I’ve been reading Singletrack for a long time now, and although I find it to be a bit over-earnest at times, I continue to buy it.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. I [b]used[/b] to buy it through the simple process of handing money to a newsagent and getting the magazine. A fair exchange, I’m sure you’ll agree, and one which enabled me to peruse said mag before parting with my money. I was default-set to purchase, and only a profusion of beards/singlespeeds would put me off. Or if Mike Ferrentino was being even more ****tish than usual.
I digress. The problem I now face is that [b]I simply can’t get hold of a copy.[/b] I used to be able to buy Singletrack in my local Tesco, but that stopped six months back. After that, it was the trudge to the centre of town to WH Smith, but now they no longer seem to stock it either. I’ve now looked in the WH Smith outlets in three or four of the major London train stations, with similar results. My LBS doesn’t stock Singletrack (never has), so unless I fancy driving 25 miles to a shop that I know stocks it, it doesn’t look like I’m buying it over-the-counter.
Yes, I know I could subscribe, but I like to see what I’m buying in advance. I’ve never subscribed to magazines and probably never will, so it looks as though we must part company. Sorry, and I’ve enjoyed the read, but unless you make the product available, you’ll not get any more of my cash.
Hmmm.... is this a magazine flounce? 🙂
You're obviously not trying hard enough. Have you thought about moving house to somewhere near to a newsagent that does stock it? 😉 😆
Get an online subscription. You won't have to waste your time going to shops and you could do something more entertaining instead. Ride a mountainbike maybe? And... think of all those trees you'd save.
get with the times old man, going to see a lot more of this in the future!
Why can't STW sell single copies from the STW shop?
Yeah, just pay the £5 or whatever it is for an online only sub. Job done.
Look, I like buying magazines, OK? They're portable, don't care if they get water splashed on them when I'm reading in the bath, don't require an energy source....if the Gods Of Singletrack have made a statement that they're not going to sell printed copies any more, then fair enough. I just must have been away that day.
As I said, I like the mag, want to buy it, and can't believe that there's such an established customer base that there's no need to sell on a non-subscription basis. After all, you need to keep getting conquest sales, even to stand still.
Can you "virtually browse" the online edition before purchasing ?
do you not have a local newsagent. ask them to get it in - you are under no obligation to buy it normally. but it means that they will stock it for a bit.
Singletrack is a fairly small niche magazine. Tesco, WHSmith, et all, can only stock so much and they will always go for the Future Publishing, IPC mags because of the buying power and multiple publications they offer.
Singletrack is published independently and therefore doesn't have the bargaining power and distribution network that these bigger titles do. With that in mind it will generally take a bit more effort to get hold of.
Just subscribe and be done with it. A yearly sub is £25, that's less than 50p a week.
Yeah man, just subscribe - ya booo! (And other such comments, completely ignoring most of what the OP has said, as if it were just completely irrelevant).
Whoop, classic STW 'opinions' and 'advice' in general opposition to the OPs proposition. Very useful. And very predictable.
So long [b]STW[/b], I enjoyed reading you.. 😉
clearly a serial browser & occasional buyer, otherwise you would just subscribe to save your hardship!
My local W.H Smith in Liverpool city centre stocks it...
I would suspect its W.H Smith calling not to stock it, not Singletrack. I would also suspect they have stopped stocking because they have to many browsers & not enough buyers & have decided to stock something else!
Count up the number of issues you've not bought in the last 12 months. Multiply the paper price by the number you have bought. Now check the subscription price. If the subscription price is lower than the cost of all of the ones you bought in the year you're a winner and can have them delivered to your door and you can use the beardy weirdy ones as composting material.
It used to be stocked everywhere, I even found it in Australia and Tescos, now nowhere.
I think that's pricipally because I stopped buying it, because it got predicatably boring* and overly-earnest. (I do love a good Singletrack bitch-fest 😉 )
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.
.
