Lets talk about how much inside kung fu magazine sucks!

[bodhitree]

I think it is the worst publication in the world, and I want to fight all of its contributers at once!

[PHILBERT]

Alright, let's talk about it.

1.) The majority of there profit comes FROM advertising. Initially, for the $4 each issue costs of IKF, regardless of how good it is (and yes, let's all admit, they do have some crappy articles, which outweigh the good ones), they would not turn a profit for it's employees, publishing, and distribution at $4 an issue.

2.) The advertisers determine who they are going to pay to put there ads in do to there own sales. If Joe Company advertises in IKF, and sees a large profit, then it will continue to pay to go into IKF. Then it might try and go into Black Belt Mag, or Grappling mag.

Yes, IKF does suck, it says Kung Fu on the cover but has alot of grappling articles not related to Kung Fu, alot of NHB coverage, etc. But for the ads, that is how they make there money.

Go pick up an issue of Time magazine and you will see more articles than advertisement. That is because Time magazine SELLS. It does not appeal to a select group of people, it appeals to the mass majority of competent adults in America. Heck I've been reading Time magazine off and on since I was 15.

Go pick up a porno mag, you'll see alot of advertisements for phone sex hotlines. Why? Because the porno magazine does not turn much profit (save for Playboy) so they use outside advertisers paying them X amount of dollars to help turn the profit to pay it's models.

That is why I like KF/TC magazine alot, sure it has advertisements, but the advertisements are from it's own company and not outside distributors.

Though I think IKF is owned by Unique Publications, which holds many of there own ads as well.

[bodhitree]

KF/TC is mostly not BS, Not glorifying David Carodine, not trying to pass off some weird karate as gong fu. What is it with them, and whats up with selling a book called kung fu masters with Jackie Chan on the cover. The guy has some talent, but, come on, kung fu master?

[norther practitioner]

It seems to be really hit or miss with IKF...

hopefully it will be a good issue when they run some fan apps. that my teacher and I shot with them in Albuquerque.

Good shots of me getting ktfo with a girly weapon....:D

I almost cried when we were going over which ones to shoot and I got hit full throttle in the boys.

[Gold Horse Dragon]

IKF and KFT have both had their share of bad articles to good and excellent articles. Advertising is advertising...does not matter if it is from outside the publisher or by the publisher or both and both IKF and KFT have significant advertising.
IKF has it over KFT with the color pages.
DC has done and is doing a lot to promote CMA...good for him.
I do not like that IKF promotes grappling and NHB so much, but I also so not like how much KFT promotes comtemporary wushu. As well...KFT's majority of models and master pics are of Asians...they do not give the same coverage to Non-Chinese masters as models (including cover) in the mag on the whole.
All that said...both mags are good and are good for the promotion of Kung Fu in general.

GHD

[mortal]

I think Jackie chan is definately a kung fu master.

[Lao Shan]

ikf does suck in comparison to kfm.
Karrotdine only makes kungfu look ridiculous to people outside and inside it. Stuttering his way though fortune cookie sayings. Idiot.Nothing wrong with being chinese masters focused too. there are too many of them who get drowned out by ego filled non chinese who walk around talking about fighting arts they really don't understand. non chinese can learn kungfu non chinese can teach kungfu but many non chinese make kungfu look stupid and so comes bad reputation for all. fewer chinese masters make this mockery of the arts.
most non chinese masters cannot read or speak chinese but cover their websites and schools with chinese. for all they know it could say something totally different than what they think it does. they don't have the background to know and often they will lie about lineage or skill or what they know so they can stroke their own egos.keep up good work kfm , ikf should become wrestling magazine.

[Stranger]

I think it is the worst publication in the world, and I want to fight all of its contributers at once!

I think you would have your hands more than full tangling with Monkeyslap Too. ;) His articles are first rate as well.

[Gold Horse Dragon]

Originally posted by Lao Shan
ikf does suck in comparison to kfm.
Karrotdine only makes kungfu look ridiculous to people outside and inside it. Stuttering his way though fortune cookie sayings. Idiot.Nothing wrong with being chinese masters focused too. there are too many of them who get drowned out by ego filled non chinese who walk around talking about fighting arts they really don't understand. non chinese can learn kungfu non chinese can teach kungfu but many non chinese make kungfu look stupid and so comes bad reputation for all. fewer chinese masters make this mockery of the arts.
most non chinese masters cannot read or speak chinese but cover their websites and schools with chinese. for all they know it could say something totally different than what they think it does. they don't have the background to know and often they will lie about lineage or skill or what they know so they can stroke their own egos.keep up good work kfm , ikf should become wrestling magazine.

