Are we still in love with print?

[cravensdmufan]

Having now analysed responses over the past 9 days of the thread I note that out of those who gave a definite preference 80% still favour print.

 

So as far as the OP's question is concerned the answer seems to be a resounding YES!

 

Little wonder that Warners have invested in the "honking great new printing hall" that Phil mentioned.

 

I for one will be pleased  to see printed magazines continue and hopefully thrive. 

Edited January 7, 2020 by cravensdmufan
Spelling

[Rob F]

I have no desire to see the end of print, but I do not necessarily think it is a binary choice between print and digital subscriptions. As I said, I have stopped all but one of my magazine subscriptions but I have not felt the need to replace them with digital versions. I still have an avid 'thirst' for information but find it can be slaked by other means.

 

A prime area of dissatisfaction for me is with magazine reviews, which I find are often overly kind to the manufacturers. A similar trend is visible here where critical comments often get censured by the mods and others accuse people of 'rivet counting' and the like. I am INTERESTED to know how accurate a model is. I accept that all models are a compromise and will have inaccuracies but I still like to know what they are. It does not mean I won't buy it but I like feel that I am informed on the matter. We have lost contributors to this forum who had a vast of amount of knowledge because people objected to their 'tone', which usually translates as being overcritical. I think that is a shame.

 

 

[AY Mod]

10 minutes ago, Rob F said:

A similar trend is visible here where critical comments often get censured by the mods  .....  We have lost contributors to this forum who had a vast of amount of knowledge because people objected to their 'tone', which usually translates as being overcritical. I think that is a shame.

 

You're wrong, people don't get censured for being critical or overly critical; that gets addressed if it's not based upon fact. People get censured for being unpleasant.

[ruggedpeak]

I have previously expressed a strong preference for paper for many of the reasons mentioned above. However having eventually got rid of 20 years of car mags that filled quite a bit of my garage I found that space was rapidly filling up with railway mags so am reducing my magazine subs and trying to go digital. I don't particularly want to but don't want to be accumulating another pile of stuff that has to be dealt with later is no longer viable. I've been sorting through all the mags ripping out useful articles to file away. One thing I have noticed is the huge amount of airbrushing articles across all publications - feels like the airbrushing industry has been heavy on PR the last few years!

 

It is trying to find digital publications that are user friendly and a device that is inexpensive but a viable replacement for a print mag. Rather more work and upfront cost than buying a mag.

[rob D2]

Don’t have any hard subscriptions anymore. Have RM and Hornby mag on the iPad, will buy other individual copies as and when it’s very interesting such as BRM, traction, strangely never MR which used to be a favourite.

 

The online deal varies - I think RM is a winner as my subscription includes free access to back copies from 2010 onwards which is great for research 

[Rob F]

6 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

You're wrong, people don't get censured for being critical or overly critical; that gets addressed if it's not based upon fact. People get censured for being unpleasant.

I suspect we will have to agree to disagree!

[choo1choo]

 

 

Still l;ove my paper mags....I buy BRM and MR as and when they hold something of interest to me...but do subsribe to The Toddler as it is invariably a good read.

[Ross34]

On 07/01/2020 at 16:26, cravensdmufan said:

Having now analysed responses over the past 9 days of the thread I note that out of those who gave a definite preference 80% still favour print.

 

So as far as the OP's question is concerned the answer seems to be a resounding YES!

 

Little wonder that Warners have invested in the "honking great new printing hall" that Phil mentioned.

 

I for one will be pleased  to see printed magazines continue and hopefully thrive. 

 

I wonder what the average age of the respondents is & whether this influences choices?

[Phil Parker]

22 hours ago, rob D2 said:

The online deal varies - I think RM is a winner as my subscription includes free access to back copies from 2010 onwards which is great for research

 

Only 2010? RMweb Gold gets you back to 2007...

[Phil Parker]

On 08/01/2020 at 08:40, Rob F said:

As I said, I have stopped all but one of my magazine subscriptions but I have not felt the need to replace them with digital versions. I still have an avid 'thirst' for information but find it can be slaked by other means.

