CannabisCulture Magazine Last Issue Printed.

Cannabis Culture magazine to go online only

According to Marc Emery's facebook status, Cannabis Culture, the pre-eminent libertarian marijuana-focused magazine, will follow the Western Standard and shut off their printing presses in favour of an online-only publication.

Here is his status, as well as his comments on the status thread:

"Marc Scott Emery has decided to no longer publish Cannabis Culture Magazine on paper because each issues loses about $40,000 and advertising & circulation is falling off."

I'm not that sad. The store has to sell so much to pay for the losses every issue. We printed 62,000 of issue #73. Then Anderson News went out of business. They handle 25% of our magazines. Because they went under last month, our distributor ordered 9,000 less for #75 and the distribution will be chaotic and our sales on newstands will be much ... Read Morelower, raising losses even more. Of the 62,000 printed, 38,000 sold, meaning 24,000 got destroyed each issue. Now our potential sales would drop to 30,000 - 35,000. The circulation revenue for that is a disappointing $38,000 per issue. Advertising is only providing $30,000 per issue. It costs $56,000 to print 62,000, another $10,000 to ship to distributors, stores and subscribers. Those costs are covered by revenue, but the cost of producing the magazine is $16,000 for material (writers and photographers), $32,000 to produce the magazine, $4,000 an issue in promotion, posters, cards, and much more. Losses are approx. $42,000 to $55,000 per issue...

And magazines don't have the impact they once did. All information is available faster and free online. If we put the effort into our online presence, we can raise revenue there and lose much less and be more efficient and competitive with information. WE are always being quoted, but the quotes come from our online web material, our videos, movies... Read More, TV interviews and multi-media. Our magazine is rarely quoted because people had difficulty finding it, the media don't quote magazines anymore and our feedback has dropped from readers...

So our energy is being put into a revamped online presence. Our cannabisculture.com got 24 million hits last month from 300,000 individuals so thats where we should put all this effort. And that's the future for all magazines and newspapers. Many magazines you are currently familiar with will go out of business by the end of the year, including The... Read More National Post, Sports Illustrated, Maxim, and so many others. Check out the latest Sports Illustatred, it has only 10.5 pages of advertising in the entire issue. Time Magazine has only 8 pages of advertising. It will save alot of trees but many forestry workers and pulp mill workers will be laid off permanently...

Unfortunately, subscriptions never made money, and we never had more than 1,400 at any one time. Each magazine cost about $2 each to produce, plus 60 cents to ship in Canada, $1.50 to ship to USA, $3.00 abroad. Envelopes and packing took another 25 cents per issue. Then we sent a free copy to all Canadian MPs and Senators, and a copy to all newspapers in Canada and many in the USA, which was all cost and no revenue...

Ultimately, all subscribers will get goods they want or their money refunded.

This is a shame. Cannabis Culture was much loved amongst those of us who believe in liberty, and think the war on drugs is a disaster.

Posted by P.M. Jaworski on March 23, 2009 in Media | Permalink