When we stopped selling Singletrack on the traditional news stand there were quite a few sad faces lamenting the end of an era. It was great to casually grab a copy of Singletrack when in town. What we now needed was a plan so cunning, you could stick a helmet on it and call it Lance.
Everyone’s a winner baby.
Business is not always easy with both the publishing and bicycle worlds going through pretty significant changes. Then it came to me, “Let’s get Singletrack in to every good bike shop. It makes perfect sense to keep the flow of stoke, good vibes and cashflow buzzing around our own industry”. Bike shops get a tidy margin, our advertisers get even more exposure, and Singletrack readers now have a great excuse to pop into their local shop. Win, win, win.
Chipps elaborates.
“This is great news, both for Singletrack and for its thousands of readers. With the changing landscape of publishing, small publishers like us are abandoning the waste-heavy ‘traditional’ newsagent channels and working closer with our readers and the bike trade.
In early 2020, we left the high street newsagents for good and are concentrating on a more direct relationship with our readers. Although we have thousands of subscribers, we need to get our magazine under the gaze (and noses) of new customers as well. With millions of visitors to our website, we can create a demand for new readers, but it really is in the reading and handling (and smelling!) of a magazine that customers are swayed. We’re really looking forward to working with Madison to get Singletrack Magazine in front of those eager would-be readers and those readers who used to sneak a copy into the shopping basket when shopping in Smiths.
Bike shops will now be the only place to see a new copy of Singletrack and we’d much rather give the generous magazine margins to the bike trade than the news trade. With readers coming into bike shops to find the new issue, we hope that they’ll stop for those other bits and pieces they knew they needed anyway. And with Madison’s huge dealer network, we’re looking forward to introducing new readers to Singletrack.”
Get on it.
If your local bike shop doesn’t have Singletrack on the counter, have a word with them. Bike shops can now buy Singletrack Magazine from Madison. To place an order dealers can speak to their local sales agent or head to www.madisonb2b.co.uk.
If you like what we do - if you like our independence then the best way to support us is by joining us. Every penny of your membership goes back into Singletrack to pay the bills and the wages of the people who work here. No shareholders to pay, just the people who create the content you love to read and watch.
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Great idea. Love my singletrack magazine. Its always a brighter day when it drops onto the doormat 🙂
It’s pretty rich for you to talk about racism in MTB, while continuing to use a moniker based on a racial slur used against the Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War. It might have been a cool reference in the nineties but times have changed. Deeds not words.
Great idea STW
@frankiefingers – eh?
Ha, that ^ is a fair point. Staffers should probably be more careful
@big_scot_nanny this news article was submitted by ‘Charlie Dontsurf’ if you don’t recognise the reference give it a quick google
Charlie comes from the phonetic “Victor Charlie” for VC or Viet Cong.
That’s not racist.
Perhaps, I can’t say I’m an expert. I wouldn’t stand up in defence of it’s use though https://www.etymonline.com/word/charlie
My name is Charlie, and there is no surf in Calderdale. You can call it “Calderfornia” and there is still no surf. I know, I climbed up to our alleged beach high above Todmorden. It’s murky reservoir with 30 foot of sand in one corner.
Yeah, it is a movie reference too. A quote by the character “Colonel Kilgore” in “Apocalypse Now”. It’s also a Clash song reference.
But dig deeper and read up on the guy that Kilgore was based on… the guy who really said “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. He was a surfer, a Colonel in Vietnam, really had a surfboard mounted on his chopper, became famous and decorated, sick of the industrial slaughter he actually spoke out against the war and his government, he believes they tried to assassinate him several times, he quit… and went on to be an anti nuclear campaigner! So the line from the movie script “Charlie Don’t Surf” is arguably about change, changing your mind, and changing the world for the better. https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/colonel-david-hackworth-the-man-who-loved-the-smell-of-napalm-and-hated-war,10189
But I am cool using my real name too.
Or changing your user name by the looks of it 🙂
I changed the user name to real name as we actually have a general policy that authors of editorial content must use a real name for bylines. The fact Charlie’s was still set to his username was an oversight.
You can blame our regular contributor and pro ‘tog James Vincent for that policy as his user name is ‘Justin Bieber’..
