know Titbits was published anymore

Bill McCarthy · Post by **Bill McCarthy** » Thu Nov 11, 2010 10:15 am

As Nick said the items in the Safety Section would be a good addition to the website. Fairly recently someone was looking for information on how to form a canopy. I keep all my mags (right back to '76) and had a thorough search through all the latest ones, because I know there was a blinking good article, with pictures, on how to do it but I must have loaned that issue and could not find it. A "How To" section could be incorporated I suppose.

Brian Hope · Post by **Brian Hope** » Thu Nov 11, 2010 11:41 am

The Heritage Group is currently scanning (or preparing to scan, don't know if they've started yet) all previous issues of Popular Flying to a digital format which will include a search facility. Key words, like canopy mould for instance, will then bring up any relevant references/articles. When that archive becomes available I do not know, hopefully it will be available in chunks of five years or so as work progresses and perhaps the first will be available some time next year. I am not involved in the project so will have to ask how it is progressing.
Most of the Light Aviation issues are already digitally stored so we are in a position to consider ways to use the archive already. Tasters on the website and complete documents in the members section is one possible way. We need to consider options.

Nick Allen · Post by **Nick Allen** » Thu Nov 11, 2010 12:07 pm

I assume that the magazine would have involved PDFs in its print production for some time now (even in its old incarnation), so I would have thought that there should be a reasonable amount of material that is already digital, and could be made available for relatively little effort (and cost!). Of course, this assumes that the repro house/printer have kept archives of their files, something that it might be worth checking on, Brian.

Brian Hope · Post by **Brian Hope** » Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:40 pm

'Of course, this assumes that the repro house/printer have kept archives of their files'
Therein lies the problem Nick, we are unable to get the old discs from the previous publisher so have to scan all mags up until the change to our current publisher, who we have only been with for two and half years.

Nick Allen · Post by **Nick Allen** » Thu Nov 11, 2010 5:15 pm

Brian, that sounds like a pain! Without wanting to teach you to suck eggs, have you asked both the typesetter and the printer if they have files available? (I work in this field, and you'd be unlucky if they had both binned them!)
By the same token, it might be worth agreeing an archiving policy with the current suppliers, just to stop them clearing their disks when they think the stuff is no longer needed.

Bill McCarthy · Post by **Bill McCarthy** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 6:41 pm

I couldn't wait any longer. I have been snowbound on the farm for over a week now and had to use the tractor to get up on to the main road this morning through a couple of feet of snow in order to get to the post office to get my mail, newspapers and the LAA mag - well worth the effort !
Twelve hours later, high winds blowing with a temperature of 8 deg has cleared the snow, bar a few drifts here and there. Melt water is now forming lakes where I've never seen water before - I'll need floats.
I enjoyed Brian's foreword on new designs. Some of them look very sleek but its high time someone produced Jodel kits in modern materials - wouldn't that be great !!