If you did a double take when you saw that this issue is labeled spring rather than winter, fear not; we have not abolished one entire season of the year. The change is, however, worth explaining. We have done it to give each issue a longer shelf life for single-copy sales. When Naval History began as a quarterly three years ago, it demonstrated strong initial growth in circulation. In the recent past, however, we have seen a plateau rather than sustained growth. The continuing strong response from subscribers tells us that we have a quality product. Our challenge is to find the means to spread the word to additional readers so that they can become aware of the magazine and be sufficiently interested by what they find to become subscribers. We will continue to use direct mail as one tool in that effort, but its effectiveness has been diluted by the glut of such material that shows up daily in everyone’s mailbox.
In addition to the direct mail approach, we believe that Naval History itself can be its own best advertisement. Thus, we have embarked upon a program of selling single copies of the magazine in addition to subscriptions. That accounts for our new cover design. People knowledgeable in the field tell us that the vertical illustration format is best for attracting attention on the shelf. Initially, we will be selling Naval History through the gift shops and bookstores of naval and maritime museums. The tie-in is a natural, of course, because the people who visit such places are interested in our subject matter to begin with. We hope that many of the people who pick up the magazine at these gift shops will like what they see sufficiently well to subscribe. If the program succeeds as well as we hope, it can be the first step toward distributing Naval History through newsstands in addition to the maritime museums.
For our first vertical-format Naval History cover painting, we have a familiar source; Tom Freeman’s work has appeared regularly in Naval Institute publications over the past dozen or so years. As the profile on Freeman in this issue demonstrates, he is a versatile and talented artist. In addition to his expert work with the brush, he does his homework so that his paintings are technically accurate in addition to capturing the mood of the subject. The late-burning lights of Commodore George Dewey’s flagship Olympia convey the feeling of urgency as the U.S. Navy ships in the Far East prepared for the Battle of Manila Bay. Similarly, we got a great deal of positive response to Freeman’s painting on last winter’s cover of the heavily laden Liberty ship John W. Brown, shown steaming toward the Persian Gulf on her maiden voyage in World War II. Freeman has the ability to evoke a reaction on the part of those who see his art that “this is the way it really was;” we hope the entire magazine creates that reaction on the part of you, our readers.