Well done guys, the survivors innovate, you’re one of the survivors.
Great news and hope it sells a few mags to new readers, although I wonder how many bikes shop venturers there can be now that haven’t heard of or seen Singletrack before?
Either way, if it keeps the costs under control and prevents the guff that goes with having your magazine in more commercial outlets then all good.
Are you using just the one front cover now, plain with no words?
Personally I think it looks loads better and the quality images used will stand out further, enticing passers by (of a like minded opinion hopefully) to have a closer look.
And for that, I blame a drunken welshman in Porthmadog several years back. Bunch of us walking past a pub having ridden Snowdon that day and he stops, points at me and shouts “you, you’re Justin Bieber”. And just like that, the name stuck. Didn’t even consider that I’d be shooting for Singletrack when I signed up to the forum all those years ago 😀
Sim Mainey’s original username came from an online ‘What’s your Star Wars name’ generator…
@Charlie Hobbs – your cranberry sausage rolls are an outright disgrace to real world pricing ethics!
It’s impossible to change your user name or so I’ve been informed on the two occasions I’ve requested.
Yes, it is.
This isn’t a user name change. Charlie’s username remains as it was. His display name however is what you see when you view an article that he’s written. Only authors of editorial posts get to display that. By default the system automatically sets an author’s display name to their user name. I forgot to change Charlie’s
Instead of saying sorry for publishing multiple articles with a racial slur in the byline we get a nice story about an American soldier and the publisher justifies it by falling back on their byline policy. I don’t think you’re serious about tackling structural racism in MTB all I’ve seen so far is platitudes.
I listened to the podcast and I’m sorry you got ‘heat’ on your Facebook page, but you’re in no position to pat yourselves on the back. Publishing two articles one of which wasn’t even your content isn’t good enough for a website, which claims to be Europe’s biggest MTB news site.
An organisation with your profile could do so much to increase participation, but you can’t even say sorry when your own racism is called out. In the years I subscribed to Singletrack I never saw a photo, article or advert featuring a BAME rider and judging by your meagre attempts to address the situation recently I doubt I ever will.
@frankiefingers – I can only comment on the things I’ve had a hand in, but I know for a fact that I’ve photographed at least one feature including a BAME rider for the mag. It was for the Quantocks Trail Hunter and it appeared sometime within the last couple of years. It’s definitely not good enough though, and I know we need to do better.
Our latest issue has a BAME rider on the cover. But our policy is to normalise this and not shout about it every time we do it. We are just taking steps to address the situation and you are right that we have been a part of the industry for over 20 years and as such we are part of the problem. We aren’t trying to cast blame and point fingers we are trying to change and be proactive about that change.
We have recently paid an equalities consultant to help us produce a video that we have made available to the bike industry in order to help them make good choices. Our position is that one of the biggest places where change needs to happen is with the industry itself and so our first steps have been in that area. That’s not public facing and there’s no reason you would be expected to know about that. But we are not interested in mere platitudes – as I said in last week’s podcast it’s not enough to be passive and claim we are not racist – we have to be proactive. We are being proactive and we are only just getting started.
As for Charlie’s username I apologise as the publisher/owner here for the offence it has clearly caused you.
“Yes, it is.
This isn’t a user name change. Charlie’s username remains as it was. His display name however is what you see when you view an article that he’s written. Only authors of editorial posts get to display that. By default the system automatically sets an author’s display name to their user name. I forgot to change Charlie’s”
Sorry my post wasn’t clear, the point I was trying to make is that if without realising if you set up a username that in hindsight you really didn’t want to use or was inappropriate and wished or needed to change it as a one off, I was advised when a subscription member and also when changing to a life member it was impossible to do.
Technically we can do it but it requires a deep dive into the database. That requires tech time and with thousands of users every day we aren’t going to make that an option. So, to all intents and purposes you pick a username and you are stuck with it. You can’t change your mind about it later and at a whim ask us to change it. Your username is your unique identifier on our site and all our IT systems. Changing it is a big deal. So, only in very exceptional cases, for example where a person’s safety has been an issue, do we ever change usernames. The bar is exceptionally high and always has been.
Thanks for the apology Mark. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours to tackle structural racism in the industry moving forward.