Car Magazine Sales Declining?

Phil from Spinopsys sent me this great link to Mark Fletcher’s blog last night. Mark is the owner of a NewsAgency and conducts research into magazine sale trends. According to Mark’s research Motoring Magazine sales are declining. Mark comes to a great conclusion:

It makes sense when you consider the quality and timeliness of specialist websites in the motoring area now.

Being an avid reader of car magazines for a few years now, even I have cut back on my purchases, I am only ever interested in TopGear magazine these days and even so, most of their articles are either available online on their website, or via other online sources. So why does anyone still buy magazines? I can only think that having those nice photos in hardcopy has a much better feel to it, and given that car magazines love to give you ‘free‘ posters, i know that’s one of the reasons I tend to buy them.

Will the medium ever actually die out? I highly doubt it. Amazing that magazines like Wheels don’t have an online subscription service. They do have a blog though, which seems to be updated once a week. If that! I guess they don’t understand the point of a blog. Its not a weekly column. Its meant to be at least once a day, if not more. A minimum of an hour work goes into this site every single day. Reading all the latest motoring news / blogs / press releases and posting the most interesting stuff. And why? Cause we love cars! And because there needs to be some meduim with honest opinion and ideas about cars that doesn’t have the vested interest of Car Companies as Advertisers.