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Time To Tack

(Editor’s note issue #138)

This magazine began as a labor of love. Those early black and white copies were launched on faith—a belief there might be enough of you who were like us—folks looking for more to read on the topic of small boats and cruising.

As businesses go there wasn’t much money in it, but for the first 13 years SCA grew slowly, eventually paying its way. We were thrilled because putting this magazine together never felt like work. We did what we loved and, lo and behold, it paid off. 

For a time it was tempting to believe we were eyewitnesses to a lasting small-boat renaissance, or at least renewed interest in simple little boats and sailing, but we might have been making our own wind. Looking back, I’m not sure the number of small-boat sailors has ever fluctuated much. New or younger sailors always come along, but they are offset by others who lose interest or age-out.

2013 apparently marked our zenith as a print magazine, as SCA has lost subscribers each year since. Younger people are spending more time on screens and less with the printed page, of course, but the trend toward digital information sources—newspapers, magazines, forums, retail shopping—applies to all age groups. I get notes from many of you telling me Small Craft is the last print magazine you take by subscription. While we appreciate the support, it reveals an ominous truth: Print is dying.

My uncle and SCA co-founder, Craig Wagner, retired years ago, so the staff is down to just me, along with my friend and Associate Editor, Marty Loken. Even running bare bones, it’s been a few years since this magazine was worth publishing from a financial perspective, but here’s the real killer: As our audience has continued to gradually shrink, mailing, printing, and other costs have increased precipitously.  Simply put, we are staring at a rocky lee shore and being forced to slam the helm over.

For years we’ve brainstormed ways to keep SCA solvent, but all our ideas have had significant drawbacks. Printing fewer issues each year, cutting the number of pages, reducing printing quality, or raising subscription prices won’t work, as each option would likely turn away too many readers to justify the change.

At this juncture the only move that makes sense is a switch to publishing SCA’s content in a digital format only, since the vast majority our overhead costs go to printing and mailing. Like many of you, we’re old fashioned enough to prefer the paper magazine between our varnish-stained fingertips, but we’ve also come to see the benefits of the right sort of all-digital format. Where you used to wait two months between issues, we can publish content as it arrives, with subscribers receiving an e-mail with each new article. Extensive archival content can remain on the site and be readable at anytime. Contributors won’t be limited by word or page count and can elaborate at length. The same goes for photos—where we often only have space to choose the best 2 or 3 images, now we’ll be able to publish every relevant photo or illustration. But it has to be easily readable, so we plan to ditch our current digital magazine layout (with its sometimes clumsy controls and magazine look)and move to something much more user-friendly.

Most of you are more like friends than simply “readers,” and as contributors to this magazine, it’s as much yours as it is ours. With that in mind we’re committed to SCA carrying on, even if the presentation format will have to change. Even after 22 years of publishing we have a lot more to share on the topic. We sincerely thank all of you for your support and hope you will stick around to get familiar with our new format.

—Joshua Colvin

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