Property investment magazine closes despite soaring market
Australia’s highest-selling property investment print magazine has published its final issue after almost 20 years, but it remains unclear what will happen to the title’s digital assets.
Australian Property Investor magazine, which first went to print in 1997, will no longer produce its February 2017 edition, due to hit shelves on 1 January, 2017
The Brisbane-based Australian Property Investor, which claimed 130,000 monthly readers, first went to print in 1997 and was due for a relaunch in January 2017.
Kieran Clair, who took over editing the title in March this year after three years contributing as a journalist, was told of the magazine’s demise on November 30.
The news comes despite the ongoing high levels of investor activity in the property market, with loan approvals for investors picking up again in recent months.
Clair said the “new media environment” caught up with the magazine, forcing its closure.
“There was no avoiding that, definitely, the circulation had softened over the past couple of years, but I think that was the case for a lot of magazines and publications,” Clair told Mumbrella.
“What became pretty apparent is that while subscriptions are great, advertising tends to drive profitability. My feeling, and while that wasn’t my department, my feeling is that, we had a good advertising manager who was getting people in – but it was hard work getting and retaining long-term advertisers, because the options are just so good for online.”
Clair said would-be advertisers were now creating their own content online, so no longer needed print magazines to sell their wares.
Australian Property Investor will also cease publishing online, but it is unclear what the magazine’s publisher, Australian Commercial Publishing, will do with the title’s digital assets.
It is unclear what publisher Lane Boy (pictured) intends to do with the magazine’s digital assets
“As I understand, consideration is being given to placing whatever assets there are on the market,” Clair told Mumbrella. “I’ve made approaches myself to the owner to find out what’s happening because a lot of people have contacted me with interest in either the mailing lists, all sorts of things, that the brand has,” he said.
“I think there’s some value in those assets, but it seems like the intent is to put all those numbers together – he [publisher Lane Boy] is controlling the destiny of that at the moment – and put it to the market to see who’s interested in those assets.”
Clair said in an ideal world, another publisher would pick up the magazine’s assets and “find a viable way to keep producing the content we were producing”.
Key Media’s Your Investment Property Magazine is now the only remaining monthly print magazine for property investors. Momentum Media’s (formerly Sterling Publishing) Smart Property Investment ceased producing print magazines in early 2015, but continues to operate as a daily digital publication.
Disclaimer: Vivienne Kelly is the former editor of Smart Property Investment magazine
Such is the case with a lot of titles, especially independently owned.
With no mobile website, no bespoke digitally created content and no social strategy what did they really expect?
You can’t simply regurgitate print tonight online.
Sadly it’s not suprising they went under, just a wonder they didn’t give up sooner.
The editor was quoted that advertising drove profitability but wasn’t their department, quite frankly, as the editor or general member of staff profitability is everybody’s department.
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To clarify that quote – advertising wasn’t my, or the editorial teams, department. We always tried to keep content and advertising seperate to avoid advertorial comment in feature articles. It was a core value of the publication to keep the two departments as seperate as possible. Of course the editorial crew were keen to improve readership (and profitability) through high quality content and exposure in other mediums. That was our brief.
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I was a subscriber to API for many many years and have to say the disrespect of this Lane Boy character is disgusting. It’s the subscribers that would have kept API going all those years. I would have had at least another 18 months on my 3 year subscription and not even a courtesy email or letter to advise what has happened.
I’m not sure but the new “Your property Investment” looks terribly similar to the failed API “Australian Property Investor” Can anyone tell me if the Lane Boy has any affiliation what so ever with the new magazine?
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