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We are certainly aware of the rigors, especially present in this modern age, of publishing a magazine. When the commercial landscape shifted so drastically that the ‘e’ world became a legitimate part of publishing commerce, those of us who published print magazines and books knew we had to now include the digital dissemination of our wares to stay current in the marketplace. That alone killed a bunch of publications and making Von Gutenberg issues available forever onward in all Apple applications, for Android and Amazon readers was one of the most important advances we had to undergo. Add into this soup the fact that we publish a decidedly ‘niche’ global magazine, our concerns of staying alive and well in 2015 and beyond are ever present. Thankfully Von Gutenberg is not going anywhere and is indeed now working on our new issue, new features and ever new innovations, but not all publications of a ‘niche’ manner survive, and in this post today we say goodbye to one of the best and brightest of the bunch, Bizarre magazine.
The Huffington Post’s headline British Bastion Of Fetish, Freaks, Extreme Tattoos And Porn, Closes After 18 Years uses the word ‘Freaks’ but no Bizarre reader would think it a pejorative. The fetish faithful, tattooed, alt. life-styler and just-all-around-curious for something interesting came to this British institution for nearly two decades to read about sex, films, music, even politics. At the height of its publishing the magazine sold 100,000 copies per issue, at its low-presently-11,000. In a statement from Bizarre’s publisher Dennis Publishing it was noted that “with a large proportion of the printed magazine market suffering a decline with lower sales in an increasingly digital age, Dennis Publishing has made the difficult decision to close the publication.”
So, yes digital killed Bizarre.
In light of the recent attack on Charlie Hebdo and a decided homogenizing of world culture that often leads to too much political correctness (something a good dyed-in-the-wool alternative life-styler rejects at every turn) we are sorry to see Bizarre magazine folding and thank them for their unwavering work in the field of fueling all of us freaks for a very long time indeed.