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* I see a pattern here.
If you subscribe then you can have the satisfaction of declaring that you're "CANCELLING MY SUBSCRIPTION" next time you feel like a flounce.
😉
So you won't travel to buy it, you won't subscribe, and you won't get an online version.
How about Chipps crawls on his hands and knees and delivers it to you personally? 😀
When I were a lad you could ask t'local newsagent to get you a magazine in. Why don't you do that. I wonder if there is a correlation between mtb and moany whineyness, seems to be such a high proportion of whingers on here!
Look, this is not a difficult one.
Singletrack (the paper magazine) used to be available in newsagents, freely and without ordering. You know, the place where you went to buy magazines. It isn't now. I'm not going to subscribe because I don't want to. Nor will I get the on-line version - I don't have an iPad or the like, and I usually read magazines on the train, on a plane etc.
I recognise that this makes me a Luddite of the worst type, and perhaps my custom is no longer valuable. It would obviously be useful to know this, so that I can cross Singletrack off the list.
Have you actually asked your local Tesco if they will re-stock it ?
For £15 a year you could read it online.
Have you actually asked your local Tesco if they will re-stock it ?
"Dunno mate, we just stock wot they send us, innit" was the response
For £15 a year you could read it online.
No real use to me. I read to relax. I don't relax in front of a laptop. I don't read a laptop on the train. My laptop isn't something I can read for a few minutes then chuck on the floor, or leave on the back seat of the car.
In short, on-line access doesn't do it for me. And although I could get a subscription for the paper version, I've been burned before when a magazine closed down. Oops, no refund.
The magazine's more available here than ever before tbh, Tescos, most WH Smiths... Individual shops tend to run the numbers of what's selling and what isn't, if it doesn't sell they'll drop it.
Do none of your local bike shops carry it?
It's available in quite a few local newsagents near me. I don't read it anymore as I find it a bit dull.
Latest is IMHO the best issue for a long time - apart from the route near Dummer which manages to miss EVERY bit of decent singletrack in a 5 mile radius. Not sue who dreamt that one up
I worked in an Embassy once. The ex-pat staff were AMAZED that a person could spend their lunch hour browsing mags for free, and exercised that right on a regular basis, although one did get asked to leave the store once for eating his lunch on the free entertainment.
Try before you buy is a privilege not a right don't be such a tin bum.
Hi Nick,
If you email me or Jamie (chipps@ jamie@ etc...) where you live, we'll find where your nearest stockist is. In fact, we've just had our distributors in for a two-hour meeting.
The Smiths in train stations and airports are the hardest (ie most expensive for us) to get stocked in as they're smaller and so have less shelf space.
We are in 80% of Smiths stores, hundreds of Tesco, Sainsbury's stores and in Martin McColl and other newsagent chains and independents, as well as over 100 bike shops.
If we can't find someone within a few miles, then we can see if we can get a newsagent to stock it for you... We like people buying the mag and try to make it as easy as possible to do so.
We do sell individual issues too: http://www.singletrackworld.com/shop/acatalog/singleissues.html
Latest is IMHO the best issue for a long time
Agreed, was a very enjoyable read.
It's available from Chain Reaction by the issue......
Singletrack (the paper magazine) used to be available in newsagents, freely and without ordering. You know, the place where you went to buy magazines. It isn't now. I'm not going to subscribe because I don't want to. Nor will I get the on-line version - I don't have an iPad or the like, and I usually read magazines on the train, on a plane etc.
What an odd way to work. It's not available at max price in a shop I have to go to specifically, so I won't buy it online or delivered at a reduced price.
OK. But it's not really ST that's odd here?!
I'm with nickf on this, can't find it anywhere round these parts now.(south west)
I'm not into subscribing either.
I did ask the assitant in Smiths but he seemed far to busy playing with his own arse than help me out.
Anyone know of a stockist in/near Canary Wharf?
