why always a month/year ahead?

[Tenshi no Ai]

Ok, here's something I've never ever been able to get and it bugs me, so maybe osmeone knows the answer to it:

Ok, everytime I get a magazine, it's always a month ahead. If it's November say, they come out with a December issue (which is usually a holiday special and a month too early to be a Christmasy issue, of whatever). I know they're being made during October in those cases, so WHY list it as Dec. if they KNOW it'll be out in Nov?

Same thing with cars and video games. Brand new cars are ALWAYS listed a year ahead of when they are released, and sports video games do the same: if it's 2005 they come out with an "NHL 2006".

Why? Why? WHY?! I've never understood... can someone clear it up for me so I won't have to keep ranting about it in the future? ^^

[Shao Feng-Li]

It's the same thing with Shonen Jump! It was September and I got the October issue and so on.

[Tenshi no Ai]

It's the same thing with Shonen Jump! It was September and I got the October issue and so on.

EXACTLY! It's just a total confuzzlement for me :/

[TurkishMonky]

i once got a computer magazine dated a year ahead (but i think it was a typo )

[Rexman64]

Plus automobile models. Don't forget car models.

My guess, as for games and cars, anyway, is that they're trying to sound "advanced". Next-gen. Cool.

For magazines, I think they just want to be sure that everybody has the issue by the release month. Newstands get issues a few weeks later than subscribers, right? That would mean that the February issue of "Whatchamacallits Monthly" would get to subscribers in January, but it'd almost be February by the time newstands got it.

Unless I'm just a complete idiot.

[Puritan]

I think Rexman has the right of it. The monthly magazines publish their magazines ahead of time so they can be shipped to news stands and stores in time for their publication month, so if you subscribe to a magazine you will get it a month ahead of schedule (although you may be able to find the new version on news stands before their publication month as well). As for cars, I would suspect that they just want people to think the car is cutting edge, so they designate models by next year's date. That, or they are may be planning on selling the 2006 model for most of 2006, but they first start showing it near the end of 2005. That's what I suspect, anyway, but this type of thing is mainly determined by market analysts, and I've never understood them.

[Kaligraphic]

Rexman64 is exactly correct as far as the magazines - they release early so that all the newsstands can get the issue in time.

As far as cars go, the 2006 model is the one that they're hawking at the beginning of 2006, not the end of 2006 - of course, to do this, they need to release early so that dealers will have the correct model year. Thus, they have to release early as they phase out the previous year's model if they want to be set for the coming year. Cars, naturally enough, take a lot more effort to ship and longer to sell than magazines, so they need more lead time.