How to Increase Newsstand Sales of Chess Life.

[samsloan]

I have already told everybody how to get more news stand sales of
Chess Life.

Put Alisa Melekhina on the cover!!

Take a look at the current Chess Life, with Ron Hames, age 70, on the
cover.

Who plays better chess, Ron Hames, a 1500-player, or Alisa Melekhina,
a 2300-player?

Whose picture on the cover will sell more copies of Chess Life?

Sam Sloan

[Forsythe]

One, the magazine is written for the newsstand.
Two, the magazine would have gone out of print if it was only written
only for the newsstand sales.
Three, when was the last time the USCF ever reported their newsstand
sales or reported how many issues was produced for the newsstand
sales.
Forth, if Mike Nolan ever produced evidence to show the amount of
members that during their membership, they never played a single rated
game, with over the board and correspondence chess, the numbers would
be very minor. Even then, the membership could have been used to
purchase merchandise to get the membership discount.
Fifth, even if someone does purchase a membership just to read the
magazine. Number of people will lie about their true age to get it at
the cheapest price possible. Therefore, there have been times the USCF
has sold scholastic members at a loss just to try to keep the member
and still receives the magazine.

Conclusion: The USCF with newsstand sales has produced some people to
lie about their age with a magazine subscription that could have been
sold at a loss. Even if the newsstand issue was sold, and a membership
was sold, that turned into a over the board player of correspondence
player or both, does not justify the production of the magazine for
newsstand readers.

[The Masked Bishop]

Chess Life has been clueless for decades on how to market themselves
to the general public. With the exception of Peter Kurzdorfer, every
editor has overseen a magazine that reads like a geek
newsletter...something old model train guys or stamp collectors might
enjoy.

We often hear "costs" as the reason the magazine is so damned ugly,
but that's a canard...anyone with a laserprinter and Microsoft
publisher could put out a far more interesting rag, graphically
speaking.

We can't escape the reality that US Chess is dominated by chubby old
white guys, so it's a bit of lie just to run hotties on the cover
every issue. But as the November issue showed, you can creative and
feature Lev Alburt in an amusing and kinda classy way.

Where Chess Life fails is not acknowledging that the bulk of US
interest (and money) is in scholastic chess, and they should be
feature a lot more kids, schools, or anything having to do with chess
education on the cover. Forget the kids magazine, and run that
material as a section in the regular magazine. If they need space for
that, dump the tournament life section and just print a one-page on
how to get that info online. When a magazine devotes the back third to
tiny-print classifieds, you have a problem.

TMB

[The Masked Bishop]

Another notion, certainly too radical for the staid poo-bahs at the
USCF offices, is to rename the thing with a title that promotes other
"brain" games as well. Lasker played a lot of Go and Bridge, if I
recall.

Using "life" in a magazine title is pretty 1950s.

TMB

[Forsythe]

Since the age of the internet, never understood the rational reason to
purchase a Tournament Life Announcement to be printed in the magazine,
as an organizer can produce their own website that advertises their
own tournaments with more detail then a print magazine, or, the USCF
website is going to allow.