Forum - View topicNEWS: Freelancers Report that PiQ's July Issue Is Its Last
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zrdb
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I think a lot of people expected PIQ to live up to Newtype's anime coverage and when it didn't-guess what? They stopped buying it! PIQ didn't do anything for me-if I buy a magazine about anime and manga-that's what I expect to get-not the stuff in PIQ.
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yoru08
Posts: 5 |
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I have contacted my local authority and be advised to take further action immediately.
Judging by both NTUSA and PiQ illegal acts, they not going to refund anybody a penny. All they doing is to buying time as much as possible since they need time to complete their "BANKRUPTCY" claims and it does take certain time for judge approval depending on wherever they filling the claims So please if anyone really wish to have your own money back, I need more witness and back-up on the upcoming trial . I not allowing them to extending any more time Please help me , first, please send them the dispute letter to whichever address you able to obtain to: (if you need one, I will post two address on my hands here) The sample of dispute letter as following: http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/guide/complain.shtml Then please go to this legal website of Federal Trade Commission to report their illegal acts at : http://www.ftc.gov/ and I have a guide for Consumer Complaints, please feel free to read it: http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/consumer-selfhelp.shtml Thank you in advance for all of your help! I deeply appreciated it! |
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tlsmith1963
Posts: 100 |
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Maybe they should've marketed it better. I didn't even know that PiQ had been out for awhile. I would've bought an issue if I had known. 
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tlsmith1963
Posts: 100 |
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I'd love to see NTUSA return. I miss it. |
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saishokushugisha
Editor, Anime Insider
 Posts: 101 Location: USA |
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I'm sorry, can you clarify? Because it sounds like you're saying that Kadokawa is doing something terrible by trying to stop fansubbers. Kadokawa's move to make anime free online is a step in the right direction. Far too many Japanese companies are refusing to take steps to make more anime free because they are too entrenched in the way things have always been done. |
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saishokushugisha
Editor, Anime Insider
Posts: 101 Location: USA |
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These days, printed magazines of any kind--all the way up the ladder to Time and The New Yorker--are "superfluous" if you only consider the purpose of a magazine to be source of news. But that's not what magazines do anymore. Everyone knows that information on the Internet is faster; people buy magazines for entertainment. The only thing that a magazine these days can offer readers is a focused, extremely entertaining voice or hot exclusives. When PiQ broadened its audience in an attempt to appeal to more readers, it lost the focused voice of NT, and with few studios knowing the new name, I'm guessing that exclusives were an uphill battle. Advertisers make or break a magazine, and if an advertiser can't look at a magazine and clearly see that the mag's audience will eat up his product, then he's going to spend his money on a safer bet. And with PiQ spreading itself over so many areas, many advertisers probably couldn't even get a good feel for the magazine's demographic, much less if that slice was going to buy their product. If you don't think that advertising makes a magazine, consider this: Say a magazine sells subscriptions for $20 a year. If 15,000 people subscribe to that magazine, it's making $300,000 a year, or $25,000 a month. However, 25k a month is not going to cover paychecks, office rent, printing and shipping the magazine, and the host of assorted expenses. Without supplementary income from advertisers, a magazine is doomed to failure 100% of the time no matter how good or bad it is. [NB: Yes, I left out newsstand sales. I was trying to make an uncomplicated point. Trust me, even if you add them in, a mag is in the red without ads. Also, no, those are not Anime Insider's sales figures :) I used small-to-mid-sized-magazine average costs.] Summer Editor, Anime Insider |
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Batman3777
 Posts: 160 Location: Down the Shore, NJ |
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This is definitely NOT the whole truth. From BV's blog, Tatsunori Konno discussing NTUSA's end here:
So, Greg Ayres must have been somewhat... mistaken. Perhaps he was misinformed? I am sure managment was not eager to tell everyone around them "yup, money is tight and we can't pay for the license, so... we're not going to be NTUSA anymore." Hopefully, ADV will learn from this experience and improve its business management and model. That way we can avoid anymore losses, and not have to endure the "the sky is falling" worries. PiQ did not sell, well, probably, for 2 reasons: 1. it wasn't given enough time to sell, and 2. the original readership was not interested in this new hybrid magazine. It happens. If the magazine had more ads, and if management had been better, PiQ might have been able to ride out the storm and gain readership. Like I said earlier, I hope NTUSA can come back. Everyone write in to Kodakawa and ask!!! 
