No, we don’t offer free shipping (we do, however, offer a 15% discount on the cover price when you buy a UK subscription).
Why not?
In the heyday of print magazine publishing, sometime in the 1990s, the game was all about numbers. Get as many readers as possible, by whatever means necessary, and then fill the pages with expensive ad space. The ad sales paid for, well, everything, if you were doing it right.
That doesn’t work any more.
Long story short: to produce a high quality magazine that’s sustainable, readers have to be asked to contribute a greater share than was previously the case. That’s reflected both in Cranked’s cover price, and in the shipping that we charge (at cost).
We could offer ‘free’ shipping. But it wouldn’t be. Not really. Because, in order to make up for the lost revenue, we’d have to cut costs elsewhere.
We could pay our contributors less (which would mean waving goodbye to many of our current contributors, who are amongst the best in the world. So that’s not happening).
We could save a few quid by using cheaper paper (but that would mean losing Cranked’s coffee table look and feel. So that’s not happening either).
We could make the magazine smaller, or cut the feature and page count (but… well, you get the idea).
Cranked was founded on the principle of ‘no compromise’. We don’t always get everything right, but we aim to produce the best print mountain bike magazine you can buy, anywhere. That’s our goal, just as it was when we started in 2015.
So, although shipping costs have increased and we’ve had to pass those along, we’re proud that Cranked’s cover price in 2022 remains, as it was in 2015, £10.
We aim to provide good value, transparent pricing and a magazine that you’ll want to keep coming back to. We think that’s worth a few quid on post and packing, and we hope you agree.
What’s included in our shipping charges…
- first class postage within in the UK, and airmail to most destinations outside the UK
- a tough cardboard envelope, so your magazine arrives in pristine condition with no dinks in the corners
- free replacement if your magazine does, in fact, arrive damaged (or gets lost in the post). You need only ask