Well...I guess your just a racist.
Chinese Sifu who were not racist taught Non-Chinese starting back in the 60's. In the 80's and better part of the 90's most Chinese youth were not even interested in kung fu (except in communist China with contemporary wushu)...so Sifu taught more and more Non-Chinese and guess what...many Chinese Sifu even passed down the entire art to Non-Chinese (this was the situation even in Hong Kong) who inheriting the art are still passing in on today to both Non-Chinese and Chinese.
As far as DC...like it or not he and the show did a tremendous amout to promote CMA. He still does so today. No where have I seen that he claims to be a master...just a guy who does traditional Kung Fu he learned from his Sifu and who talks about kung fu, the movies, his experiences and opinions...or would you like him and publications to be suppressed as they are in China?! Forune cookie sayings...hm...guess you do not like the Tao Teh Ching, Buddhist classics, shinto, Christianity and others...because that my friend is where the show drew its philosophical sayings from. And what is Kung Fu without the philosophy, morals and Mo Duk...just another fighting art...thats what.
So..you do not think Non-Chinese understand their art and make it look stupid...well perhaps you should cross hands with a few...but I seriously doubt that you would get a chance for a few after the first one :D
There are good Non-Chinese and good Chinese Sifu and todi.
Too bad you are a racist :(

GHD

[brassmonkey]

can you name the magazine that's had articles by both Sin The and Rich Mooney within the last year?

[Jook Lum]

David Carradine quote" I am a dancer man, not a martial artist"
Boy what a shocking revelation!

Anyone else get sick of most magazines covers(articles sometimes too) having the person on the cover make faces
like they are constipated or sitting on a sharp stick while
performing a technique.

Some say it is the expression of Chi on their face or their
KIA spirit yell B.S.. I know they are trying to make the cover
picture jump out at people to peak their interest in the mag-
azine but come on. If some martial artists do this naturally
fine but come on with the faces of death.

Most martial artists look relaxed and focused not tense and
rabid. (Above I said most, but not all). As far as alot of the
crap articles in some magazines, sometimes you have to walk through a lot of **** to get to the grass.

[SifuAbel]

GHD said most of what I wanted to say and I 'll add that there are some chinese "masters" out there that can read chinese but have only so-so skill. And, are benefiting from their ethnicity alone. Egos get stroked on both sides of the Pacific.

Now granted there are some non-chinese that are doing what LS is suggesting. But it isn't the state of the art. Only a fool would put up a chinese saying without getting it translated fully.

On the issue of IKF , I agree that it has become a sensationalist mag geared toward the beginner kid and the MA fan geek. It has some good and some bad and some rediculous. Then again that is the reality of life.

KFM, as far as I'm concerned, isn't too far behind. Looking back at the back issue covers you'll note that there are few if no non-chinese people on the covers. It makes it seem like there are no non-chinese people in teaching levels or even master levels of kung fu. Of which there are many. Its as if the effort is to keep it in a tight knit little club. Which only serves to alienate in the end.

[SevenStar]

Originally posted by Stranger


I think you would have your hands more than full tangling with Monkeyslap Too. ;)


heh. agreed.

[SanSoo Student]

I dunno why they bothered giving david carradine his own column, I mean all he talks about was his movies Kill Bill, and "kung fu" experiences.

[GeneChing]

Magazines are really difficult to run nowadays. As I've mentioned before, the industry of print magazines has been in a steady decline for years now. Sign of the times. I'm happy to report that we have been on a slow, but steady increase. So things are good, for us at least.

The racism issue comes up every once in a while for our cover and it's a delicate one. Right now, there are very few magazines at all that have asian faces on the cover. Let's see, Yao Ming made it on Sport Illustrated. Then there are the Hapa like Keenu Reeves, Tiger Woods, Kristin Kreuk, etc. Then there are the Amer-Asian mags like Yolk, A, Giant Robot and Hyphen, which of course, pretty much just do Asians on the cover. Call it compensation, if you like, but we do think of ourselves as an Amer-Asian magazine sometimes, in the same vein as those others. The majority of our cover masters are immigrants or not American citizens. Many of them would have little voice here without our magazine. Most of the non-Chinese masters can speak for themselves perfectly well. It's not that we don't believe there are qualified masters of Kung Fu that are non-Chinese. Of course there are. But, with a few exceptions, we try to keep our focus on China.

