• Thinkware Dash Cam Banner AD
  • Superior Driveline Banner AD
  • National Bus Trader Banner AD
  • Tire Table New Banner AD
  • Bus Manuals Banner AD
  • Straight Line Banner AD
  • Flame Innovation Banner AD
  • Unforgettable Fire Banner AD
  • Midwest Bus Parts Banner Ad
  • Ardemco Supply Banner AD
  • Bus Manuals Banner AD
  • Unforgettable Fire Banner AD
  • Straight Line Banner AD
  • Bus Manuals Banner AD
  • Midwest Bus Parts Banner Ad
  • Thinkware Dash Cam Banner AD
  • Bus Manuals Banner AD
  • Flame Innovation Banner AD
  • Ardemco Supply Banner AD
  • Tire Table New Banner AD
  • National Bus Trader Banner AD
  • Superior Driveline Banner AD

Why do you no longer offer a Print Version of BCM? 

By going to an all-digital format in May of 2018, as many publications have done, we were able to more than double the page count of Bus Conversion Magazine. We also cut the subscription price by more than 50% to make it affordable to more people as an effort to help spread the word about the advantages of traveling and living in a bus conversion. 

With a digital magazine, we also can embed videos and add additional content including hyper-linked display ads, classified ads, nomad events, links to Bus Nuts we follow, and more.  

By clicking on the display ads in our magazine your browser will take you directly to our advertiser’s website where you will have access to all the information about their products and services.  Clicking on our classified ads will take you to our website where you will find many more photos, a full description of each bus, and the contact information to reach out to the owner to get even more information. 


More and more people were switching from the print version of the magazine and were signing up for the digital edition.  As more and more people started traveling, they were able to download our magazine from anywhere, so a digital magazine was a logical choice.  

As printing and shipping rates kept rising it became cost prohibitive to print and deliver a print magazine, as people were switching their subscriptions from print to digital. BCM is a specialty publication with limited circulation. Printing fewer copies of a magazine costs a lot more per unit item than printing thousands of magazines as National Geographic does.  

The print version also takes longer to get into people’s hands.  It added two additional weeks to the cycle, whereas the digital edition is available to everyone, anywhere in the world the day it is uploaded.   That also gave everyone a fair chance at seeing any bus conversions listed for sale in our Classified ads, rather than the people living closer to the printer getting all the deals, as every subscriber now has access to the magazine at the same time. 

We also had to print about 100 extra issues each month because we never knew exactly how many we would need after the mailing. By providing a digital magazine only, this is no longer an issue. 

There was also the cost and time involved in resending several magazines every month because people moved without telling us, or their magazine was lost, stolen, or damaged in the mail. Sometimes subscribers would be missing several issues, not just one. Sending one or two individual issues costs significantly more than sending many issues using bulk mail rates and it takes time to process each one and to take them to the post office. By providing a digital magazine only, this is no longer a problem.  

A print magazine is also bad for the environment.  Most magazines after they are read are tossed in the trash as were the extra issues that we printed just to have on hand. Very few were recycled.


Producing a printed magazine was also challenging because we had to adhere to a specific number of pages each month, a multiple of four pages. It was very time-consuming to adjust content and decide what photos and content to leave out to make it fit in exactly the correct number of pages. We ended up having to use filler material some months and leave out some very good material other months to fit all our stories into a 32-page format. 

With the digital edition, this is not a concern. We just add or remove pages as necessary to include all the material that we believe people want included in the articles as our page count can vary with each issue. With a printed magazine, adding four more pages was significantly more time-consuming and costly each month, so that was not an option.  With a digital edition, we can add or subtract a single page or multiple pages with no problem.


Also, by going digital, we do not need to keep track of when people change addresses, as we only use their email address, which seldom changes. This saves time too as many snowbirds change their address twice per year and reduce concern about your personal information being out there.

The digital edition makes it easy to make changes after it is released if we realize later there is a mistake in the magazine, which has happened a couple of times.  We just make the correction and upload the new copy. This is not possible with a printed edition. We would have to print corrections in the next issue which may cause some confusion for some people.


Another great thing about going all-digital is that we now can provide all subscribers access to over 200 back issues and over 1,500 articles online with searchable content, so you are not only getting one issue each month but also access to hundreds of issues, which is a ton of bus conversion Tribal Knowledge. The digital content is also searchable in a matter of seconds, rather than searching through over 360 printed magazines to find one article. 

People used to have boxes and boxes of issues of BCM in their bus which took up a lot of space and sometimes issues would get damaged.  The digital edition takes up much less real estate to store. You can store every edition of BCM way back from our inception in 1992 on one DVD.  But then again, there is no need to do that as all Back Issues are available 24/7/365 on our website. 


Printing and mailing the magazine was not the only cost of offering a print edition, which many people do not realize. There is also the cost of maintaining an office to process and store over 5,000 magazines, having a space for shipping the magazines, and storing extra envelopes, boxes, mail scales, packing material, etc. Office space is very expensive. With a digital-only magazine, many of our employees including myself work out of our buses to help keep costs down.

We now have more subscribers from Canada, Mexico, England, Australia, and other countries because the cost to ship printed copies was very high to those countries, but the digital edition opened the world to us. 

The digital edition also allows readers to zoom in or out as necessary to see print, diagrams, URLs, email addresses, and phone numbers as clearly as they want to see them.  


We also have an option where you can read BCM for free. Simply send us an article and we will give you or a friend a new subscription, or extend your subscription for 1-5 years depending on the length and complexity of the article.  Many people have a perpetual free subscription as they send us an article or two each year.  So, you can read BCM for free every month, as many people now do. We are always in need of interesting articles about the bus life, and traveling and living in a bus.

Subscribers also now have FREE access to several E-books, which include all the information you would ever need to convert any kind of bus into a home on wheels. That is a LOT of value, and it is included with every subscription. 

If you still wish to have a printed copy of BCM, you are welcome to print it out each month as that is an option, we allow for with our three most Recent Issues.

Thanks for your understanding and for continuing to support Bus Conversion Magazine

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