Climber Magazine

CLIMBER’S EVOLUTION
I have some difficult news and it is with a heavy heart I need to tell
you this. As you will have read in these Editorials over the past couple of years, keeping the magazine in print has been challenging, to say the least. This has now been compounded further with more increases in printing, paper costs, postage costs, business costs etc, plus an acute fall in advertising revenue as companies spread their ever-diminishing marketing budgets across yet more platforms. The cost of living crisis hasn’t helped either as everyone tightens their belts further. Despite my very best efforts, I’ve had to take the diffi cult decision to end the magazine’s publication in its current format of six issues a year as it’s no longer financially viable and,as a one-man band publisher, I can’t absorb the increased costs and fallingrevenue despite my very best efforts. I’m very proud of Climber, a magazine that, when I took over publishing in 2011, many said would last only a couple more years. I’m elated to have turned it around and kept it alive for a few years more. The harsh reality is trying to balance the books and make the magazine fi nancially viable.
As such I was left with two choices, either close the magazine and
perhaps concentrate purely on the Climber website (or close that too) or roll with the punches and evolve the magazine into something else. Well, all is not lost for Climber in print form. I’m presently formulating a plan to relaunch the magazine this summer as a three-times-a-year journal/bookazine-style magazine. There will be more content per issue with inspirational stories and imagery across all aspects of climbing and it will be printed on more premium paper stock with a contemporary design.

With heartfelt thanks, here’s to evolution
David