To be perfectly honest, it's really about sales. Those few times that we have put a non-Chinese on the cover, our sales dropped dramatically. The same is true for women. You'll find less women on our cover too, and I wouldn't say that we're male chauvenist. Quite the opposite, we've had a line up of female editors and our publisher has been female for nearly a decade. Maybe our readers are racist and chauvenist. I certainly don't like to think that, but frankly, I gotta sell the magazine, or there'd be no magazine. FWIW we put a non-asian and a female on the cover last year, but I'll be the first to admit that's an anomaly and it won't happen again for a while.

[mickey]

Greetings Brothers,

I have been reading IKF since the late 70's and I can tell you that David Carradine has absolutely NOTHING to do with the present state of the magazine. The magazine started to go to hell when another person with the same initials came to IKF: DAVE CATER. Up until then IKF was the magazine to learn from. People, masters, shared insights to their respective styles without reserve. Since Dave Cater became the editor, IKF has become a magazine that played sides with controversies and reveled in sensationalism. Since his arrival at IKF, it seems that fewer Chinese masters wanted to contribute. WHO WOULD WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO TRASH? It has nothing to do with martial ethics.

If you are going to blame people for the present state of IKF, look to Dave Cater and Curtis Wong. Its their baby and it needs to be euthanised.

I had hoped that John Allen would have came out with a magazine by now.

mickey

[Gangsterfist]

Listen to all of you bicker. All of you are all theroy and no action. If you want a better magazine start your own, or perhaps free-lance write an article for it. Instead of complaining about how bad it is make an effort to improve it or go buy another magazine. Now I can say I am not too impressed with IKF magazine, but it has had some good articles every now and again. If everyone were to boycott and the magazine went under where else where all of you troll internet message boards?

As for the racist thing about only kung fu magazines with chinese men on the cover sell is sad. My sibak came from china to the U.S. for whatever reasons he had. He teaches anyone willing to learn Kung Fu and has the philosophy that kung fu is for everyone willing to learn. Learning the traditions of an eastern culture is just a bonus of learning martial arts.

BTW Jackie Chan is easily a Kung Fu master. He started training in the Pek King (I may have spelled that wrong)opera at like age 6 I believe. There he trained kung fu and other arts. So that means he has bee doing kung fu for over 40 years, I would say he is a master.

[Gold Horse Dragon]

Originally posted by Jook Lum
David Carradine quote" I am a dancer man, not a martial artist"
Boy what a shocking revelation!

You have to keep that in context. True he was not a ma when he started the series, but after the 1st season he began studies in earnest with Sifu Kam Yuen.


Originally posted by JGene Ching


Those few times that we have put a non-Chinese on the cover, our sales dropped dramatically. The same is true for women.

That explanation does not really wash. To use a one time a year or two years Non-Asian on the cover and say that sales dropped because of it...perhaps it was due to the content of the issue not being that popular or the time of year of the issue or who was chosen for the cover. And, that explanation does not account for the lack of male Non-Asian models (other than the token one)throughout the issues. As far as female...I would bet you that if you put a female on the front in some hot outfit, sales would go up dramatically...but that really has nothing to do with MA, does it.
Like stated before, both mags have their good and bad points along with good and not so good articles.

GHD

[joedoe]

Let's turn it around then. Have a good look at the rest of the print and electronic media and tell me how many Asian faces do you see? How often do you see an Asian playing the lead role in a Hollywood movie?

[SifuAbel]

Well, that may not be the case in australia but in the U.S. its becomeing more and more common, thats a good thing.

As per the the issue of sales, its obvious that it may decline since KFM has already established its client base. But I agree with GDH that one non-asian or non-monk cover duth not a statistic make.

[joedoe]

Sadly you are right about that situation in Australia, however if you want to talk about statistics and proportions, then I think you will find that even in the US the representation of Asians in the print and electronic media is still pretty low.

But you are also right that one or two incidences does not make a reliable statistic. If they were to do it a few more times and the same thing occurred re. sales then maybe you could infer a trend.

[PHILBERT]

Originally posted by GeneChing
To be perfectly honest, it's really about sales. Those few times that we have put a non-Chinese on the cover, our sales dropped dramatically. The same is true for women. You'll find less women on our cover too, and I wouldn't say that we're male chauvenist. Quite the opposite, we've had a line up of female editors and our publisher has been female for nearly a decade. Maybe our readers are racist and chauvenist. I certainly don't like to think that, but frankly, I gotta sell the magazine, or there'd be no magazine. FWIW we put a non-asian and a female on the cover last year, but I'll be the first to admit that's an anomaly and it won't happen again for a while.