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TornadoTatsumaki
Posts: 145 Location: Mission Bend,Texas |
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irishninja
 Posts: 344 Location: Seattle-ish |
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Summer is totally right (and completely awesome for 'splainin' a few things). The print magazine business is one that is VERY hard to make money in, because even if you do get enough ads and subscribers and newsstand buyers to cover your costs, you still have to deal with an extremely bloated and archaic printing and distribution system that in some ways seems designed to make magazines lose money. And we won't even talk about the number of magazines that get pulped every month. When I started my magazine job (for a monthly with roughly 30,000 subscribers) I found out how many magazines don't sell and what happens to them—AND that the magazine company has to pay for all of that! Oy. |
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Hon'ya-chan
 Posts: 973 |
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[quote="irishninja"]
So why not recycle them? Get with the times, Green propaganda BS.... |
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saishokushugisha
Editor, Anime Insider
Posts: 101 Location: USA |
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I know! The giant chain bookstores are so big that they can set their own rules that everyone is forced to follow. For those not in the know, one of those is that they can "strip" the cover off books and magazines and just return that to the publisher for return credit. They save on shipping and just toss the remaining magazines/books. Well, a lot do get recycled, actually, but it still means that the publisher has to give money back for magazines that it can't ever resell. Hope I'm not getting too far off topic here. |
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mithrandiryod
 Posts: 11 |
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Personally I saw this coming when they decided to ditch Newtype and try to branch on their own. Most of their subscribers (Me Included) more than likely didn't want a new magazine and took their patronage elsewhere. I actually received the first issue before my subscription tanked....wasn't impressed in the least. I found most of their insights flawed, and while I did enjoy looking at their take on the industry I could only laugh at their poor attempts to cover everything else. Goes to show though....if it isn't broke...don't try to fix it, and if it isn't profitable, you only have yourself to blame really.
-mith |
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wintermoon
 Posts: 5 |
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*follows you off topic* I always wondered how much "stripping" affected publishers financially. I worked at Barnes & Noble for three years and I can't even begin to tell you how many book and mag covers I've stripped and sent back. If it sits on the shelf too long you simply rip of the cover and send it back. The rest of the book or mag is thrown away-seems like an expensive disposal service... (On the other hand, if you work there you can go through the stuff to be thrown out and take the books/mags you want for free, so I ended up with a TON of free books/mags.) 
To get back on topic: I was a NTUSA subscriber. I liked it a lot because it gave me the info that I was looking for, and I liked getting the dvd. Piq tried to do too much. I think that everyone has pointed out it's deficiencies already, so I'm not going to touch on them. When it came down to it, whether the mag was good or not doesn't matter, it just didn't cover enough of what I wanted to read about. I was very thankful that my NTUSA subscription only had one issue left. (Otaku USA-here I come!) The fact that it seems like people won't be able to get refunds for the remaining balance of their subscription is terrible. NTUSA was an expensive magazine. I hope this issue is resolved for you all very soon. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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When I was very young, I remember us getting a few books with missing covers from my grandad who drove a van for a large newagent chain. so some did get 'recycled' even back then  The best stuff as far as I was concerned was old sticker books with whole boxes of stickers (never really mattered what the stickers were for). I've never really been aware that it was the publisher who footed the bill for it, as that really is senseless - I'm no retail expert but AFAIK pretty much everywhere else if you buy more than you can sell, you have a sale.
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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Honestly, I don't expect Otaku USA to be around for many years to come. And I wouldn't be too suprised to see Wizard shut down Anime Insider. After all, Insider's website has been dead for months now. The problem is, that print magazines are dying a slow painful death right now. Even the major publishers are having problems, and several have even filed for bankruptcy (like ZD). With such a niche market like anime, there just isn't the revenue to make a magazine really successful. And with the internet, most of the news in these magazines is months old by the time it's printed. And I just don't like Otaku USA. It's a pale imitator of Newtype USA, with similar shallow articles, but none of the pretty artwork. It may be cheaper than Newtype was, but I still feel like I"m gettting ripped off. |
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I didn't hate it, but it just did not cover enough of what I liked, whereas NTUSA did.
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