Tuesday, 19 March 2024
News

Singletrack reduces print frequency to fatten up for subscribers

Singletrack is to push forward with giving subscribers a premium print experience, reducing its annual output from eight to six issues per year, but bulking up in the process.

With the changes coming into effect from April, Chipps Chippendale told CI.N that a quality over quantity approach has become a better strategy since Brexit.

He said: “Due to Brexit and print and paper costs going up, among other costs, we’re going to change frequency of Singletrack from eight a year to six – mostly in order to save on print setup and postage, but also to give us a little more breathing room to make some bigger, better features – both in the magazine and online. We’re going to be changing the page count of the magazine from it’s current 116 pages (or 100 for non-subscribers) and taking it up to a chunky 148 pages, of which 32 pages will be just for our Premier subscribers. This means the regular mag gains 16 pages and the subscriber copy gains 32 pages.”

Coming in tandem with changes to cyclocross sister-title Grit.cx, Chippendale said he remains a “print disciple” and all for more regular printed products when costs balance. For the time being, the publisher looks forward to rewarding regular readers with a bulked up and carefully considered product.

“The change will allow us the room for more in-depth features, photo-heavy travel articles, deeper interview and to basically look at what makes the magazine great – and add more of it,” added Chippendale. “As you’ll know, when we started the magazine in 2001, even in those early days of the internet, we decided that the website would concentrate on things that the web does well – like instant news, forums, videos and so on, while the print magazine would do things that print does so well – great photography, long, rich features and that quality hand-feel that you only get with print. We’ve just taken that a step further with this latest change.”

Publisher Mark Alker said that he had now informed subscribers of the changes, outlining that, while saving costs, the move will add value for his firm’s following.

He added: “We just still love print and out of our cold dead hands will it be torn! Print is really hard to do well. But we are still good at it.”

singletrackworld.com