MR does do scratchbuilding articles

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
21

Ah, the plastic wood debate. I guess I’m pretty neutral. When you are scrounging you make do with whatever comes along. I’ve been ripping down popsicle sticks for lumber and what I get a a rough lumber look. No matter how much I sand, the wood will not give a finished look–but it looks great in a rustic setting.

On the other hand, it sure is a lot easier using styrene board and baton for a wall. It looks a lot better than the same detail. if you can get it, in real wood. I agree with Joe on the paint. When you get down to that level, you can make plastic look like anything with the proper blending of color.

22

Hey, use what you like: wood for wood or styrene for wood or metal for wood. There are no technique police that will come and haul you away if you don’t do it my way. [swg]

It’s easy to understand how you can make wood look like wood, but I still maintain that if you haven’t tried the styrene as wood method, just spouting think-so’s doesn’t cut it. Speak from experience, not just using mental gymnastics.

Try both methods several times, then if you still prefer wood, hey, use wood. I still use wood for some applications … in this video PDF series, I use wood to make:

  • a concrete tunnel portal
  • a wood grade crossing
  • ties on bridge so I can spike the rails to them
  • ties under rail joiners
  • concrete bridge footings
  • tree trunks

But I also sometimes use metal to represent wood or styrene to represent wood. In general, the more flexible you are in chosing your materials, the more options you have when scratchbuilding and the easier you will make your modeling. [swg]

23

Joe,

You make some good points. Your PDF on trackwork (the bonus thing that was available when a copy of the Realistic Track book was purchased) was great! However -

With the DVDs, you actually get a physical product - the DVD. There are costs associated with duplication, distribution and so on. For studio movies and such the DVDs cost the studio only a few bucks each (from what I’ve read) , and I suppose the number isn’t all that much highe

24

Mark,I could not agree more.$5.95 is high for a small down load.I would also be interested in a collection of HOW TO on pdf or better still a pdf on past railroads you can model or the BETTER layout articles.I fully agree Mr.Keller does charge a high price for a video seeing Pentrex DVDs sell for less.

Joe,I just don’t think comparing your pdf article to MR is a fair comparison since you get far more out of MR for the same money…

25

I have to agree: knock 'em down to $2 and I’ll order a bunch. But the current prices, starting at $5.95, are too high for pdfs.

26

Mark, Brakie, etc:

As always, a thoughtful response.

I think one thing that skews people’s judgement on this stuff is the el cheapo prices on Hollywood DVDs. They sell millions of those things, and it’s easy to get the per unit costs down under ten bucks per DVD. But the typical hobby DVD costs $25 - $45 each.

The problem is the volume – Model RR videos just don’t sell like Hollywood movies. I don’t think we’ve even sold 1000 copies of my DVDs yet, which is just plain pitiful.

If we had to pay the going rate for the camera work and the editing, we’d be looking at about $800 a minute. The series, when complete, will run over 400 minutes. You do the math – that’s $32,000 in production costs! Fortunately, we’ve gotten some good discounts on this work, but it’s still far from free.

The MR video PDFs cost a lot to produce because once the video has been shot and edited, then it needs to get re-edited to fit into the MR video PDF format, then a new PDF article needs to be written, still photos need to be produced, and then the video needs to be re-rendered into a streaming format suitable for inclusion into a PDF document and it all needs to be assembled into a final PDF document. Each PDF also goes through three rounds of edits. By the time one of these things is done a lot of hands have touched it to make sure it’s a quality product and not a piece of slapped-together crap.

I dare say, given the costs of labor today in the US, I doubt MR’s making a lot on the video PDFs even at $5.95 each. There’s also the cost of promotion … yeh I know, it’s MR’s site so advertising is cheap … but even then you need an ad copy guy to write the copy, then some editor to review it to make sure it sounds good, and a web guy to post it. Those people aren’t free, you know.

I guess sometimes I think the huge media outfits from Hollywood who can produce this sort of thing in millions of units and get the price down to pe

27

As an aside to the discussion, Joe, your statement at the end is telling, and should be required reading for some of those who insist that the hobby is robust and enjoying great success. I don’t mean to suggest that the opposite is true, just that it is how I have always understood our numbers…something like 0.5% of the N. American population actually take concrete steps to foster their interest in MRR. By that I mean open their wallets for a purchase of some kind.

