Viewcamera magazine in Europe

[Martin Patek-Strutsky]

Reading all your rave comments on the Viewcamera magazine I decided that it is time for a subscription.

Learned that the European distributor is Robert White and that the price is USD 12.40 (per issue, not per year!)

Have never seen a copy so I would like to hear if you can still recommend it for such a prohibitive price.

Mr. Simmons, maybe you read this and could bring some light in your pricing strategy?

[Doremus Scudder]

Martin,

The price does seem prohibitive. It was also high when Lotus View Camera was the distributor and when you could get subscriptions directly from the US. My recommendation would be to see if a friend in the United States could subscribe for you, collect several issues and send them along later. You wouldn't get the latest editions right away, but it would be significantly cheaper.

Regards, ;^D)

[Christopher Nisperos]

Martin Patek-Strutsky has a really good point. I'm an American who's lived in Europe for many years now and, like most other large format photographers, I'm always information-hungry.

When I first moved here, internet hadn't yet hatched. As well, I was relatively jobless, so international subscriptions were out of the question. Consequently, I came up with all kinds of schemes to try and obtain issues of View Camera and the like.

Years ago, I contacted Steve Simmons and offered to find several ongoing dealers for him here in Paris...even "service" the accounts ...in exchange for a simple subscription and some back issues. Not a word of response after several attempts, so I just dropped the idea.

View Camera wasn't unique; Shutterbug never replied either. The point is, I think that alot of U.S. companies in general either don't realize or care that there is a market abroad. They seem to think that it's more trouble to ship out of the U.S. than to the next state. It isn't. It's normally the receiver who'll have customs hassles, not the sender (and anyway, customs doesn't even usually concern publications).

On the one hand, from a business point of view, Robert White's pricing is understandable. As well as import costs and a normal profit margin, there's 17% to 23% sales tax here in Europe. Plus, stupidly, the buyer will pay postage a SECOND time for the magazine when mail-ordered from a distributor. Therefore, from a customer point of view, it's preferable to subscribe to these publications directly, at --or near-- the U.S. subscription price (with an understandable difference in postage), and to receive the issues not too long after the U.S. publication date (which is another issue..for another forum!). Perhaps some enterprising person will see this discussion and think of a solution. You are free to contact me. Meanwhile, Mr. Scudder's idea --asking a U.S. friend to help-- is a great suggestion. The key is, finding another LF freak.

Anybody wanna trade footwork? Euro-photo-mags (like Linhof Photo International, if I can dig them up), in exchange for View Camera, etc.?

Happy shooting!

[tim atherton]

don't get your hopes up - Viewcamera won't even ship direct to Canada (which is close than Alaska...), which every other US magazine I can think of does. So I pay for it to be shipped to the disributor and then pay again for the distributor to mail it to me - which pushes the price up quite a bit.

It does usually show up on the newstands in the major bookstores - but there ain't one here. WIth most other magazines it's cheaper to buy a subscription than get it on the newstand - with Viecamera it's the other way around I think.

[Steve Lewis]

Hi Martin

FWIW even living in the U.K. the price per issue via Robert White here is £6.75 UK sterling. At current exchange rates, this is around 11.00 USD, so RW are charging you an extra dollar or so to ship it to Europe.

My local bookstore get the odd copy here and there at 5.50 UK sterling, so I think the little extra for a subsciption is worth it.

Steve

www.landscapesofwales.co.uk

[George Hart]

I see no reason to withhold my voice from joining in the general gripe about the difficulties of getting this magazine in Europe. Like Steve I cough up to Robert but the most recent issue, which came 2 days ago, was seriously creased in the post. Yuk.

[Bob Salomon]

"Linhof Photo International"

Tho eliminate confusion.

There is no "Linhof Photo International"

The magazine was a Grosbild publication that was owned by the Karpf family and, until Grosbild was sold several years ago, was distributed through Linhof under the name International Photo Techniques and then as Photo Techniques International.

It has not been connected to Linhof or the Linhof factory for several years.

[Dave Miller]

FWIW there is no VAT or customs duty (sales / import tax)on printed matter here in the UK, unlike the rest of Europe. If Lenswork can post to England then I'm sure the other USA publishers can, if they were interested in the business.

www.emmg.graphy.org.uk

[Ron Bose]

Tim,

I get my copy of VC from my local Chapters and I've also seen it at Indigo's. I'm in Southern Ontario which I think is a little more populace than your part of the world ...

Ron

[Richard Fenner]

I'm in the UK. I recently subscribed to View Camera through Robert White, and also had a go at them about the cost. I also emailed VC, pointing out the normal US photograhic magazines increases UK subscribers, and how their increase was so out of line. They replied that they had had problems with issues going missing for overseas subscribers, hence the outsourcing. I'm skeptical, especially given the profit RW must be making on this. RW say they have over 200 foreign (non-US) subscribers. If we all complain individually to VC (although I'm sure they read these posts), they might have a change of heart. But, it's not as if we're all going to start subscribing to Popular Photography instead...