8// The Modern Print Magazine for Runners
An interview with Simon Freeman, Editor of Like the Wind magazine
Hey pals,
I took a break last week after having my first week-off of annual leave this year (featuring running in the Scottish Highlands - lush).
We’re back with an interview with subscriber and all-round gent, Simon Freeman, editor of Like the Wind (LtW) magazine, a print magazine on ‘why we run’. The quarterly magazine has been going for 33 issues now and if you’re into reading enthralling stories on running packaged in a well crafted magazine, i would highly recommend subscribing.
Coincidentally, we had the interview on the same day that Trail Running Magazine (UK) announced it was cutting its print magazine to refocus on digital. After Trail Runner (US) made this same move earlier this year, I was intrigued by how you build and sustain a successful print magazine on running in this era.
The secret for Simon and Julie is simple - focus on satisfying the passionate runner, the runner who is invested financially and emotionally in running, by telling incredible stories that resonate and building a commercial model that doesn’t interfere with their experience of the magazine. As Simon says, it’s a win-win-win for publishers, brands and readers.
I hope you enjoy :)
Matt
It would be great if you start out with the origin story of Like the Wind and where the motivation to start came from.
The idea for Like the Wind (also known as LtW) started when my wife Julie and I ran around the Trail du Mont Blanc (roughly the UTMB course) over a couple of days as a cheap honeymoon. We talked about all sorts of topics, including the long form journal-type magazines we were buying about cycling, surfing, skateboarding … and we rarely did any of those activities - we were runners. But the running magazine we wanted to read did not exist. So we agreed to try to create that magazine. We got back home to London and got started: I contacted people to ask for stories while Julie learned how to design and layout a magazine, mainly from YouTube tutorials. We created a very basic website and set up social channels, so that we could start to tell people about the magazine and sell copies. And we found a printer. We made the decision to start the magazine in October 2013 and unveiled issue 1 in February 2014, at a party in the Truman Brewery in London. From that point on, it has been a rollercoaster and a huge learning experience. And when I look back 34 issues to that first one, it amazes me how far we have come.
Print media has had a rough decade with many magazines being cut completely by publishers to refocus on digital media. Yet in outdoor media, we have a strong independent print magazine scene with the likes of Sidetracked, Mountain Gazette and LtW continuing to publish against the tide of macro trends. Why do you think print has endured in outdoor media when in other sectors it hasn’t?
I actually think that the outdoors sector has had as many problems with print as any other sector. As I answer these questions on 10 November 2022, Trail Running magazine in the UK has announced that it will no longer be printed, instead going online only. I think there are a couple of pressures at the heart of the trend for publishers to go online. One is that much of the content that traditional magazines publish is available online - product reviews, race reports, nutrition tips and training advice in the case of running magazines. The other problem is the reliance that publishers have on advertising revenue. And many brands now want to be able to attribute every penny they spend on advertising to sales. So the publishers are giving the advertisers what they want - SEO focused content with lots of clickable links to affiliate pages where people can buy products and the publisher can earn commission. You can’t do that in print.
What I am very excited about is exactly what you mentioned: the emergence or revival of journal-type magazines in the endurance sports and outdoors worlds. Titles that have a completely different commercial model to the traditional magazines. You mentioned Sidetracked - that is a wonderful title that started around the same time as LtW. There are many other titles that have been around for a similar amount of time. Then there are also some revivalists - Mountain Gazette has been around in some form or other since the 1970s and was bought back to life in 2020 by a new owner. Wavelength magazine started in the early ‘80s as a weekly title that started to struggle and was acquired by a passionate group of people and turned into a bi-annual coffee table title. I could go on.
What I love about these new and renewed titles is that they are all championing great writing, design, photography and illustration. We (I’ll include LtW in this group) believe people want to take time to read something meaningful, insightful, thoughtful and eye-opening.
Publishers like us know that at the core of whatever sector they are publishing about, there are passionate people for whom the activity is their lifestyle. Those people invest, financially and emotionally, in their passion. They are the taste-makers. The early adopters. And there are most certainly enough of them - in running at least - to make what we do viable.
It’s a shame to hear about Trail Running magazine, but inevitable considering the comments you made above.
I feel we’re seeing the end of the ‘casual runner’ mag, the mag you pick up when you start running or want to improve your time. For as you say, intent driven content can all be accessed for free, online. Runner’s world is still going, and i feel as the competition is declining they’ll be able to stay in print for a little while longer, but how long before they start treading on your feet and place more emphasis on runners stories?
I hope that Runners World and other running magazines keep going - I was a subscriber to Runners World when I first started running, knowing nothing about what to wear or how to train and I found it very useful. I think that as a source of information to help people get into running, Runners World and magazines like that are invaluable. And they have authority, because there are editors and writers who really know their stuff at these magazines. In terms of whether other magazines will start to encroach on what LtW does, I guess that is possible. In fact Runners World in particular has published some amazing pieces of long form writing. But I think the readers of traditional magazines expect a certain type of content and would be turned off if suddenly the magazine changed dramatically. In the same way that I know LtW would lose most of our readers if we suddenly started publishing pieces that were not what our readers expect.
