Women's Cycling magazine

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Call me a snob but the cover doesn't make me want to pick it up and page through it. I've been designing magazines for 10 years, and a glance at their homepage fails to impress.

Further, the content is too scattered - trying too hard to cover everything, which means nothing will be covered very well. There should be two editions: Women's Cycling: Road, which would include touring, and Women's Cycling: Mountain which would include cyclocross. Riders interested in one are rarely interested in the other, and by trying to cover all of it in one book, we might see one page article on each. Not really enough to satisfy anybody.

High school and college? Ummmm.... who cares? They can't afford subscriptions. I was DIRT POOR in college, my ride was 8 years old and I loved my little greybeast to death, but I couldn't even afford new brakes when I needed them. Riders in those age groups probably want to know the same things the rest of us do: what performs, what doesn't, what events are coming up. You can have a feature article about each once a year or so, but a section devoted to both is excessive.

It IS a bad time to be starting a mag - which means it is SO MUCH more important to make sure your best work is out there, to be sure that you will satisfy your readers and make them want to pay $15 for 3 issues, which will ensure advertisers (who pay the bills!) are willing to part with money to put this magazine in the hands of those readers. They need to be able to see a return on investment - I don't see that happening here. I see this as a doctor's office magazine special: Keeps you occupied for 10 minutes, and completely not worth stealing the subscription info for.

I'd love to see cycling magazines devoted to women - but this is not it.