It happened again just recently. We got an order for some packs of notecards, and it came on the order form in the magazine, but the form had been photocopied.
Almost every order we get, whether for subscriptions or notecards, comes on a photocopy. It happens so often that there has to be a reason. People don’t want to cut up the magazine. People must want to keep the magazine. As evidence that they’re keeping back issues, we noticed that the latest order form was on a photocopy from the summer issue.
This is why we tell our advertisers not to put coupons in their ads. We’re not a newspaper to be cut up and tossed out. Coupons don’t work in a magazine that people are keeping in one piece.
I’m thrilled to see this. It’s a high compliment and a tribute to our contributors and to our art director, Branimir Zlamalik, who makes our issues look so good that people don’t want to rip them apart.
If they don’t keep the back issues, perhaps they pass them on to others. If they don’t do that, we expect and hope they recycle them. That way, our old issues could become part of the recycled stock that goes into our new issues! That would be true recycling.
What about you? What publications do you keep, and what do you do with the ones you don’t?
2 Comments
Escarpment Views *is* too nice to cut up! If your advertisers have a web presence, they should put the coupon online and include the URL in the ad.
I usually keep magazines that I enjoy (like Escarpment Views!) for at least a year before recycling them. I always look through the issue one last time before recycling it, and that’s the point where I might cut something out – so a little too late for a coupon.
I have the premier issue of Country Living with a feature story of Martha Stewart looking very young and naive. That issue is followed by approximately 100 more that I have collected because I really like Country Living up to the year 1999.
I also have the premier issue of Escarpment Views and the seven following issues. I expect to collect a couple decades worth of this magazine because it too evokes the same possessiveness that I felt toward Country Living.
Naturally none of my Escarpment Views will ever be cut up.