Isnt it annoying when you sit down with your favourite Photo Mag (AP) and the center pages start falling out and by the time you get to the center of the magazine you have to start thinking celotape! It would not be so bad but there are three staples holding the magazine together and they have all failed, who ever has the job either machine or human please get your act together! hasn't quality control got to your neck of the woods yet?

 

It's not the staples that fail - it is the paper.

Very occasionally I find the same problem with AP but I would say that, at a rough guess, 19 out of 20 issues hold together until I have finished reading.

 

I have brought this problem up several times, most recently earlier this year. For a few months, the problem has gone away, then this week it all started again. There used to be only two staples, but when the third was added, it seemed to improve matters, until this week. I get this with no other magazines, and I buy quite a few. It can't be the number of pages, because AP is thinner now than it has ever been, to my knowledge, now only 84 pages (including the cover) when it used to be 92 pages.

Perhaps now is the time to change publishers?

 

Radio Times does wonderful publishing gymnastics with its printing, collating and stapling. We see multiple paper weights, even up to three paper sizes if you count the poster covers (with extra folds) and advertising centre pages. They all normally hold together.
I am a reasonable chap, in spite of some outrageous posts now and again, so I realise that RT printers might waste quite a large number of copies (possibly more than AP's total run), in setting up, and have the best high volume presses available so am willing to let AP's printers off now and again. I do expect them to get things right more often than not; recently they have done so.

 

I thought 'it can't be that bad' then realised I have not actually opened my latest two copies. Both, at he centre Page, have tears coming from the staples running along the centre fold... These are two magazines that were stapled in the publishers and have not been opened until moments ago...

So I think its either to stop us sharing a copy round, or to 'convince' us digital copy may be a preferable option

 

They need to be careful if that's the plan, people might discover they can get the mag for free digitally via their local library service

And yes, my copy often has pages falling out of it.

 

It is a problem any competent printer or finisher would recognise.
It can always be solved by setting the stitching heads correctly.

The paper used for printing the AP is not in any way unusual. It is fairly thin and the coating makes it easily tearable, but nor unreasonably so.

Their printers seem to need a more regular butt kicking than might be thought normal.

perhaps this is the time to put on some pointy boots.

 

As one of the main complainants about this issue, I was moderately pleased to see that the printers have tried to address this issue in this week's (3 Oct 2015) issue; they appear to have used GLUE to stick the inner pages together so that they do not fall out. They have made an acceptable try, in my issue at least, and I wonder if this is going to be the answer in the future.

 

mine is yet to arrive...It usually come on Saturday.
You can glue signatures at the folding stage, but I have not seen it done as you describe, it will be interesting to see. I take it that the whole last signature was glued then gathered and stitched in with the others.
I would suppose that would be very strongly fixed, but more costly.

 

I have this weeks copy (10 oct,) and I note that they have reverted to the un-glued centre signature.
perhaps it was just an experiment?

Though i would have thought it very unlikely for any of the glued ones to break free.

 

Well, since having to look at advertisements, annoys me a bit, if the 'offending' 2-3 sheets of paper (a total of 12 individual pages) were the ones carrying the majority of AP's advertising material, I for one, would really appreciate them falling out, as that would then enable me to remove most of the AP's ads in one fell swoop, knowing I was not in the process, removing any of the editorial content which I wish to keep!

 

I have now stopped buying AP, despite the construction improving somewhat of late. I find that the content is no longer to my liking, there seems to be too much of a trend towards video and film making.

The design, IMHO, in the past few months, has gone from bad to worse; why cannot the adverts be confined to the inside/outside covers and at the back end of the magazine? Why does there appear to be lots of advertising in between the editorial content? For example, in the last issue I bought, on 20th October, there is self-advertising on pages, 28, 29, 45, 54, 56, 58 and 59. Is this really necessary? That is besides other adverts on pages 9, 16, 19, 20, 21, 27, 33, 34 and 60-81 (the last being where they should be) and inside covers 2,83 and 84. That is 40 pages of adverts in an 84 page (including covers) magazine. Too much for me, I am afraid.

So, In future, I will get my AP via the website.

 

I can see why AP usually comes in a plastic bag these days, keeps all the pages in one place

 

Over the years, the magazine has appeared in that format, with editorial and adverts strictly segregated. Then it goes back to intermingling them. I imagine it reflects what the team thinks serves the company's needs for balancing content with the income from the advertisers.

 

I wonder how much AP would cost if it had no advertising revenue? £20 per issue, perhaps?

 

Possibly, but I am not suggesting NO advertising, just that it be confined to one part of the magazine, instead of being interspersed with the editorial content. And a reduction in self-advertising.

And if you are right about £20 per issue, it just goes to show how much advertising costs each and every one of us in the cost of other goods and services.

 

I don't know about AP - but many magazines charge significantly more for advertising on pages facing editorial than on pages in an advertising section. (Possibly because the advertisers fear - know? - that some readers might skip past an advertising section en bloc.)

 

Well, we're sorry to lose you Roy.

As we have stated many times in the past, the pagination of AP rarely changes much from week to week.

There may be a one or two page difference in the split between editorial, marketing and advertising pages, but roughly speaking we stick to the same numbers each issue. Trying to produce a weekly magazine where everything changed completely week to week would be a nightmare.

As for the video content, we have featured 2 pages once a month for about a year now, but we have actually missed a couple of months. There has probably been around 10 editorial pages given to video in the last year. Apologies if this is too much, but sadly we can't please everyone.

We do have a 2 page advertorial from a video camera manufacturer in a recent issue. Just to clarify, once again, these pages come out of the advertising allocation NOT the editorial pages. So you aren't being deprived of any content that would have otherwise appeared. The same goes for any other 'advertising features'.

And yes, these pages at the front do command a higher value than those at the back. They are what enable us to keep the magazine going and prevent us from having to charge £20 per week, whilst still enabling you to use our website for free.

As for the marketing pages these vary a little depending on what is happening. These are used to make you aware of events that we may be running, competitions that you can enter, the latest offers on subscriptions, or more recently promotion of our latest website The Video Mode (yes, once again those two pages about video were not taken from the regular AP editorial page allocation. They were taken from marketings)

In summary, not much has changed and the advertising features helps us to keep the magazine ticking over nicely, as we have been doing for 130 years

 

Thanks for the reply, Richard. I assume by Marketing, you are referring to Self-advertising.

Whilst I understand where you are coming from, I still feel that the overall content of the magazine no longer suits my purposes. Perhaps it is because I am getting old, and have read most of the editorial content before over the past 35 years (with the exception of new camera tests, of course).

I also feel that photography is again becoming too expensive, especially lenses, most new kit being far out of my reach. Even decent compact cameras are being priced out of my reach.

So, I will have to stick with my TZ70, bought earlier this year, which gives me the quality I am satisfied with for my type and scope of photography. Previously I owned an Olympus Pen EPL5, which was good, but for prints up to A4, IMHO, gives little better quality than my TZ70, and of course, lacks a viewfinder, something which I am increasingly leaning towards in camera specifications.

 

The magazine has also reduced in page size. It's quite noticeably smaller as well as thinner.