Put Margie on the cover and sales will increase ;)




































Mainly cause I'd buy extra issues.

[scotty1]

"Mainly cause I'd buy extra (t)issues."

:)

[GeneChing]

Part of it is the state of newsstand distribution nowadays - it's extremely competitive given the declining market of print magazines, instigated by web publishing and the rise of the superstore 'monopolies". Imagine if you will, a shark tank, with say 100 sharks. Now imagine that the tank is getting smaller and the food is getting less. What do you think will happen. That tank is the newsstands and the publishers are all the sharks. No magazine can afford to have a single issue not sell, because if we don't make our 50% point of sale, our numbers are cut and are distribution is reduced. The only way to increase distribution is to buy programs - that investment need to come from somewhere (and we're talking several K now for a basic program). So every cover of every magazine is very calculated. The cost of failure is very heavy, much heavier than you might think, for any specialty magazine like us.

As for females in hot outfits, do you know that we get complaints when we do that inside the magazine? It's goofy. WE've even got complaints that the spread legs of models on our pro leg stretcher (http://store.yahoo.com/martialartsmart/20-60.html) are 'dirty'. I'm totally serious about that - repeated comments. Take a look around you - martial artists are funny people. I'm not talking so much about our forum members now (but we are funny too) but more so about our 'old school' readership that is not net savvy. It's a weird silver mine to be digging, sometimes we just dig holes.

But I will say that it's a fair cop on our models. We are asian heavy there, but we're moving towards being less so. We don't pay our models. They volunteer for the publicity. Frankly, I'll be honest, only two people on staff here at the mag are non-Chinese, so our contacts are mostly Chinese. But we're more than open to non-asain models, they just haven't been coming forward yet. They're starting too, so what for improvement in this area in the future.

Of course, we like to have masters model - but if you've got the poses, we maybe interested. Got that look? Send me some samples and maybe you can be our next model. We're always looking for someone to put in the pro leg ;)

[Meat Shake]

lol.
Gene is forever on the grind.

[Gold Horse Dragon]

Hey Gene,

To draw an inference based on one or two issues is not a valid argument in my estimation. It is just not large enough of a sampling.
I hear you about the female issue...but as we all know...scantly clad females sell :eek:

Hey I offered a photo of myself you already had as sort of an advertisement in an issue. It was a decent photo and I think I am pretty decent looking...so does my wife :D ...but you did not take up on it :(

All that said...you have a good mag. I have had three hard copy articles published by you and one e zine article...so I guess my fingers were faster than my sense for self-preservation :eek: when I brought up the lack of Non-Asian models/cover subjects...Are you still going to publish any worthy articles I have in the future :D

GHD

[Gold Horse Dragon]

Originally posted by joedoe
Let's turn it around then. Have a good look at the rest of the print and electronic media and tell me how many Asian faces do you see? How often do you see an Asian playing the lead role in a Hollywood movie?

Two wrongs do not a right make!

GHD

[Gold Horse Dragon]

Hmmm....

[phoenix-eye]

Nice deep argument......

But I'm a very shallow guy....

Put Van Do on every cover.:D

[Vash]

I will go so far as to say that Kungfu/Qi Gong/Tai Chi is the single best reading martial arts publication going, as far as newsstands. This coming from a crotty guy (who not so secretly wishes to add kung fu to his practice).

JAMA is off the hizzy, but my money goes to KF/TC for sheer value and entertainment.

Plus, the cover's all shiny.

[@PLUGO]

Van Do will be making quite the come back in the next issue...

you'll be pleased. ;) :p :cool:

[GeneChing]

To draw an inference based on one or two issues is not a valid argument in my estimation. It is just not large enough of a sampling. Obviously you've never fought in a direct elimination. We're not talking fair play here - it has nothing to do with sampling. It's survival of the fittest. Publish or perish. Do or die. Every issue that we put on the stands must sell or we are cut at point of sale. Period.

But as for more articles, we always welcome submissions. As for modelling, if you're in town, let us know. We do all our shoots for modelling in house, either here or in our TN office for Tiger Claw.

