Magazines face a lot of competition from online resources. As self-publishing is now so much easier for designers, they no longer have the same power they used to. A few years ago you would probably have had little choice but to accept their offer in order to put your work out there. Now you have many other options and the magazines need to realise that they can’t get away with paying a pittance to designers any longer.

To be honest, if I want to knit something Ravelry will be my first stop, knitting magazines would probably be the last.

2. I love to be able to print it out, use it roughly, write on it, fold it etc, then trash it when I am done, but I can print it again if I loose it, or want to make it again. (I know I can copy the magazine pages, but that is cumbersome.)

3. It is SO much easier to find the pattern that you want in your computer files, rather than searching multiple magazines.

4. This should be first! I like that the individual designer gets all of the profit.

Thanks for a great post.

I find myself buying printed magazines less and less these days, because I find that independent designers like yourself are consistently producing fresher and more charming designs, in my point of view anyway.

Not that long ago the publishers were the ones answering most pattern questions. If they couldn’t answer it they would seek the answer from the designer, but would still be the one the knitter was in communication with – not the designer. Now most people can easily find the designer since many have blogs and Ravelry makes it so easy to find us as well. This means people are addressing their questions straight to the designer rather than going through the publisher, which saves lots of man hours for the publisher and pushes those hours back off on the designers. Since most of us also self-publish we can’t tell people to contact the publisher or we’ll be roasted over an open fire for not having good customer service.

When I accept a certain flat fee for a pattern I do so figuring in the likely readership of the publication and the level of experience and how much hand holding I may have to do for a given pattern. When they reprint and market it to another audience my workload suddenly increases, but I get no additional payment. Also, I may not have access to the format that person is working from so I cannot fully address questions because I have no means to double check if there was an error introduced when it was reformatted etc.

Anyway, just another reason that little or no reimbursement for additional publishing is not fair to the designers.

Great post!!