 

On 08/01/2020 at 08:40, Rob F said:

A prime area of dissatisfaction for me is with magazine reviews, which I find are often overly kind to the manufacturers. A similar trend is visible here where critical comments often get censured by the mods and others accuse people of 'rivet counting' and the like. I am INTERESTED to know how accurate a model is. I accept that all models are a compromise and will have inaccuracies but I still like to know what they are

 

So you want well-researched and in-depth reviews, but won't pay for them. To do justice to a model takes at least a day. To get the sort of depth that you want I suspect would take several. Who pays for this?

 

There's also the little issue of page space. If I am interested in a Class 50 (for example) I'd happily wade through half a dozen pages or more critique of a model, but if i don't like diesels, that is wasted space. Any mag has to balance up the needs of different readers both on topics and level of detail. Reviews normally satisfy the "average" enthusiast but can't keep someone who have lived for a specific class for many year happy. Once you get to a certain level of detail, there are also disagreements. To take the Class 50, you'll find on here people castigating the Hornby model for working louvres AND praising them because they can be set at different angles - which one is correct?

 

And of course what people really want is a review that slags off the model and the manufacturer. Everyone claims they want fair, what they want is controversy.

[burgundy]

Issue 10 of the LB&SCR Modellers' Digest was published just before Christmas.

http://www.lbscr.org/Models/Digest/LBSCR-Modellers-Digest-10.pdf

It was always intended as an online magazine, with the freedoms that that provides. Extra pages cost nothing,  so space ceases to be a constraint and colour pictures can be maximised. Interestingly, I believe that a number of readers still print it off - which must be quite an exercise for 130+ pages!

I have always taken the view that the freedom and benefits that the digital format gives me outweighs any downsides. If I were to design it to be print friendly, I would lose that freedom. It is also free and - I am told - worth every penny.

Best wishes

Eric   

 

[Rob F]

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

 

So you want well-researched and in-depth reviews, but won't pay for them. To do justice to a model takes at least a day. To get the sort of depth that you want I suspect would take several. Who pays for this?

 

There's also the little issue of page space. If I am interested in a Class 50 (for example) I'd happily wade through half a dozen pages or more critique of a model, but if i don't like diesels, that is wasted space. Any mag has to balance up the needs of different readers both on topics and level of detail. Reviews normally satisfy the "average" enthusiast but can't keep someone who have lived for a specific class for many year happy. Once you get to a certain level of detail, there are also disagreements. To take the Class 50, you'll find on here people castigating the Hornby model for working louvres AND praising them because they can be set at different angles - which one is correct?

 

And of course what people really want is a review that slags off the model and the manufacturer. Everyone claims they want fair, what they want is controversy.

I'm afraid you are wide of the mark with regard to my own preferences and motives. Much more detail about the accuracy or otherwise  of any model comes out as a result of friendly discussions between people who I believe can rightly be called experts, on forums such as this or several others, blogs etc. No magazine review could ever match the in-depth knowledge that is available from a disparate group of well informed people who are willing to share it due to simple interest in the subject matter.

 

Your second paragraph is a pretty good summation of why I have stopped taking magazines although I suspect you didn't mean it to be!

 

Your last point doesn't have much merit, in my opinion. All I want in a review is something that tells me what is good but is also able to tell me what is not so good. I am interested if a window is slightly the wrong shape or even if there are not enough rivets (!) but I don't think truthful comments about fidelity should ever be described as 'slagging off'. Just because a model has inaccuracies does not mean I won't buy it but I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to know about them.

 

It is all about personal preference and ,as I said before, I have no desire to see magazines fail. I also have absolutely no desire to try and convince people that they should do what I have done. If you still enjoy them, buy them. Simple. 

[dibber25]

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

 

So you want well-researched and in-depth reviews, but won't pay for them. To do justice to a model takes at least a day. To get the sort of depth that you want I suspect would take several. Who pays for this?

 

There's also the little issue of page space. If I am interested in a Class 50 (for example) I'd happily wade through half a dozen pages or more critique of a model, but if i don't like diesels, that is wasted space. Any mag has to balance up the needs of different readers both on topics and level of detail. Reviews normally satisfy the "average" enthusiast but can't keep someone who have lived for a specific class for many year happy. Once you get to a certain level of detail, there are also disagreements. To take the Class 50, you'll find on here people castigating the Hornby model for working louvres AND praising them because they can be set at different angles - which one is correct?