Lets move to the business side, how does LtW generate revenue? Has the balance of that changed overtime?
LtW is a reader-supported magazine. What that means is that the number of people buying the magazine - either as a single copy or as a subscription - allows us to keep publishing. Alongside that we have a group of five brands that support LtW financially for a minimum of a year. Those partners have a brand feature (what some people call an advertorial) in the each issue of the magazine and we talk about them on our social channels and in our newsletter from time to time. There are benefits for everyone in this commercial model: first and foremost the readers know that there are only five partners and that the magazine they buy will not be swamped with cheap, often irrelevant ads. The readers also know that the brand features will be well-written and designed so that they actually add to the magazine rather than distracting from it. The brands that support us know that they will be one of only five and their message will not be buried in page after page of ads. And the brands know that readers will spend some time with their stories. And as publishers, we know who we are working with upfront and we can dedicate all our efforts into promoting our partners. I strongly believe that is a win-win-win.
Across publishers in other sectors we’ve heard reports that advertisers are looking for flexibility in their ad buys, often skipping upfronts or buying for shorter periods in a bid to be adaptable if the economy in 2023 turns stale. Have you seen any hesitancy or greater demands for flexibility from your partners going into the new year?
The answer to this is ‘yes’ and ’no’. I have had many conversations with brands that want to buy a single page in one issue of LtW, I guess partly because they want the flexibility you mention. But my answer is simple: that is not available. And I have had a handful of conversations with brands who value storytelling and deep connection with runners, who understand what we are trying to do at LtW and completely buy in. Of course, I only need five companies who understand the power of stories each year, so I’m not worried if even the majority of the brands I speak to won’t commit to a year. What I believe is that brands that don’t build deep, long-term connections with runners won’t be the first that runners think about when they are in the market for new products or services. But I’m not running the marketing at a running brand, so my opinion doesn’t really matter.
Broadly print magazines and newspapers have had a tough year with higher printing costs and lower ad revenue- has LtW been affected by these same issues?
The last couple of years have been really, really rough. During the pandemic there were paper shortages. And because of the lock-downs it was hard to get the magazine printed and really hard to ship it to readers and subscribers. We had to spend a lot of time emailing the people who buy the magazine to explain what was happening and to apologise when the magazine was taking weeks or even months to reach them. Thankfully the vast majority of our readers were sympathetic and supportive. In the last 12 months the major problem has been the vast cost increases we have encountered.
Printers have seen their electricity costs increase massively and that is inevitably passed on to their customers - publisher like us. And the cost of paper continues to go up and up, with seemingly no end in sight. The cost of printing and delivering each copy of LtW has increased enormously in the last couple of years.
And that has certainly tested our resolve to be in print. But we are committed to ink-on-paper and we will find a way to keep printing the magazine. Thankfully because of the way we work with partners (rather than flogging ads) we have not seen a decline in revenue from that side of the equation. And we have more subscribers than ever, especially since the pandemic meant that more people took up - or returned to - running.
LtW operates on quite an efficient, lean model. Do you have plans for growth in the new year and beyond? Are there any areas of the business you are placing a particular focus on?
Having talked a lot about our commitment to print, this might sound contradictory, but I’m really excited about all the different channels we can use to tell stories. In a sense we are platform agnostic - I love it when someone buys a copy of the magazine and takes time to read it (I always imagine readers sitting with the magazine after a run with a mug of tea or coffee!) But equally if someone wants to read a long form piece online, that is great - so we are planning to create more unique online long form content in 2023. We are big fans of films and podcasts as a way to tell stories, so these are areas we are actively looking at. And we want to do more events - the energy you get from being in the same room as people who share a passion for something like running is irreplaceable. We have also recently published our first book - called Running Wild with Thames & Hudson - and I’m very excited about being involved in more book projects. In short, any ways in which we can tell stories about running are interesting. And the scale of the opportunity feels like starting a marathon or an ultra marathon - we’re excited and slightly overwhelmed at the same time!
Fascinating, have you thought about how you’ll adapt your business plan to these changes? For instance, will you vary your online and physical content strategy? Will subscribers get more exclusive content? Are you building more content/ad options into your upfront deals with partners?
At the moment we are still focussed absolutely on the magazine. So people who buy or subscribe to the magazine get the best we can offer. And we will not just dump those stories online, certainly not until the magazine has been out for a good while and even then, only when there is a good reason to publish a piece online that has appeared in the magazine. What we will do is create unique content specifically for an online audience - which could be people who are magazine readers but want more or are people who enjoy the sort of storytelling we do, but for whatever reason don’t buy the magazine. One idea is that we often find that in the editing process, there are elements of a story that we don’t publish in print that could be made available online. But the focus here is still on the readers. So we’re not thinking upfront about different commercial options for storytelling outside of the magazine. We’re just working out how to get more stories to more readers. There might come a time when we do introduce a way for brands to support storytelling outside of the magazine, but the priority is aways the readers.