As for Van Do, she's asian. Nice tease, DS. ;)

[Gold Horse Dragon]

No...the only times I have fought are on the street in do effectively or die and of course when I was in by Sifus kwoon when yuu had to fight all students one after the other and sometimes in twos and threes.

Again... I consider your publication to be one of the best and an added perk is this forum and the freebies you give.

GHD

[GeneChing]

I can put it in street fighting terms then. In fact, that's a better analogy. Imagine that you have six street fights a year. Can you afford to lose one? We have six covers a year. We can't afford to lose any. The way that magazine distrubution works nowadays is that the instant your sales drop - the instant you fail to sell a minimum of 40% of your issues (or more in some stores) your title is cut for that retailer. Now suppose we sell all the alotment in a given store. That just means they will continue to distribute us. It does not mean that they will increase their order by any means. Keep in mind that we compete with other magazines like Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Time, People, Cosmo, you name it.

So you're right that it's not enough sampling, but magazine distribution is not about sampling. It's about survival.

[SifuAbel]

You guys are actually quite stuck. You have esatblished your reader base on what you have presented in the past. So you couldn't change if you wanted to.


One statistic that would be interesting to note is how well magazines sold when there was an action pic instead of a personality pose.

Also, how many issues sold that had a warm and natural background as opposed to the high art issues.

One thing I would change is the logo font.
The "rickshaw" style font is not appealing, IMO. It makes the logo look a little amatuerish.

[GeneChing]

We have stats on sales, of course, but it's really hard to tease out specifics like the single factors you mention.

There is an intrinsic problem with the reader base of any martial arts mag - it's martial artists. It doesn't take a lot of surfing through this forum alone to see what kind of personalities we must cater to. :p It's a pretty diverse group. A lot of bellyachers. A lot of beginners. A lot of know-it-alls. Some really good people tho, you just need to separate the seed from the chafe.

Generally actions pics are better, but the problem with action pics is the eye contact. Eye contact is always best. There are so many studies on this in the general publishing field. It's a fundamental law of magazine covers. Generally, in an action pic, the cover master is looking at the target, not the camera, so that can be a compositional problem.

As for colors, black, white, red, blue and natural settings do well for us. Traditional art is ok. We did well with sepia tones of old GMs in the background. High art - well, I'm not sure how to define that exactly, there were some wacky ones over the years. Most of those experiments have failed, which is why we moved away from those in the last few years.

The font for the cover we have inherited. I've been more concerned with getting out name straight since there were a lot of issues with the title of the magazine that we inherited. It's finally to the point that most every american can pronounce it, which is very refereshing.

So we keep working to improve, one step at a time. Right now, I'm looking for more non-asian models who have the "juice." That's one step. More to come...

[MonkeySlap Too]

Actually, I rather like the logo.

Overall the mag has a distincy 'voice' and the travelougue style of it gives an view into the Kung fu world that the distinguished competition doesn't. The growing effort to build the 'how-to' aspect is also a good tack. The 'cultural trappings' i.e, Chinese horoscopes, recipes, et al all add to the 'flavor' of the CMA articles. For many CMA (or for that matter KMA, JMA, FMA, IMA, etal) players part of the joy in practice is exploring a new culture.

Gene, how come you haven't written a book yet? You are a d@mn fine writer...

[joedoe]

Originally posted by Gold Horse Dragon


Two wrongs do not a right make!

GHD

No, they don't. However before you start complaining about something in a relatively small population (like the magazine) you should probably have a look at the larger picture first (like the general media).

[Gold Horse Dragon]

Originally posted by joedoe


No, they don't. However before you start complaining about something in a relatively small population (like the magazine) you should probably have a look at the larger picture first (like the general media).
I can complain anywhere I like :D and it was not first an observation and then a comment...not a complaint really.

Hey Gene...I can take a quality photo right here and send it to you...just send me the outfit you would like me to pose in ;)

GHD

[GeneChing]

BTW, I should mention that our Kung Fu title font isn't really a font. It was created just that, we think. That's a little annoying, design-wise, but when you inherit something, you just have to play the cards you're dealt.

MST: Thanks for the kind words. I write so much here that compiling everything into a book seems like so much more work. But you're not the first to ask, for sure. Maybe after I retire from all this....

JD: Everyone thinks they have the answers on what should be in the mag. But there's sitting on your butt dreaming and actually earning a living doing this. The reality is complex, moreso than one imagines. But as an aside, my first trip to China I went with two Wongs and a White. It worked then. :p

GHD: riiiiiiiiiiiiight....;)