After surveying Creating Keepsakes’ drop in advertising in the past 12 months, it seemed a good idea to follow-up with an examination of the advertising in the other CK Media magazine still in print: PaperCrafts.
The advertising situation in that title appears even more dire than in CK Media’s flagship title. A year ago, just over 24% of the magazine was paid advertising. The current issue is 8 pages shorter than the length in March 2008, and still only manages to contain 18.6% paid advertising. Considering that Creating Keepsakes’ “good” numbers a year ago (when it appears they were already having trouble paying their bills) were 33-38%, 18.6% is dismal.
Are the advertising problems industry-wide? To a certain extent, it appears so – which isn’t surprising to anyone following the publishing industry with magazines dropping right and left. A year ago, Scrapbooks Etc. was 32.25% paid advertising. Now, it is 8 pages shorter, and only 25.6% paid advertising content. Memory Makers’ numbers look even worse: In May/June 2008 they were 31.64% paid advertising content. Now, they are 15.4% paid advertising content (although the same length).
While CK convention attendance has seemed strong to outside observers, that doesn’t seem to mean they’ve been any better at paying their bills for that part of their operation. I’ve been receiving numerous reports of creditors who are owed overdue bills that run into as much as 5 digits from doing business with CK Media’s convention department.
And apparently being on the magazine’s masthead doesn’t keep you off the list of the unpaid, either, as Creating Keepsakes’ web hostess Erin Lincoln indicated this morning in a post to a thread on the CK message board about the company’s troubles:
Which may be the biggest indicator of all of exactly how deep the company’s troubles are.
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This is just sad. It is clear our industry is in a time of transition – but to what? Where will media fit in with the new technology? So many questions…
I know no matter what happens I am not renewing my CK mag-I can barely manage to flip thru it without gagging. But I do like Papercrafts and have almost three years left on my sub as opposed to one on CK. I often wonder about the foray into scrapbook items that CK did a while back that were sold at Joann’s. Within a few weeks they were in the clearance bins and no one wanted them. Was this before or after the sale to private equity?
What’s even more of a shame is the word has gotten out to the scrapping community that CK is not honoring it’s contracts with those who submit. Some are owed a year or more $$ for submissions. That can’t be good either. No paid advertising + no paid submissions = no magazines.
What a shame it’s only one of the magazines I subscribed to even it was from abroad. I bet they’ll just stop sending issues.
I only subscribe to two magazines one in the USA and one in the UK.
Thanks for telling us about it Nancy
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Fab
Nancy, I’m really proud of you for breaking this story. Keep it up. And THANK YOU!
When I noticed the increase in postage on my international subscription, I refused to renew and let it lapse…
I just called the Customer Service Phone Number to get a refund for my Project 365 KOTM that was charged and never delivered, “If you have any questions concerning your order, please contact our Customer Service Department by phone at 1-800-453-1173 or email to CreatingKeepsakesCS@Holdenmss.com”
“Your call did not got through, please try your call again.” This is the typical message you hear when the line has been disconnected.
No surprise. I’ll need to contact my credit card company to dispute the chrage.