print or digital, a changing quilt world

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July 10, 2016
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July 27, 2016
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print or digital, a changing quilt world

Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

Have you heard the news that Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine is going out of business soon? I was caught off guard by this announcement. I started subscribing to QNM way back in the days of Bonnie Leman, its original publisher. I consider it one of the influences that made me the quilter I am now.

I will definitely miss it. I am not one who is happy with digital publications, should they decide later to perhaps publish it only digitally. If there is not a hard copy print version, then I am gone as a subscriber. Even daily blog posts or e-mails are not equivalent substitutes in my book.

Here is a link to an interesting post from a much more recent addition to the quilt magazine market, with some information on the publisher’s outlook, and a magazine’s writers’ take on this. Interesting to say the least. ( click here )

I’ll just throw in, as one of our guild’s seminar co-chairs, that I have become increasingly frustrated by the seeming disinterest of our members in helping to maintain the long standing seminar tradition. But perhaps the evolution of the quilting market as described in the linked article might in some way be related.

Food for thought anyway…

 

1 Comment

  1. Robi Witulski says:

    I only subscribe to one quilting magazine at the moment, and I may also let that one lapse, as I have all the others (no, Quilters Newsletter was not one of them). I’ve noticed that after about three years (sometimes sooner), the begin to appear more formulaic; they publish the same patterns and articles, just with a different color or focus. There isn’t much new in the quilting world, but the successful ones are those that have found the new way to present it. I do buy some on the newsstand because subscribing is not an option; Modern Patchwork comes to mind, as does Quilty. Both are now periodicals, in that they appear on a quarterly or seasonal basis. I fully agree with you MaryEllen — digital is not an option for me. I like to have the magazine (or book or newspaper) in my hands while I am reading it. I bought one quilting pattern book in its digital version. That experience was so unsatisfying, that bought the book again, but in paperback. I will never do that again.

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