June 5^th 2014. Another f2 issue to mail and Comag.

Subscribers doubled since f2 came back to Icon Publications in April – but what’s twice sod all? Bi-monthly EPOS sales set to double but Comag’s entire remittance won’t cover WHS’s shelf stocking fees. We must sell 75% of news trade delivery, as we did 20 years ago, to pay for print worth a £4.95 cover price.

Another US sub arrives… another £6.85 postage franked for their first copy. 150gsm stock, feels like a book, US magazines can’t compete! We could create quarterly books for the same sub.

Goodbye landfill. Hello bookshelves…

David Kilpatrick | Publisher, f2 Freelance Photographer

The first magazine was printed. The last magazine won’t be.

As printed publications shut down, some say good riddance, better that pages should move and talk and swipe and expand beyond themselves. For others, every closure is a unique tragedy, an occasion to mourn the passing of pages that can be felt, turned, smelled, sat on a shelf.

There might come a time when print magazines will only be made by social anthropology graduates employed to demonstrate our ancient craft, paginating alongside hand-spun wool weavers and earnest people rolling tallow candles by hand.

I hope I’ll be dead by then.

Peter Houston | Editor, The Magazine Diaries