Hi all, does anyone(other than me) have a subscription to the camper and bus magazine. i have had one for around six years, during that time it has had different owners but generally its a worthy investment of a few quid, UNTIL NOW For some reason for the last two months it is only available as a online view , the magazine seems the same but no physical paper copy is available, I FEEL ROBBED. Currently its £49 for 13 printed copies and £34.99 for electronic version if this is the way forwards i am gonna unsubscribe until they , if ever, become available in paper format . Anyone any idea what is going on (dont say ask them) it wuld be interesting to have your thoughts (honest )
I had a subscription for a number of years and collected all the "how to" articles but even they started to repeat themselves so packed up at the end of last year. I'd be well hacked off if having paid for a hard copy subscription they decided to issue only a digital version. Other than to save them cost makes no sense as all other magazines (mainly sailing ones) that I know have continued to have been printed and posted to me during the pandemic.
Is it online only at the moment due to Covid, lockdown, furlough etc?? Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk
I would wait and see. Hopefully its just the lack of printers during lockdown. The Volksworld Camper and Bus mag has kept going, printing paper copies.
The August issue is printed, mine came mid week. I think they skipped an issue due to coronavirus and the July copy didn’t go to press.
It’s hardly surprising really. I worked in the print for years as a young whipper snapper before I decided it wasn’t for me and retrained. There’s a lot of logistics to putting a magazine together. We often found that the contributors would supply copy but the photography wasn’t up to scratch, so we’d have to dispatch a photographer to the far flung parts of the country. Then the copy needs to be sub edited. Then then magazine needs to go to the designers. Mock ups/ proofs made, rejigged, and approved. All the advertisers need to be contacted and any changes made to their adverts mocked up and approved. Then the advertising pages laid out. Then a pagination produced (page layout). Then printing plates made. Paper ordered in. Ink ordered in if there’s special colours. Sealer ordered in. Then it gets printed. Trimmed. Goes out to the finishers for assembly, stapling etc. Then a percentage get delivered to mailing houses for those that are going to subscribers, these get polly wrapped, labelled and posted. The remaining get distributed. That’s a lot of people in a chain with the country on lock down I’m amazed they even managed a digital edition.
As an ex-print finisher i too am surprised theres been anything on the shelves at all although the repro side is now mostly digital imput from the customers and the content quality is down to them . The finishing / dispatch is skilled and very labour intensive , it would only take one key operator to be ill and you`d lose the whole shift ... And just to be a total pedant - it`s stitched NOT stapled
Lol. Yes of course. The years have dulled my brain. In my day we made printing plates from film, I started as a paste up artist, coating bromide in wax and rollering it down onto a board. Shooting it through a screen to make film, then making physical plates from them. I did a lot of work on the very early Mac computers, but there wasn’t any digital cameras then, so all the photography was shot on transparencies and then scanned on a drum scanner. There was the first glimmer of digital print just starting to be shown, a machine called an indigo I think, but compared to what our machines printed, the quality was awful and they could only print on A3 which wasn’t much use for magazine work. I bet I wouldn’t recognise a single thing if I went to a printers now.
My daughter is editor of a group of newspapers she's in charge of print and digital for Nottingham , Derby and Lincoln ,over the pandemic everything has been done from home ,in her case the garden shed.Things are very different nowadays Print is in serious decline and turnover falls continually .print will soon be just a memory.
You would if you came to my workplace though pre-press and plate making is all digital these days even where I work. We do have a digital press (a Xerox something or other) which I haven't the slightest clue about, I'm still firmly a litho printer and hopefully I won't become obsolete for a few years yet
Agreed , i spent the last 35+ years as a print finisher and thoroughly enjoyed it but 7 years ago got the chance to jump ship and did so without a second thought . I wish those in the trade well and always buy the paper version of any mags i like but the glory days have gone .
When I started I’d just missed the glory days. My mates a couple of years older than me and he used to tell me tales of what they were all earning. They’d have been worse off if they’d literally used the presses to print money instead. That was back when it was union controlled and you didn’t do a thing outside of your allotted job without securing a payment for it first. He bought his first house at 20 years old cos his mum told him he was spending too much money in the pub and he couldn’t think what else to spend it on.
When I started work at Philips in Redhill there was the Linotype place just up the road, where the machines that produced the newspapers were made. The ones that basically typed in molten metal, casting the shape of the letters that would then be used.to print the newspaper. My grandfather earnt a good weeks wages doing just Saturday night in Fleet Street looking after the presses printing the Sunday Times.. Working alongside Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, who shared their wages with their workmates as they were so generous..
Thank you for your thoughts, who would have thought there was so much printing experience amongst us. I thought my job as a diamond polisher was quite unique ! Interesting to note someone has had a printed copy through , i await my copy then Even if its just for my monthly bath i like a paper copy , something tangible for my brass . I will give it a month more and see what happens with my paper copy
