Bike Mags

I travel a lot so stash the odd magazine in case I end up somewhere with zilch WiFi.

Otherwise I’d read it all online. Sad but true..

 

I have an online subscription to Fast Bikes via Kindle on my Ipad Pro 12.9 and it’s close to a magazine style experience on a screen that size.

I think there’s some transition for traditional magazine publishing to go through, where they stop trying to simply recreate the printed page in digital form and take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the digital platform.

I like the idea of monthly curated content still, as it’s a different experience to visiting a website, but perhaps they could incorporate audio, video, 3D models, etc.

 

When PB mag went under i kind of lost interest, i subscribed to fast bikes as well, but that was never the same since Shakey, Jimmy, Schiller etc with how to pull wheelies and the rest of the videos. (90s cult videos )
For me I hope that the the style of 44Teeth continue to grow and fill the gap..

 

I don’t read traditional bike magazines about the only magazine I do read is Sideburn a quarterly centred around American Flat Track.

The problem for me with traditional magazines they just keep rotating through best 600/750/1000 or some other combination of pigeonhole. Gets tedious in the end and they aren’t cheap to buy these days.

 

I used to use Readly for most of the mags, but followed the advice of one of the inmates on here last year and now get them all for free via the
library service and an access app called libby.
Register for an electronic library card, put the issued number in the app, get hundreds of mags and daily papers for nowt.
They download to your device, so no net connection required if you are off travelling for a few weeks.

 

I just registered for an electronic library card - took a few minutes and then I was reading a copy of Bike magazine.

How the hell they would stay in business if everyone did this I don’t know but thanks for the info!

 

Yeah, that side of things has always puzzled me too.

 

I buy MCN on the regular, usually when I am in a garage buying petrol, but only rarely buy mags and only if they have something on the cover that particularly entices me. It's a real shame as I used to have a stack of old bike mags going back to the 90s that I could dip into from time to time but alas, they got binned along with a pretty much complete Viz collection going back to the late 80s when I split with my ex missus in 2010 and there was no space at new house.

Even when I buy mags these days, to my great shame, they often go unread for some reason. Most probably because the phone or MacBook is my window on the world these days and mags are often hard to read due to their high gloss finish and the publishers' habit of printing black type over photos not gelling too well with my fading eyesight

 

Razzles Readers Wives is the only one anybody needs. The others are merely window dressing.

 

Stopped buying the MCN and bike magazines late nineties early 2000's as i was never going to buy another new motorcycle again, probably bought only half a dozen of each in the past twenty years but i do get hand me downs now & then.

 

Still have loads of my late 70s up to mid 80s Bike and superbike mags.

can’t get on with online at all, have subscriptions with Ride, Bike, More Bikes.. piles of them in my house.

 

Most of the above is probably the reason I finally got out of the print industry 6yrs ago.
(@Jez900ie Luckily for me that printers went bust 10yrs ago, I worked there and had they stayed in business any longer I would have gone blind )

last physical mag I subscribed to was Two Wheels Only. (Before it went online and became Visor Down’hill’)
I mostly get my content now from youtube