Wargaming magazines what next?

Its a tough market for print media and English language wargame magazines are no different especially with their niche market and competition from the Internet.

Magazines like Dragon disappeared into the net years ago while Wargames Illustrated was taken into the Battlefront stable and despite increasing its Flames Of War coverage for obvious reasons i think continues to provide a good read with availability though many newsagents here in Australia. Battlegames another small wargaming magazine made the transition to both print and pdf issues some time ago which gives us worldwide access outside of the capitol cities where Ive only seen it in gaming shops. 

Games Workshops White Dwarf is a little bit different being totally in house with no outside content apart from brief mentions of the other IP licences. Its having a bit of a reposition with GW's tightening of release information and possible return to White Dwarf rule releases. If you listen to the Internet at all White Dwarf in particular may be suffering from a dropping readership, have a look at BOLS with Brents latest piece although like anything based on incomplete figures we can only speculate. It seems that around here it's disappeared out of the newsagents too. I would imagine White Dwarf will get a new lease of life with the Hobbit movies around the corner and their signing of the licence deal for those figures. 

Miniature Wargames has managed to stay independent and is a magazine I've seen only rarely in Australia with the newsagent coverage being nonexistent. They are trying some different things out with their latest being trial issues of June and July 2011 published on the Internet. The link is here http://www.exacteditions.com/miniaturewargames so wander over and see what they are doing. There are some of the older issues there to have a look at as well. I've spotted a couple of pieces that I'll have a read of.

The way they are handling it is by offering magazines to view online and on Apple and on Android devices. You can download and print individual pages but unfortunately due to copyright they cannot allow the whole magazine to be downloaded.

All these publications have to struggle with getting relevant content that isn't readily available on the Internet and when they are physically printing copies getting the advertisers to make it worthwhile. So if you happen to make an order based on a lead from a publication give the supplier a heads up on where you got that information.