In this day and age, I feel that Kalmbach should produce their Model Railroader back issues starting the the orginal issue as a PDF file. Say one year at a time. I know I’d buy every year if the cost was right. Keep the PDF a few years behind the current year so that they can still sell the magazine. It sure would save space in my home, make searching easier, plus the magazines would not wear or be destroyed. Now if you want a back issue and it’s out of stock you are out of luck. I know someone will mention the pirating issue and that’s a drawback I understand. Plus some people would rather wait to buy the PDF entire year instead of subscribing to the magazine. I feel Kambach could have a market offering this service. They are already doing certain articles and other items in PDF. I currently have every Model Railroader issue from 1979 and it takes up so much room. Just and idea. What do you all think?
Not to put a damper on it, but Kalmbach impresses me as operating pretty close to the bone. I’d be REAL surprised if the publishers are getting rich off of it. Therefore, it’s doubtful they have staff or equipment for such an undertaking.
However, your idea has much merit, and I’d be among the first to sign up for a pdf subscription at, as you said, the right price. I’d imagine Kalmbach would be tickled for the revenue opportunity if enough readers were willing to presubscribe, thus defraying Kalmbach’s investment. There are numerous archival companies with whom Kalmbach might contract for the effort. If they take bids on the work, they can easily calculate number of subscriptions necessary to break even on the project.
I’ve spoken with Kalmbach about this when I’ve met with them about my articles and video PDF project that I’m doing for them and they tell me it isn’t likely to happen.
The market for MR on PDF (several thousand copies) is just not very large compared to the cost and labor issues. Plus just a scan of the pages would not be enough, you would need someone to go through all the pages and mark words to index … the manual labor would be extensive.
Then there’s the issue of payment … years ago it was not unusual for magazines to buy an original article with “first time North American publication” rights, so now producing the material in PDF form could be considered a second time global publication, which is in violation of the original contract. Just tracking down all the contractual agreements and sorting out the legal issues, determining if the author should be paid more for the second publication, yada, yada … it could be huge.
Unfortunately, much of that material was originally produced with no idea that digitial redistribution might be a future option so the original contract when the work was purchased doesn’t allow for that.
Long story short – no market and the production is fraught with technical and legal issues.
You can get back issues for a song on eBay and Kalmbach provides an excellent online index … which is almost as good. [swg]
To have quick access to PDFs like this is a valid suggestion.
My first thought was who would be the lucky individual to have the job title: Page Scanner (for life). This would be a labor-intensive task.
I know what it takes just to scan and covert my own personal projects into PDFs, even when using a great tools like Irfanview & OmniPage for scanning, Serif PagePlus & DrawPlus for publishing, and Adobe Acrobat Professional for PDF fine-tuning.
I think that having an online, digitized record of ever MR (and just about every other model RR mag) would be a GREAT idea, especially for the older mags (30+ years, say). The older mags are chock full of good prototype data that’s unavailable anywhere else (plans, histories, etc), and having the issues in digiatl form will make them more easily accessable to a lot more people.
Scanning and indexing the issues isn’t a big deal. Most are already indexed, and PDFs are VERY easy to word search. It would probably take less than a year for one person to scan and catalog EVERY magazing Kalmbach’s ever published (heck, I can digitize 100 prints at 4 meg apiece in about two hours).
Several RR historical societies are starting to digitize everything they’ve ever published, and it’s a boon to people researcing the line. If people and organizations DON’T step up to the plate and start digitizing their material NOW, it’ll soon be lost forever.
Want to generate more interest in any given subject? Make the data available online…
IT would be nice but like everyone is statting what I was thinking. I myself have scanned certain articles and reviews from MR magazines for my own good so i could pack up the magazines in a bin and have the articles I want at hand without taking up the space in the train room.
This same question appears over and over at intervals. Early in this forum’s history a magazine rep (I can’t recall just who it was any more) postered a reply clearly stating that MR had considered the project but had no intention of doing anything about it in the foreseeable future.
Incidentally, the first few times this question surfaced here, numerous posters indicated what they’d be willing to pay for such a product and, to say the least, their figures would have never made it worthwhile for Kalmbach to consider anyway. [;)]
Sorry, I don’t quite buy the old “we’re too small to do this” bit. The ARRL (amateur radio organization in the USA) years ago started selling ALL their back issues of QST, QEX, and some other magazines on CD rom. Nobody seemed to get in a tizzy about royalty payments or original contract language; heck some of the articles go back to the early 20th century (1934, IIRC).
The League doesn’t have a huge in-house staff to do this, they just chugged away at it and got it done. And, you don’t have to index ev
Forgive me for going off topic for a moment, but this is a personal pet peeve of mine: NO ONE said “if you build it, they will come” in Field of Dreams.
The quote is, “if you build it, HE will come.”
Also, Kirk never said, “Beam me up, Scotty,” and the line “Play it again, Sam” does not appear anywhere in Casablanca.
He/they - who cares. One is singular, the other is plural. Maybe I should have said that I paraphased the line. Whatever. But the whole point I was trying to make is: if it gets done as a pdf and distributed on cd-rom and the public is made aware of it, then it will get purchased. If MR doesn’t make mention of it, asking if modelers would want this, then how will they know whether or not to do it. And, as far as I can remember, it’s never been mentioned in MR. Look at it this way - it’s another revenue stream for them.
If they thought they could make money doing it, wouldn’t they be producing them now? After publishing MR since 1934–and watching competition come and go–I’d imagine they know how to generate revenue, no?
I think I read somewhere that PDF files can be setup so they cannot be copied or altered. Maybe it was something different, but there are certain things that originators can do to prevent some actions with the files. Anyone know for sure? If this is correct, then if Kalmbach did do them, copying might not be a problem.
As to the problem of past article being able to be used, I dug out an old copy of one of MR’s acceptance forms, and it did not include “one time use” material. It said “I agree that Kalmbach has the exclusive rights of the manuscript”. This was from 1988, so things could have been changed since then, but my article would be available. If they paid me it would be great, but it’s not something that I would expect.
The Adobe Acrobat Professional edition does provide copy/print protection.
Haven’t several people already mentioned that Kalmback is not interested in doing this for several reasons besides the expense and logistics? Kind of surprised this thread still has legs.
Guys,I have mixed feeling about this subject…There are some back issues I would love to have again…On the other side there was many I read and enjoyed but,found nothing useful for me and would not want another copy of…
Just because a company has been around does not mean they are doing all the things TODAY that they should be. Many a company that is 50 + years old has failed to adapt to the times, no?
This seems like it would be a job for a third party company that specializes in that sort of thing. The question really comes down to whether there is enough of a market to make this a profitable venture. Sure it would be interesting to see issues of MR from the 1940s and 1950s, but after the novelty wore off, how much value would most of those how-to articles be worth today. How impressed would we be by those old layouts compared with what we see today. Modelers in those days did not have the advantages we have today. They did great work with what they had available but I think we would find what they were able to produce, with few exceptions, would pale in comparison with what we have now.
There is a scene in the movie where he says something like that to Sam who is playing the piano and singing does he say something similar to play it again? I know something like that is said about a song.