 

And of course what people really want is a review that slags off the model and the manufacturer. Everyone claims they want fair, what they want is controversy.

Absolutely agree, Phil. I've just reviewed an O gauge loco. I reckon I've spent around a week on it, spread over two weeks. Studio photography takes an afternoon. A trip out our nearest O gauge layout to test it takes another afternoon. We had a faulty example, so another had to be ordered. It arrived on Christmas Eve. Another trip out to test it. The review had to be complete and the page designed by 6 Jan, so much had to be done over 'the holiday'. I'm not a fount of knowledge on that class of loco so I needed to do a lot of research to get my wagons in a circle. Dismantling (to find out what motor etc it has) and re-assembly took another couple of hours. Over that time, the review is built up, often sentence by sentence. Then there's all the measuring up to be done, not to mention finding a source of dimensions of the real thing (internet sources usually provide just the length and wheel diameter if you're lucky) and that doesn't provide nearly enough info, so you have to resort to books - often having to borrow from someone else. In our business, 'slagging off' a model or a manufacturer is simply not done. We have to meet and communicate with the people whose work we'd be slagging off. You haven't lived until you've taken a phone call from a manufacturer who is unhappy because you didn't give his model a 100% rating! A review is designed to inform the customer and allow him to decide whether or not to buy. It is not a means to convince him not to buy. In a court of law any whiff of malice in a review can be very expensive! I'm always wary of the fact that I'm a jack of all trades and, whatever I'm reviewing, there will be someone out there who knows more about it than I do and will be looking to tell me I've got something wrong. I know. I do it myself whenever someone writes about the Staines branch, for instance. I was taught how to review models and write reviews by Alan Williams, who was responsible for establishing the reviews in Model Railway Constructor as the best of their time. It is something that has to be taught - you can't just pick it up and that's what most on-line reviewers try to do, hence 10minutes opening the box and two minutes admiring the model and that's it. Finally, of course, modern studio photography by expert photographers provides print magazine reviews with sharp-throughout, full-colour photographs which five minutes of a moving loco on Youtube just can't match. Print, in our time, O Lord, Amen, simply because some things are worth paying for. (CJL)

[Trevellan]

As someone who edits and produces a quarterly magazine for a charity, I can identify with the comments from Phil and Chris. Interestingly, the critics and naysayers among my readership (a tiny minority, it should be noted) take up more of my time than satisfied readers. [Sigh]

[rob D2]

4 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Only 2010? RMweb Gold gets you back to 2007...

My point being, really, that a lot of mags you still have to pay for back issues even with a subscription so I was quite surprised at the generously

[ardbealach]

Still on the paper / digital publications - does anyone take an interest in the DVDs attached to the covers of paper magazines?  Are they filed away or thrown away? And do they provide any added value?  (AM)

[cravensdmufan]

1 hour ago, ardbealach said:

Still on the paper / digital publications - does anyone take an interest in the DVDs attached to the covers of paper magazines?  Are they filed away or thrown away? And do they provide any added value?  (AM)

Personally I'm not a great fan of the DVD "how to" footage, preferring to read printed articles with "stage by stage" still photographs. 

 

You do often get some good video footage of layouts.  Hornby Magazine are particularly good at this and produce the occasional free DVD lasting around an hour purely featuring various quality layouts of different scales and eras all of which are really well filmed.

 

Those HM ones I tend to keep - others I take to the charity shop along with the magazines after a couple of months.  

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by cravensdmufan
Additional wording

[Pandora]

i simply "cherry pick" and buy a  magazine only if the issue  strongly engages with my interests. that applies to other magazine subjects  too,  motorcycling/cars/electronics, as for newspapers,  I cannot recall buying a newspaper for several years,  although I read them in the local library when I call in. At the back of my mind is the build up of clutter in my home, too many magazines and books, rarely consulted, but too hard to part with.

[dibber25]

1 hour ago, Pandora said:

i simply "cherry pick" and buy a  magazine only if the issue  strongly engages with my interests. that applies to other magazine subjects  too,  motorcycling/cars/electronics, as for newspapers,  I cannot recall buying a newspaper for several years,  although I read them in the local library when I call in. At the back of my mind is the build up of clutter in my home, too many magazines and books, rarely consulted, but too hard to part with.

