2016-04-08
Why did they screw this up?
Up until the April 6th issue I got the Auto Express magazine through Zinio every week and everything was good. I got the whole magazine - all the editorial, all the adverts, everything but the wrapper. Now for some idiotic reason Dennis Publishing has split the sheets with Zinio and is taking over distribution. If that is all they did it wouldn't be a big deal however the brain trust at Dennis no longer sells a magazine in an eprint format and instead has removed my cherished adverts and reformatted the editorial content so that it looks like a web magazine. I'm sure this effort took a lot of work at great expense however this work is for naught from my perspective. The eprint version allowed me to quickly browse the articles and cherry pick some obvious favorites. Before the next issue would show up I would eventually read every word editorial, adverts and all. Why did they kill the adverts? Sure many products are not distributed in the US but many are. In any case I have a shopping list for my next trip to the UK. This has happened before but with Top Gear although they maintained the eprint version through another distributor. For a few months I was subscribed to both versions. Now that the gang of thee is gone this is a moot point. To potential Auto Express subscribers I suggest that you buy a single issue and see how the webzine works for you. For me I'm headed to Autocar.