Well, since my post about the missing Railway Post Office column in the latest issue didn’t seem to elicit much comment, I also see in the From The Editor column that “digital editions of Model Railroader will be on sale soon”.
Anyone care to comment on that?
That was pretty much it, nothing specific, just gonna happen.
My wife is fluent in Japanese and reads various mags of interest to her. Many of them are in e-editions now and downloaded straight to her iPad, without waiting on the very expensive overseas mail. They look great, but even with the iPad, there’s nothing so portable as a magazine. But this is the future. I’ll be selective about what I choose to convert to web-delivered media from print.
One thing I’m wondering about is the price point. Many such efforts pass at least some of the savings in paper and transportation costs to the consumer, at least in Japan. If they do that with MR, I can see a lot of people switching rapidly. If priced the same as the paper edition, not so much.
I get some of my tech journals in digital format and to tell the truth, the media isn’t there yet. The two issues I have with it are the size vs readability and ready access between pages. Current magazine formats read well to most eyes – there’s a reason fonts, paper size, picture size, etc have evolved to where they are for most magazines. You can easily hold it in your hand, while seeing enough detail in the picture and reading the caption at the same time. With digitual media, you often have to blow it up to get a readable image and then can’t see the “forest for the trees” so to speak.
The second problem is I often flip back and forth, scanning text on one page while quickly flipping to an image on another. Digital readers don’t flip that fast and I lose the mental connection along the way.
Overall I think they are the coming thing, and are already useful to replace paperback size books like the Kindle/Nook. But are not yet ready to replace full size books and magazines.
uhh… why is Borders bankrupt again?
Technically it should not be a stretch, since all the composition and so forth is alreayd electronic.
It’s figuring out the price point and stuff that is the issue. Do it right, and people with flock to it. DO it wrong, and you will get a lot of pushback.
In other publishing - I really try not to buy anythign from Tor Books, they have no clue with electronic publishing, they charge MORE for the ebook versions! On the other hand, Baen gets it. Ebooks are usually paperback price or less, and the jumpstarted the whole thing by giving away free books. In the fiction world I think this is critical - it led me to discover authors I would have never risked dollars on buying a book, which then led to me buying books I never would have known about had I not had the chance to sample their works for free.
Nonfiction is a bit different, however I would really liek to see the option to get an electronic edition if I am already a subscriber to the paper edition.
–Randy
I subscribe to an automotive magazine, they offer it in electronic form at the same price as the paper form. Paper for me, thank you.
Unable to compete with other sellers and on line retailers. Very different issue from e-readers. Not enough people have e-readers yet to cause a store to go broke.
And, I said it was coming, but not there yet. My wife uses an e-reader which works very well for her paperbacks (she’s in the chair reading it now), but she also tried it with a magazine subscription and gave up. The e-reader format didn’t it the magazine format very well.
I believe that for subscribers of the mag in paper the E-version should be an added bonus. If you do not want the paper version then you should be able to subscribe to the E-version for less than the paper subscription simply because of the savings in print and postage. I like both versions, I dont like taking my paper mags places with me, I dont like them to get torn or damgaged and I do save them for future referance. Due to the requirement of my job I need to maintain no less than 15 passwords and accounts, I cant do that in my head so I need a secure way to store them and that is via my Nook Color. Since I pretty much have that with me all the time now, having my copy of MR while sitting in a line somewhere would be nice. I already pay good money for the paper copy and I dont feel it fair to pay more for the exact same thing only in a PDF format.
Massey
Hi!
As long as a good ol hard copy of MR shows up at my door each month, I couldn’t care less if it is available in digital form or not. If the time comes that hard copies are no longer available, then I will no longer be a reader - its that simple.
Said another way, I want my books and mags in hardcopy form, and have no desire to get them in other formats. Now I readily realize the value of having digital access to reading material if one is in special circumstances (i.e. on the road, bedridden, etc.), but consider that format as an alternative, and not the only choice.
I look forward to the day I don’t have to lug around old magazines in moves, look through binders and boxes for particular issues, or track down back issues. And I look forward to being able to find and read any issue, at any time, from anywhere.
I have a subscription for Model Railroad News and besides the paper version I, as a subscriber also have access to an electronic on-line version in addition to my paper edition.
