Comic Buyer’s Guide Ends with #1699

For over 30 years Comic Buyer's Guide provided comic book fans with quick reviews of comics and in-depth pieces by a slew of veteran comic book buffs. As of Comic Buyer's Guide #1699 in March 2013, Comic Buyer's Guide is over. Comic Buyer's Guide was published by F+W Media, Inc., which is considered the leading enthusiast media Company. They have served more than 20 niche consumer and B-to-B communities with portfolios of events, ecommerce, online education, ebooks, emags, print media and more. The main reasons for the magazine's closure are that the title had a small circulation and a steady decline in advertising. I'm not surprised, and not just because comic books are not as mainstream as something like movies or even video games. Print media has been declining over time. Magazines that used to be booming like Variety have ended and newspapers like the Trenton Times have also pulled a disappearing act. People can get everything they need in print online. People reading this article right now, at the tips of your fingerprints is the instrument that is making print media obsolete. The President of F+W Media, David Blansfield, commented on the Comic Buyer's Guide cancellation: "Ceasing publication of a magazine is never an easy decision, but there are several forces that have worked against CBG's sustainability... With vast amounts of freely available comics information online, declining paid circulation and advertising, and the costs and constraints of print, continuing to publish a monthly, small-circulation title like CBG has become financially and operationally unsustainable." For fellow subscribers of Comic Buyer's Guide, after the final issue if you've been confused as to why you've been receiving Antique Trader instead of your monthly comic book magazine fix, here's why: after CBG's cancellation, subscriber's started to receive it's sister publication Antique Trader on a biweekly basis which is about antiques and collectibles and has existed since 1957. So if you were a CBG subscriber you should have recieved two issues of Antique Trader. I've been subscribing to Comic Buyer's Guide for over a year and you are given a lot of content to devour per magazine. I haven't had much time to read all the magazines I've received from them over this year and now I can go back and look more closely at the now extinct magazine. But from what I saw it is a shame (an inevitable shame, but still a shame). There were some solid articles in those magazines. It wasn't just comic book reviews which you can read on dozens of sites for free online. You got to hear stories from people who have been collecting for dozens of years who really knew and loved comic books. My personal favorite was the monthly "Obligatory Fight Scene," an article where two friends would fight over whether a particular comic story was good or bad. There were many creative approaches in Comic Buyer's Guide, but again I'm not surprised to see more print media bite the dust. The scary part is, one day print comics could bite the dust and we'll be left with just digital comics... Hopefully that day comes after I'm long gone. The www.CBGXtra.com site and its Facebook page will continue to exist and will serve as an archived resource. You can find out more about F+W Media at www.fwmedia.com.