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Marc Coulson - Editor
Marc is the Editor of Total Carp and joined DHP having been a PGA-qualified golf professional. Marc states that the prospect of being paid to do a job in his life-long hobby prompted him to make the move.Work commitments and a young family mean that Marc is far from a full-time angler and he sees this as the strength behind his success on the magazine, which continues to outsell the rest: “I don’t go fishing every day, but then nor do my readers – this means that I know what they face in terms of restrictions on time and budget, so I know what they want from their carp fishing magazine.”
Marc currently has a PB of 28lb and states his favourite water as being Linear Fisheries’ Hunt's Corner Lake.
Jon Bones - Deputy Editor
Jon joined the Total Carp team back in November 2002 and has been fishing since the tender age of 10. Getting out on the bank with some of the country’s top anglers has helped Jon improve his angling skills no end, which is something he endeavours to pass on to the readers through every feature he does.“A lot of my fishing is done through the winter months when the banks are quiet. That said, I have just started fishing a water where I plan to spend my weekends in pursuit of a new PB over the 2007/2008 season.”
Jon currently has a PB of 36lb 8oz and doesn’t have a favourite water. As long as he’s catching he’s happy.
Total Carp is the fresh-faced, up-to-the-minute magazine for the modern carp angler striving for success. It's no surprise it is also the biggest-selling carp fishing magazine in Europe.
The Complete History Of Total Carp Magazine
To understand the complete history of Total Carp, the world's biggest-selling carp fishing magazine, you have to travel back in time to 1996 when Jim Foster first joined DHP as deputy editor of Catchmore Carp.
DHP bought Catchmore Carp from its previous owner and publisher Tim Hodges, who stayed on board as editor for a short period. The aim was to develop it into a top-selling title that would rival the likes of Advanced Carp Fishing and Carpworld, the most successful carp titles in that sector of publishing at the time.
There was a problem, though. Catchmore Carp was a failing title when DHP purchased it. Sales prior to DHP acquiring Catchmore in 1996 were not great and the magazine had a poor reputation among its target readership.
So in 1999 the magazine relaunched as Total Carp and all set goals were achieved in the first three years of the magazine's existence. Jim still remembers the day that Simon McKeown, DHP's circulation manager at the time, came into the office and congratulated him. Jim asked what the congratulations were for, and Simon said that Total Carp had sold more than 20,000 copies in a month for the first time. It was the first carp magazine ever to do this.
In 2003, Jim's time as editor of TC was over and Marc Coulson took the reins. Under his focused leadership the magazine has continued to grow and get better still. Now it is bigger than ever (196 pages long in peak months) and has a current accredited ABC circulation of 22,524 copies sold every month. This figure, thanks to the efforts of Marc and his team, is nearly 5,000 copies per month (27 per cent) higher than it was in 2003.
The philosophy behind the production of TC remains the same now. DHP was once paid a very high compliment by a magazine guru from publishing giant Emap, who said that Total Carp was 'laser targeted' at its readership. It is, and it will continue to be.
Without the efforts of all the people who've worked on the magazine over the years, TC wouldn't be what it is now - the best carp magazine in the world!
