STOP THE PRESSES!
As a publisher and editor, I’ve always wanted to say that but never had the chance. Magazine publishing doesn’t work that way. Stopping the presses is a newspaper thing. But this time I mean it. After 28 years, Kung Fu Tai Chi is stopping the presses. Forever.
Now before you read any further, go to MartialArtSmart.com and buy something. Anything. A DVD. Some back issues. Anything. I have published well over 300 articles here on KungFuMagazine.com and there are over 500 more by other authors, plus all of our past cover stories. You can access them all for free. However, if you don’t support our sponsors, KungFuMagazine.com will follow our print magazine. It will stop publication too. And the web isn’t like print. There’s no physical legacy. KungFuMagazine.com can all go away with a flick of a switch. All things are impermanent. Especially on the web. If you enjoy KungFuMagazine.com, you must support the sponsors. If Kung Fu Tai Chi had more support, we would not have had to stop publishing it.
I confess, several of my articles were packed with ads and product placement – some were even blatant infomercials. That’s what pays for it all. Sometimes the best attack is a simple direct attack. I’m not kidding around anymore. Go buy something RIGHT NOW. After that, you can read on with a guilt-free conscious. On your honor as a warrior, don’t read any further until you’ve bought something at MartialArtSmart.com.
The Death of Print Magazines
The end of Kung Fu Tai Chi was inevitable, something I’ve been anticipating for years. I started a thread on our forum Print publishing death watch to monitor industry trends in expectation of May 12th, 2020 - the day when we officially announced cessation of print. I started that thread in January of 2009.
Nearly 300 magazines folded in 2009 and that was just the beginning. Within that death watch thread is documented the demise of many much larger print magazines than us over the years – Maxim, Newsweek, Penthouse, ESPN (the magazine), Mad. Those titles sold more in one state than we sold worldwide. Kung Fu Tai Chi is a niche magazine, meaning we aren’t sold in supermarkets and convenience stores. We are only available in outlets that have large or specialized newsstands. Walmart and Target used to be major vendors for us, but they both reduced their newsstand to grocery store level years ago, which shut us out. The mega-bookstores were okay until they collapsed. Borders declared bankruptcy in 2011. When the pandemic began, our SPRING 2020 was already on the newsstands, but when the national Shelter-in-Place orders came, none of those newsstands remained open. Barnes & Noble, which accounted for nearly half of our distribution, shuttered over 500 of their 600 stores, and in late April, they announced that they would no longer be ordering new magazines, and would cease carrying them altogether.
It was too much to bear. And we won’t be the only print magazine to fall to COVID. Only the most robust mags will survive. Most of the indie niche mags will cease publication too. The pandemic brought about a reckoning for so many industries and print periodicals have been vulnerable for years. I knew the end was coming, but I always hoped we’d be the last martial arts newsstand magazine standing. If any other martial arts magazines survive, I strongly encourage you to support them. If not, we won’t have any left at all.
When I first began working for Kung Fu Tai Chi in 1999, the newsstands were still fat. The internet had not yet risen to power and we were putting out 60,000 copies per issue. We were even monthly for 2000. However, throughout my watch, print magazines showed a steady decline. It was the death of a thousand cuts, quite literally. By the end, we were at about 8000, clinging to the edge of the precipice by our fingernails. Honestly, I’m amazed we survived as long as we did.
That extended survival of Kung Fu Tai Chi was largely due to the support of Tiger Claw, however now Tiger Claw has its own battle to fight. With all the schools closed across the nation, Tiger Claw sales are way down. The entire martial arts industry is hurting. This is why you must support your schools and your suppliers as soon as the pandemic subsides. It's also why the staff of TC Media International had to be disbanded. The five of us, Graphic Designers Patrick Lugo and Kevin Ho, Videographer Jason Chang, our Publisher Emeritus Gigi Oh, and me, have been a team for the last 20 years. Sadly, due to social distancing, we never got to say ‘goodbye’ as a group. We’ve discussed things between ourselves, but the last time we were together was the day before the Shelter in Place. Who knows when we’ll all be in the same room again? Maybe never.
While Kung Fu Tai Chi has a subscriber base, it is not large enough to support our staff and production costs. Subscribers have been notified by mail about how they can redeem the remainder of their subscriptions. at MartialArtSmart.com still has a fair cache of Kung Fu Tai Chi back issues, but when those go out of stock, our magazine will only be in the libraries of martial collectors.
The Final Issue and the Future of KungFuMagazine.com
When the Shelter-in-Place order came out, we were nearing completion of our SUMMER 2020 issue. We had to drop everything and our department was immediately furloughed so our staff could collect unemployment benefits. A condition of the furlough was that none of us could work on the issue, so it stopped dead. We are looking into the possibility of a fundraiser to finish that issue. Stay tuned to KungFuMagazine.com and our social media because if that project is feasible, we’ll announce it there and we’ll be grateful of your support.
After we announced stopping print, there were several calls to rally across social media from our readership, fans, and supporters. That’s touching, but it’s too little, too late. While many of the suggestions were heartfelt and appreciated, many came from a naïve place. Print periodical publishing is a world of its own. Advice given from observing it from the outside is akin to telling fighters how to fight without ever having been in a fight. There were also suggestions that we should move to the web or YouTube. Obviously, we’re on the web as you’re reading this here on our website. We’ve been here since 2001. And our YouTube channel has been going since 2009. There are nearly 600 videos there already. All this falls under the KungFuMagazine.com banner.
At this writing, KungFuMagazine.com aspires to continue to publish fresh content, provided MartialArtSmart.com is viable enough to continue to support it. However it will take some time before it can get back up to the weekly article frequency we were at prior to the pandemic. The Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship has future potential as well, but until the pandemic subsides to a level when we can hold mass public gatherings again safely, we just won’t know how that might happen. Please be patient as we rally our surviving resources and see what the future holds. The only way this will live on is through the continued support of MartialArtSmart.com.
Whatever the future holds, we are very honored and grateful for the opportunity to have served the martial arts community for these 21+ years. We are enormously proud of what Kung Fu Tai Chi achieved and hope that its legacy will be preserved for years to come. Thank you, dear readers, for the years of support of our work. We truly hope that our contribution to the martial world helped to inspire your martial journey, and we look forward to continue publishing through KungFuMagazine.com.