This started a few months ago as a result of Canadian subscribers having long delays before receiving the monthly paper version. I received an e-mail that advised me I could read this months magazine before my paper edition arrived.
They are not offering the electronic version only as of today, next week, how knows?
Call me old school. But having a hard copy of a magazine I pay for monthly is a must. Something about picking up the magazine and being able to reference it at any time, without having to fire up the laptop.
Hi again!
One more thing that makes books and mags attractive to me… You don’t need an electrical power source to read them!
In my last years at the office (major oil company), some of the company publications began coming out online instead of hardcopy. I, and more than a few others, just lost interest in reading them. It was actually pretty sad, but their appeal greatly lessened, and that’s just how it was. I suggested that hard copies be printed up and made available, but of course once “they” went to online, that was the end of the hardcopies.
The traditional call of the Conservative (not the political kind):
“…because that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
“I don’t like that new fangled stuff.”
“If it aint broke; don’t fix it.”
That’s pretty much it.
I work professionally with some of these stuff. If it is just a plain pdf of the printed version, then it’s not much more than adding link navigation and that can be done while the pages are made at little or no extra cost.
It can be read as a pdf in a computer or on a device. With all constraints mentioned.
But if we are talking about “digital magazines” with all bells and whistles, i.e. movies in- or online, and other nice stuff, then we are in a different yard. It is another reading experience.
Depending on how you do it the cost can be substantial and not for small publishers. Or, there are some small publishers doing success. Of course it depends on how you do it. Kalmbach can sure do it, they have the muscles. But making a printed edition and a digital edition that are not identical is a business decision not without things to take into consideration. I understand some of us are slightly older than the average computer geek and that has to be considered.
Just my opinions and observations.
/B
My [2c] worth:
1 - The total cost is above my budget for one purchase (as are most brass locos…)
2 - Some unanswered questions, such as capability for printing (or is this at screen dpi only), since if there are usable (to me) articles with plans, I will want to print out those for building the same…
3 - I don’t really want or need ALL of the back issues; I already have a few years of MR in the original format (in ‘bank box’ holders), so don’t need/want those years duplicated. Thanks for the offer, Kalmbach, but due to how modeling techniques were back in the 1940’s or earlier, plus that I model later than that era, all of the MR issues before 1950 or so would not be worth it to me… (No offense intended)
4 - Doesn’t say whether there is a good search engine on the DVD('s), and that by itself could be a deal-breaker on its own. Not that into starting a search when I go to bed and getting up the next morning to see what was found. [;)]
So for just those reasons, the cost of the set as advertised isn’t a good value for me. Now if Kalmbach made CD/DVD’s with just decades (or even two decades to a disc), at a more affordable price (and dealing with my mentioned ‘problem areas’ above), THAT might be a good value for me.
So let’s see what else you have to offer me, Kalmbach.
By the way (forgot who mentioned it) - the person who mentioned having to have power source for this version of MR forgot: if it’s after sundown, you will need a power source to read either version of MR (unless your night goggles are charged up, or unless you’re very Lincolnesque…). [swg]
Jim in Cape G.
As I understand the mechanics of the magazine industry, Ads are sold to reduce the cost to the end user (us).The same content that costs $40 with ads might cost $10 without. how many of us buy something solely based on a slick ad in a magazine? MR in e-zine could actually add content and still keep to the same size in MB.
The real bonus of a digital magazine is that it isn’t printed on paper. So adding additional content is very low in cost, as it doesn’t result in printing additional pages. It is just data.
Since it is only data, including a bunch of colour photos to illustrate the article is no big deal. Just a little extra time to layout the pages. On paper pictures consume real estate, which means more paper is needed to include them.
You are right, the end cost of a magazine is subsidized by the ads. They have a ratio of editorial content to advertisements, which determines how big the magazine is. More pages cost more to print, and more to ship. A server to distribute the digital copy isn’t cheap either, but compared to shipping and mailing paper copies, it is a bargain.
As an experiment with that ‘other’ mag that’s electronic and free, I loaded this month’s issue to my tablet instead of reading it on my computer. While limited to the ‘standard’ PDF without the interactive 360 degree view pictures, it worked VERY well and was easily readable. Of course, it IS formatted fromt eh ground up to be in an electrinic format and is more of a landscape format than the portrait of a traditional magazine, but definitely this is a practical thing.
–Randy