Summer 2024 Issue of ‘RV Today’ Mag Looks at Bowlus RV – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
QR codes kill kittens.
Everyone says we live in a digital world, but I will tell you analog is making a strong comeback—and I don’t mean 8-tracks are coming back into our cars.
When I started Rootless Living magazine in 2019, I was shocked that digital nomads and full-time RVers actually wanted a print version of the magazine. Rootless Living subscribers were 90% digital and 10% print, which stayed steady until we merged it with RV Today earlier this year.
With RV Today, we have seen a considerable uptick in print subscribers. In a year or so, we may have as many new print subscribers as digital-only subscribers. And it’s not happening just with RV Today’s print magazine. Look around and you’ll see how popular other non-digital media is becoming. People seek film cameras and dumb phones (calls and text only). Even LP sales are growing. People want to get off their devices.
Now, the great thing about being a magazine that is available in print and digital is that we can cater to both types of content consumers. If you don’t want to read a magazine on a device because you find yourself distracted by all the notifications from other apps, then grab a print subscription. If you like the experience of having the magazine with you at all times, clicking links, and having a more 360 experience, then grab a digital subscription.
All hobbies and lifestyle niches need print magazines. They’re a staple in these communities. However, magazines are drying up in niches because advertisers don’t understand how important a print magazine is to their ecosystem, or they get too excited about the next shiny object and go all in there (cough, TikTok).
You would think I would be excited about my competitor magazines shutting down or transitioning to digital-only and discontinuing their print version, but I am not. Print and analog are still very important.
As an example, have you heard of a magazine called Girl Camper? Well, if you haven’t, my friend Janine and her team do a fantastic job creating a quarterly publication that is available in print and encourages women to get out and camp and RV either with their families or solo. The print quality is amazing, and it really is coffee table quality.
I started this letter with a statement about QR codes, so let’s get back to that. While we continue to innovate, I always ask myself, “Are we doing what we’re doing because ‘that’s the way things have always been done’? Or are we taking an innovative approach that truly meets a need for our readers and RVers?”
Behind this message is our goal of designing the print magazine to be a device-free version, and that will mean banning QR codes in the future. The digital version will be slightly different and more interactive but still with no QR codes, as the device you are reading the magazine with is probably the one that also holds the camera you need to scan said QR code. But don’t worry, if you buy the print version you get the digital as well.
Print and analog content are here to stay. If the uptick in print subscribers over the last six months is an indicator of the future, then we are on the right track.
Demian Ross
Founder/Publisher
[email protected]
