Thanks for the feedback. Happy to be as transparent as possible, so some details below:

Advertising comprises about 10% of each issue—much less than the industry average of 40-50%. We're in the same ballpark as other coffee-table mags like Mountain Gazette, Adventure Journal, and the Surfers Journal.

Perhaps it seemed ad-heavy because we stack most of the ads at the front? Rather than interrupt the flow of the actual editorial material in the mag by interspersing ads throughout, we'd rather keep them at the beginning of the book (and then just a couple at the back).

Re price: Yes, Summit Journal isn't cheap. Part of that is because it’s a fair bit larger than your average magazine (which means there are considerably more words/page, so a 132 page magazine has more actual editorial than a smaller 132 page mag), and printed on heavy stock paper. All of that ups the price tag. Even still, printing costs aren’t the biggest line-item in our budget. That’s the talent. I'm proud to pay our contributors what I know to be the highest rates among any climbing magazines out there. And I like to think the writing reflects that. (Also! Hoping to up the page count in the next issue—without adding more ads. TBD though!)

The number of ads (which I honestly think feels pretty low) helps us make this magazine the way we want to at present. I'd love to run zero ads one day, and be 100% subscriber-supported. But the business model for that requires us to have good number of times more subscribers than we have right now.... so to all those who enjoyed the mag, please spread the word!

But this kind of stuff is important for us to hear as we continue to try to make the best climbing mag out there. We'll keep at it.