Aside from being a beautiful engine, the interesting thing about the cover photo of the June 2009 issue of Gas Engine Magazine is that you, the reader, chose it.
| The cover of the June 2009 issue of Gas Engine Magazine. |
Tom Winkler’s 1904 6 HP C.P. & J. Lauson was one of four cover images we had to choose from, and to help us decide which one to go with, we surveyed more than 2,900 GEM subscribers by e-mail in late April. We also asked them to rank their interest in several articles based on headlines and brief descriptions, and you’ll find many of those articles in this issue.
Many subscribers took advantage of the opportunity to share their thoughts on GEM through the open comment portion of the survey. Most of the comments were very helpful, and some of you asked a question that I’d like to answer here. That question was, why are we surveying our readers? Shouldn’t we know what to put in the magazine without asking?
Considering the content in GEM depends on reader submissions, we think it just makes sense to ask the readers for their opinion on other aspects of the magazine. Surveying also helps you contribute to the magazine if you don’t have time to submit an article.
Lately, each issue has had more content planned for it than we have pages to fill, which has provided a perfect opportunity for us to get the reader involved in the process of making the magazine. And while it doesn’t happen too often, we found ourselves with four very strong cover images for this issue, again providing the reader with the unique opportunity to “build-your-own” magazine.
At this point, I should note that if you chose some of the articles that you don’t see in this issue, don’t worry – we’re planning on running them in future issues of GEM. We just thought that since we had such a strong set of options for this issue that we’d give you a chance to weigh in.
As I’ve already stated, we sent out the survey by e-mail to more than 2,900 subscribers but we’d love to send it out to thousands more. If you have an e-mail address and you’d like to participate in our next reader survey, just send a message to my e-mail and I’ll add you to the list. That will also give you the opportunity to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which will show up in your e-mail every Tuesday.
Thanks to everyone who participated this time around!
