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In Reply to: RE: I don't want to start any rumours... posted by mkuller on February 06, 2008 at 12:50:40
My horseback estimate is that there are, worldwide, maximum 15,000 people for whom HP's writing is a gotta-havvit. Someone whose opinion I respect says I am over-estimating by 100%, the real number is closer to 7,500.
A stock-picking newsletter can make lots of money with 7,500 subscribers, because it is a one-man job and it just requires a good head for picking stocks. Someone who spends his day watching the numbers crawl past on the screen and who has a facility for writing can do it all himself. No layout, no graphic design other than a chart every now and then. No photos. And the newsletter proves its value by whether the picks make money.
Coming up with enough equipment-review content for even a newsletter, forget a magazine you can put out on a magazine rack, is a huge job for one person, or a job for several people. And once you add in recording reviews, well, you need a staff. And unless they want to write for free, that costs.
Somebody below made a snarky comment about my allusions to the Latin Mass. I think that comment betrayed a serious failure to comprehend the point I am making by invoking the Latin Mass--as well as wooden boats, and chess. For nearly 40 years, it was extremely difficult for the average Catholic to hear a Latin Mass--unless, like Mel Gibson, you have a private chapel on the grounds of your estate. NONETHELESS, a magazine devoted to the Latin Mass has a circulation far greater than TAS'. (Mutatis mutandis, Biblical Archeology Review, the readership of which seems to be mostly Protestant, has a circulation more than twice that of Stereophile.)
My point being that you have two pursuits that most people would think of as fringe-y, each actually more popular than high-end audio, judging by the circulations of the respective enthusiast magazines.
IMHO the potential audience for a new publishing venture with HP at the helm or as a figurehead is a strictly limited subset of the subscribers to the two existing major US print high-end audio magazines. When I was a teenager, I avidly subscribed first to Stereo Review, and then Audio. I actually subscribed to Popular Electronics before either of them. For me the idea of an "average" teenager subscribing to ANY new high-end audio print magazine is a off-base as the idea of a teenager raised in a non-religious home who never goes to church, subscribing to Latin Mass magazine.
Nobody is asking my advice, but, here it is anyway: don't waste any money trying to "convert" bad prospects. A little birdie once told me that by the time even the shouting was over, Fi magazine had spent about $635 to get each of the subscribers it had.
Ciao,
JM
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