In fact, we've just had our distributors in for a two-hour meeting.
Were they late due to the snow 😉
Singletrack sells around 14,000 copies per issue. We are sold in over 2500 outlets around the UK. 3000 around the world.
In the UK there are 78,000 shops that are in the newstrade network. If we wanted total market coverage we'd have to print 78,000 copies. Most outlets prefer take 10 copies. We'd have to print 0.75 million copies to service that market.
Instead we print around 20,000 copies because we can afford that.
All our stockists are listed (inluding full postal address including postcode)in the footer of this very page. I've found 8 stockists in Watford by typing 'watford' into the box marked 'search'.
If you take the postcode and put it into google maps you can even work out the exact distance from wherever you are to your closest stockist. It will even calculate how long it will take you to get there by walking. As an example I've just used my iPhone to calculate that my nearest stockist to my current location is 0.1 miles away and it will take me 2 minutes to walk there.
I believe others may be able to replicate this feat.
Am I wrong or is the current lack of over the counter mags due to a large portion of the subs mailout disappearing up Royal Mail's crack during the snow, and the non subs copies being pulled back from shops to fulfil subs?
Nice to know about CRC though as I too missed the last issue.
Hi again,
If you look down the page, in the bottom left of the grey bar at the base of the page is the Stockist link. Click on that and then enter your town into the 'Newsagents' section. A quick search shows eight stockists in Watford and looking for Canary Wharf (E14) shows:
new on the wharf shop2 cabot, square (east),
news on the wharf 5 london E14 5AB
news on the wharf 8 bank street, E14 5NY
peter wagg ltd shop 1 cabot, square (west), london
Hope that helps
Cheers
Chipps
nickf, if you live near me you can come around to my house after I've read each issue and have a flick through. If you like it I'll sell you a used copy at 1/2 the cover price. How's that?
(but then if you lived near me you'd know at least two local shops that stock it. Plan foiled)
Midlife..
Nothing to do with Royal Mail.
Principally because it was issue 62 that was delayed by RM and issue 63 is the current issue.
The decision to stock any magazine always lies with the manager of the shops concerned. They will adjust the titles and quantities based on their own sales results and any other business decisions they may consider. This means the list of stockists of any magazine will be dynamic as no publisher can service all 78,000 outlets unless they are a national newspaper or some crappy celeb rag that sell by the hundreds of thousands. This means that one shop may sell Singletrack one issue but not the next. Any newsagent can get a copy for you. If they don;t it's because they chose not to and there's nothing we can do about that.
Ha ha ha!
I genuinely love the happy smiley Chipps 'ying' to Marks functional direct almost-sarcastic 'yang'...
Brilliant. It's like there's a Karma-meter in STW towers that goes off when a thread like this arises.
Classic.
I'm with nickf on this, can't find it anywhere round these parts now.(south west)
There's always plenty in stock in the poxy tiny WHSmiths in the poxy tiny seaside Devon town I live in...
I should say [i]used[/i] to live in.. I've just moved into the wilds and might havta get a subscription..
Blimey, spoilt for choice in Canary Wharf. Never noticed the link at bottom of page before.
It's one of those links that has always been there, but that many people (myself included) often forget is there.
Great thread! That mag stockists search engine is pretty useful - perhaps also have it as a link at the top of the 'magarchive' page? I'd probably look there first if I wanted that info and was looking at the main section links at the top of each page of the site.
Might have been easier just to email stw directly with a 'where can I buy the mag in xtown?' rather than start a thread though?
Just tried the retailer search engine thingy - it did pull up the one local shop (in Inverness) where I can still seem to get the mag, and confirmed that it is indeed the one local shop where I can still get the mag!! Good work.
But also pulled up the Borders Book Shop which has been closed since they went TU a year and a half ago or whenever it was..........luckily it's next door to the Tesco where you can get the mag, so wouldn't have been a wasted trip 😀
computer says noooooo 🙁
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