I do wish, and hope, that you have better success with your fine efforts in the years to come. I guess you would settle for them becoming valued collector’s items by 2080? [%-)]

Oh, wait, isn’t that the year the hobby officially dies?

28

Howdy All,

I’ve been thinking about this topic. Not that I think MR does no scratch/kitbashing articles. However, I think the magazine has not only less of them but also thined out as a whole. I attribute this to the ready made stuff and the newbiees that has attracted. -not that we can complain, we do want new people to gain intrest in trains right? Some of these people would not be iterested if say the new RTRs from Athearn weren’t available. I know some myself who “don’t know how to kitbash.”

I have experienced this in my line of work as well. As a graphic designer I was trained before computers came into being. Back then you could make $50/hr. Now with computers there are many more people. WHY? -Because the computer allows you to do this without having to use; markers, ruling pens, T-squares —PAPER for all that matter (until you make a print; likewise we now get $20-25/hr. because there are so many people looking for work).

So I guess MR feels it has to cater to a new group? My favorite articles show you how to modify diesels or rolling stock. The last one I saw like that was the SD-20 kitbash (YES I will do at least one of those) So if that is what I really like should I be reading RMC? Their articles seem less detailed but perhaps I should have another look.

Dan

29

Joe,Another thing is those PDFs will be reaching a smaller group unlike say Pentrex or Green Frog videos…There are thousands of on line modelers that isn’t a member of this forum…There are thousands more that don’t do forums of any kind and then how about the thousands that don’t have computers?

As far as production costs of a pdf I bet its far less then Pentrax or Greenfrog doing a railroad video because there is NO added cost like gas, motel rooms and meals…After all a PDF file can be done during the course of one or two normal work days unless of course the author sends it to MR in pdf form.

$5.95? Sorry no sale.

30

Actually, as to video production, it takes me 10 hours per minute of video to produce a finished, polished how-to video. Since the video PDFs average about 10 minutes each, there’s about 100 hours of my time.

If you google on this kind of work, you will find videographers will charge you $50 to $100 per hour to do finished video. So using the bottom end of the scale, I could be charging $5000 to MR for the video part of the video PDFs (don’t I wish …).

Then the remaining work to redit the video into small chunks suitable for inclusion into a video PDF, plus writing the text, doing the still photos, re-rending the video, and building a new video PDF probably takes about and hour per minute of video, so that’s another 10 hours or so. Then the extra rounds of edits adds maybe another two hours per round, so there’s another 6 hours. Then there’s maybe another 4 hours of incidentals involved in getting the product item posting copy written, edited, and posted to the MR web site … so we add about 20 hours to the 100 hours I’ve invested in producing the video.

Even at minimum wage, that work should be worth about $1000 (fortunately, MR’s not that cheap, thank goodness). But if MR charged the $1 - $2 everybody seems to think they ought to charge, they would need to see thousands of these things downloaded just to break even. As it is a few hundred downloads will recoup the costs and put them into the black. But anyone who thinks these things cost next to nothing to produce doesn’t have a good handle on reality.

I know when I’ve talked to friends of m

31

Joe,Another thing that might hurt the sales is the books on ballasting scenery,detailing etc.IF I was a newbie I would go for the books and the scenery how to video by Woodland Scenics.

You say it took you a hundred hours to do that pdf then the price is to low if they are paying a person to do the work a nice livable wage like you say and in that scenario they are LOSING money with every sale…I am not aware of any company including Kalmbach that is in business to lose money so,IMHO the production cost isn’t adding up to high dollar figures.

32

What I am saying is at the surprisingly slow rate at which downloadable anything seems sell in the hobby, it can take many months or even years to recoup the costs of production, especially where video is concerned.

