New-style cover finish

A foolish mistake - Model Engineers are never happy with anything!

I have more serious things to worry about than magazine covers! Old age, health problems, family issues, cost of living, war in Europe (that could easily spread and go Nuclear), energy crisis, natural resources depleting across the board, dimwit extremist politics in the ascendant, fake news, and climate catastrophe. The grim reaper is coming to my house soon...

Dave

Here's the other side of that:

my copy arrived earlier in the week, and I noticed that the cover and paper were slightly different paper. Then I read the magazine, which has the same mix of articles that it's had for ages - the reason I buy it.

I too have too have to change how I store the old copies, but that's because the space I keep them in is now full.

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 21/05/2022 10:10:03

Oooh! Shiney!

Alternatively:- **LINK**

Being away from home at the moment, I cannot comment on the new covers, however, for magazine storage, I use two large cereal boxes, remove one end and either the top or bottom, of each, fill one of the boxes with magazines, and use the other as a cover over the top. A sticky label on the outside showing issue numbers enclosed, and the job is done. I also have a homemade database system containing a brief description of each article that may be of interest and the issue(s) in which it may be found. Thus I can easily and readily find any article of interest.

Of course, if the new covers are too slippery, there may be some as yet unknown complications. We shall see!

Cheers,

Peter G. Shaw

The decreasing paper quality of MEW has been a bugbear for years and the new publishers want to address this. It may be that a super glossy finish is a step too far, but I've just done a comparison and I can't find a significant difference between the angle a pair of glossy issues slip at to a pair of the old style ones.

Also, the glossy finish repels oil etc. better.

But do please raise any thoughts in the 'New Cover' thread. They are being read by the publishers.

Neil

When I was editor of ME and MEW the biggest complain I got was shiny covers.

I investigated the cost of shiny covers and found if I dropped shiny covers I would save the company several hundreds of pounds a month. I also found that it cost more to print a 60 page Model Engineer than it would cost to print a 68 page Model Engineer because they’d Page used two different pesos while the 68 page could be done on one press. While the savings on the 68 page were considerable, they did not outweigh the increased cost of paying contributors for 8 extra pages hence I published old content from English Mechanics which most readers would not have read.

Another thing I did as to increase subscriptions by using free gifts to subscribers to encourage subscription sales. One offer I did increased subscriptions by about 220 and they signed up for two years.

Is this still happening?

If the publishers do read this I hope they will do the same exercise I did to increase profits ad so ensure the ongoing success of the two magazines.

I don't think free gifts are often much of a carrot to dangle; model engineering is such a broad church a gift is likely to appeal to a very small demographic at any one time, and most model engineers tend to seek quality items rather than the sort of thing likely to be economically viable to attach to a magazine. No offence intended, merely airing my personal opinion.