I love magazines ever since I can remember. As a kid in the 80s I had a huge ass collection of Smash Hits and I currently have a huge ass collection of WIRED (dating back to 1994 I think). When I first signed up to Shop & Ship back in 2001 I think I signed up to at least 20 magazines.
Slowly slowly though I stopped renewing a lot of them once the iPad got released. I just downloaded and subscribed to all the magazines using Zinio and just left one physical magazine subscription and that was WIRED. But, I’ve just canceled that as well.
With the Kindle and Zinio App on the iPad it really doesn’t make sense to buy print versions of the magazines anymore. Other than the cost of magazines in Kuwait being a lot more than the US and since the cost of shipping magazines from the States has increased over time I finally decided to go completely digital. I’ve always wanted a large bookstore to open here in Kuwait but I think I’ve finally realized now it’s just too late.
If you don’t know what Zinio is check out my previous post on it [Here]
12 replies on “No More Magazines”
You should black out that Maxim cover.
no way would i ever black out arianny!
😀
Just airbrushing it would do:-)
Ive been a subscriber of the printed version of MotorTrend, GQ, and Road&track for a while, and i usually get it via regular mail of Kuwait (much cheaper than aramix) and somehow it works, not only i get “most” issues on time, they are never censored!! even crazy GQ covers.
Now am fallin in love with the interactive ipad apps. the GQ and MotorTrend apps kick ass.
I think am gonna cancel the paper issues soon
This is why I love digital. A movie doesn’t come out in Kuwait? It’s ok let’s go check piratebay/iTunes. I remember trying so hard to get underground music CDs growing up and whenever I traveled first place I would go is a bookstore and record store, now you can find anything online and don’t need to pay local markups.
Saves a lot of paper and wasted shipping too! Honestly all media should be digital, a lot of friends argue with me they “enjoy collecting CDs”. You know what, I did too until I had 200 CDs and had to move countries. I ended up throwing all the packaging and now they’re rotting in a CD case somewhere. It’s wasteful.
Mark, you should check out Next Issue on iPad: https://www.nextissue.com
But we still need a bookstore. Magazines okay, but I much prefer reading a physical book than an ebook.
Bookstores around the world are going out of business because digital is taking over, just embrace it 🙂 more ecologically friendly too, no need for paper, ink, or fuel to ship around words on a page that could be transferred digitally.
I travel to Dubai bi-weekly to get my favorite magazines amongst other reasons, I don’t do anything in Kuwait anymore – I take my money south. But what irks me more than anything is when they did bring Hello and Emirates Woman magazine to Kuwait they would further edit it with broad black magic marker censorship. Who do you think you are? How dare you think that you from this undeveloped garbage littered country recensor an Emirates produced publication that is already censored by Emirates authorities. Because hate to burst you bubble Kuwait, you are a far less conservative muslim country than the UAE and you are less smarter. So the Kuwaiti who could not pay his bills to Motivate Publishing which caused them to stop importing their publications to Kuwait (I called the publishers) is one of the main reasons why publishers don’t want to send their publications here. If I want to visit a damn good bookstore, I visit one in Dubai. Screw Kuwait!
“Less smarter” hahahaha the irony, it burns
Thanks for sharing this info. I bought October issue of my favorite Digital SLR photog magazine right away after reading this. It costs less than 3 times the amount you will pay in a bookstore here in Kuwait. Plus, I got the subscription early. Hehehe. Thanks! You’re the man!