In the case of my own how-to DVDs, model-trains-video.com has lost money three years running and only stays afloat because my videos are a labor of love subsidized by other income outside the hobby. Inside the hobby, the sales levels of media materials over the internet is pretty pitiful – my guess is MR sees better numbers than most, but the sales levels of even the largest model railroading videos would probably make most small-time indy movie producers just laugh (or cry, as the case may be). [swg]

33

This whole discussion makes me think of why people buy or do not buy how-to hobby products. I know how my thinking goes, and I bet many of you think similarly:

“I have limited hobby dollars … so do I buy something I can put on the layout or do I blow my money on a how-to magazine/book/video? If I buy the how-to item, it won’t add anything to the layout by itself so it’s just money down a rat hole.”

I find the greatest benefit to me of how-to information, now after having been in the hobby 40 years, is more the inspiration factor, rather than the how-to techniques. Usually there’s not a lot of new revelations in a how-to for me.

I suspect the inspiration factor is the largest benefit most people see from how-to items, and for inspiration, you can’t beat a video of good modeling. I suspect that’s why Allen Keller’s videos do as well as they seem to do and why he can get away with his premium $45 per DVD price.

How much is motivation to get out of your armchair and go work on the layout worth?

For that reason, my guess is the best sales of videos in the hobby are those that inspire – in other words, pretty layout videos. And guess who has that market sewed up? [swg]

34

I’ll some of your pdfs especially with video : )

I’m gonna check to see if there’s any on diesel kitbashing.

Oh by the way, my wife wants to know how the term ‘kitbashing’ came about. anyone know?

Dan

35

Joe,

A few thoughts on expanding your market:

Have you tried offering your videos on eBay. I’ve been buying railroad stuff there for years and with the Buy It Now option, you can test your pricing strategy.

The other costs more: DVDs can carry multiple audio tracks or add subtitles. If the model railroad community is healthier in Germany, why not German subtitles or audio track and offer it in that marketplace.There are way more fan magazines there than there are in the US.

But I am glad to have found your website. It’s all about driving traffic to it!

Good luck

36

Just because something’s available for a download doesn’t mean there’s no distribution cost.

Web hosting, the web design team, the % of every sale taken by the credit card companies, etc all have an impact on the price of a product. Add that to whatever the production cost is for the product, then you can get some idea as to what’s a viable price. It’s easy to say that the hard drive space is paid for, once they own it. But it’s not. They have to provide for disaster recovery, security, backups, etc. which all cost money.

Plus, the space itself has a value. A straight pdf file (text and pictures) may sell for $10-12 and take up less than 1/2 the space of a video pdf that sells for $6. So from a straight profitability standpoint, the regular pdfs could be considerably more profitable. Add that to the cost of the bandwidth use for downloading the larger files and that also affects the value of the video pdfs to Kalmbach.

Another factor when these items are priced is the fact that they carry no advertising. I would assume that the bulk of the costs for the print magazine are covered by advertising, and the cover price/subscription prices are calculated to provide the income needed to cover the remaining production costs, plus a make a profit.

The purpose for any company’s existance is to make a profit. I would guess that if the actual costs were tabulated for the production and sales of the internet downloads, that the actual profit would be minimal, if they have shown any profit at all.

Of course, you’re still welcome to decide if it’s worth the money. But ultimately it doesn’t matter how they derive their price, or even how much profit they are making. The only real question is if you think the product is of enough value to you to spend $6.00.

Kalmbach has to decide, based on their sales, if the price is too high. But if lowering the price makes it unprofitable, then they may just decide that it’s not a viable product and drop th

37

Frankly a lot of how-to videos just put me to sleep. The fact that they are informative doesn’t seem to help. Perhaps they go into too much detail. I’ve been modeling for around 50 years or so, Was a dental tech for awhile,I wasn’t bored during those classes in the Navy. Watching some of the how-to shows on TV like New Yankee Workshop and This Old House also put me to sleep even though DOING the subject material is among my favorite things to do. NOW!! Throw in the human factor and we have West Coast Chopper or Monster Garage or Mythbusters and now we have some excitement. Muscled up bikers intimidating there kids or co-workers or strap a cute redhead into an airline seat and drop her eight feet to see if the airliner crash position actually works,really pep up the show.[swg]