I haven't bought a newspaper since I moved away from down south into an area where there's no local paper. Occasionally read a newspaper while waiting in the barber's, and marvel at what a load of politically biased tosh they are. Really miss having a newspaper when I want to spray paint a model or light the log burner! (CJL)

[Mel_H]

On 09/01/2020 at 17:14, Pandora said:

i simply "cherry pick" and buy a  magazine only if the issue  strongly engages with my interests. that applies to other magazine subjects  too,  motorcycling/cars/electronics, as for newspapers,  I cannot recall buying a newspaper for several years,  although I read them in the local library when I call in. At the back of my mind is the build up of clutter in my home, too many magazines and books, rarely consulted, but too hard to part with.

 

That makes you a 'typical' magazine reader then... And, I confess, that's me too for those mags that I don't have on a subscription.

 

For consumer (fun) magazines covering specialist interests, many people will buy it if there's one article they absolutely want to read (at home, not in the shop). Or, if not, two or possibly three articles that are of interest.

 

Once someone has picked the magazine off the shelf, in theory you (used to be) halfway to making the sale. That's the main reason for the cover lines being so varied in the hope of appealing to all potential readers, to at least get them to pick it up.

 

There's much more to be said about covers (a huge topic in itself), but next time you're in WH Smith, just glance at the women's magazines. You'll notice that 99% of them all have the same word on the cover.

 

Those who love a particular magazine normally subscribe, although there is a significant number who will use their local newsagents for a variety of reasons. 

 

After 30 years in magazine editing I still remain fascinated about the psychology of readers' choices.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Mel_H

[dibber25]

1 hour ago, Mel_H said:

 

That makes you a 'typical' magazine reader then... And, I confess, that's me too for those mags that I don't have on a subscription.

 

For consumer (fun) magazines covering specialist interests, many people will buy it if there's one article they absolutely want to read (at home, not in the shop). Or, if not, two or possibly three articles that are of interest.

 

Once someone has picked the magazine off the shelf, in theory you (used to be) halfway to making the sale. That's the main reason for the cover lines being so varied in the hope of appealing to all potential readers, to at least get them to pick it up.

 

There's much more to be said about covers (a huge topic in itself), but next time you're in WH Smith, just glance at the women's magazines. You'll notice that 99% of them all have the same word on the cover.

 

Those who love a magazine normally subscribe, although there is a significant number who will use their local newsagents for a variety of reasons. 

 

After 30 years in magazine editing I still remain fascinated about the psychology of readers' choices.

Mel, you'll probably remember those meetings where we were told you had four seconds in which your cover had to attract someone to cross the shop floor and pick up the magazine. (CJL)

[Georgeconna]

I still love a Pint Every now and then.

[ruggedpeak]

On 09/01/2020 at 16:34, ardbealach said:

Still on the paper / digital publications - does anyone take an interest in the DVDs attached to the covers of paper magazines?  Are they filed away or thrown away? And do they provide any added value?  (AM)

Once you have a decent bundle you can sell them online for £20 or so. People will always buy them.

[Mel_H]

21 hours ago, dibber25 said:

Mel, you'll probably remember those meetings where we were told you had four seconds in which your cover had to attract someone to cross the shop floor and pick up the magazine. (CJL)

 

Certainly do! 

[w124bob]

Like many, my magazine buying dwindled when I retired. I rejoined my local model railway society and now have access to 17 rail related mags(I know it's 17 as I'm the librarian) . I do purchase now and again and have even picked up old issues via Ebay because of interesting articles. I then bin all the unwanted stuff and file just my chosen favs. I am however an avid book buyer, I grew up surrounded by my Dads book collection and will read fiction many times to the point where I've replaced books which fell apart! 

Currently I'm looking at 60plus paperbacks stacked next to me including a full set of LeCarre , Cormac McCarthy and Raymond Chandler. There's another 200 plus railway books not to mention a collection of Mercedes Benz brochures for 1977 through to '93 . I find I just can't get on with digital magazines because of the difficullty of saving just the good bits.

Edited March 22, 2020 by w124bob