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The Parlous State of the UK Modelling Magazine market


Tiger331

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Just bought my £20+ of magazine's for this month, with what I've read on this site in mind.

 

I treated myself to a £6•50, magazine Military illustrated Modeller, I've bought a few of these over the years, reason, lovely looking Fokker Dr1 1/32, looking very nice, and worth the price just for this article, But, the F35 on the front does look rushed, in the way some modern, airbrushed model can, something a airbrush sometimes makes a model look, in all honesty, the real F35 looks a bit toy like.

 

the Tamiya magazine and its sister aircraft magazine, bit catalogue in presentation, and some models within, about my standard, and this is photos from a US show, I'm sure there was better to photograph and put in the magazine, £4•50, should means only the beat.

 

Airfix magazine, is best again, full of very well made models, and a lovely poster of a Lancaster, really is good read as well.

 

Sami, miles better and has a great article on the Wasp and drawings, and few good kits made up.

 

In truth, price of five good pints 🍻 a good read, and interesting and informative, lots of additional advert's, some time's they are helpful.

 

Think the model magazine is in rich health, I will even say there's room for a £10 Magazine, side view and decals.

 

The old magazines, good in their day, but sometimes bit on the boring side, and catering for the few, not the many.

 

So, not perfect, but we do have a much better magazine today 😊

Edited by Gerrardandrews
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23 hours ago, John Aero said:

................I think that generally I agree with the sentiment of the title.  I now only take one regular mainstream aircraft modelling magazine Scale Aircraft Modelling and I think that is because I haven't remembered to stop the subscription. I also take Aeroplane ( again I'm beginning to wonder why).

 

Magazines are only as good as the editorial staff and these are restrained and controlled by the Owners and ultimately the readership. Owners want sales and the readership, only content that suits them personally.....................and it's the bean counters who will raise the alarm and then it's exit the editor. Two careers to avoid are Model magazine editors and Football managers.

 

How many editors now have a real passion that some of the past masters had. People like Ray Rimell, Alan Hall and Neil Robinson. In my opinion they brought something to the magazines now lacking. 

.........Oh and don't get me started  on the accuracy or otherwise of drawings in magazines.

 

John

:blush: Ahh well, that's two issues of each per month sold! Glad also, that I'm not on my own wondering about Aeroplane!

 

:hmmm:"Two careers to avoid are Model magazine editors and Football managers." ?

I Don't know John, at least a footy manager gets a SIZEABLE 'golden parachute'......:whistle:

 

If truth be told, I think most editors do have a passion, though I think it's a different one to the three worthies you mention above,

as I know of at least one who is working a full time job, as well as editing a magazine.

Thinking of the august people mentioned above, it's also 'proof positive' that the required 'skill' to edit isn't transmitted by osmosis.............sadly!

 

Plans? Surely you mean 'lofting drawings'?.............................:wicked:

 

10 hours ago, junglierating said:

....................................if you go to the UKs biggest supermarket well they are all there and that can be only a good thing for the hobby.

Sorry to 'burst the bubble', but the 'big 4' supermarkets are PAID to take the magazines, they also insist on 'special' issues for themselves,

hence you get a monthly issue at £4.50 with a 'free' £12.99 (RRP) publication in a cellophane bag, but only from ******* (insert supermarket name of choice.)

 

Paul

 

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I always remember being in the unfortunate position of being in Portsmouth Harbour (can't speak for Plymouth, the darkness and smell alone has a sinister atmosphere, even from the outside) train station a few years ago awaiting relevant locomotive for journey to London (I did have the often mixed pleasure/displeasure of living there for a number of years). Anyway, wanting some reading materiel for above transportation (the only suitable word for it pre-watershed) I decided on a magazine purchase. Now anybody who knows this station will recall the small selection of magazines on offer at the kiosk/shop. Many were the usual 'lad mags' full of phwoar/cars/stuff/footy and housewives gossip rags when I espied an island of sanity in the form of a BBC History magazine. The old dear behind the counter was genuinely delighted somebody had bought a copy of it. An interesting read was had albeit tempered by the creature who decided to sit herself next to me and munch loudly on what can only be described as what smelt like goat's cheese and whelk crisps.

Slightly off topic but a magazine purchase experience I just felt like sharing

 

Edited by Darby
grammar
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3 hours ago, Seahawk said:

Well, ten then.  (Four is around the number I bother to open.)   Hardly suggests that the species is in imminent danger of dying out.

Eleven.  He forgot Military Modelling magazine.

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9 hours ago, 73north said:

I bought Aeroplane Monthly recently a month ago , for the ' in-depth ' article on the Mitsubishi Raiden - apart from 2 pages covering the different units that used the type in  action -

and a small picture of the lone survivor in the USA on the final page ........ which you could find from the internet ! - however the rest of the article was 

clearly all copy and pasted from the exact same text of Air Enthusiast from 1972 !! - that covered the same aircraft !!!

 

In short - the 1972 magazine was actually superior to the state of the art magazine from 2017

 

that tells you whats wrong with magazines - they are not getting the cash to do the job - or the love and attention

A good friend became the Editor of a modelling magazine last year, and the expectation of 'the management' was that he would recycle old articles rather then commission new subjects for publication.

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1 hour ago, PhoenixII said:

Sorry to 'burst the bubble', but the 'big 4' supermarkets are PAID to take the magazines, they also insist on 'special' issues for themselves,

hence you get a monthly issue at £4.50 with a 'free' £12.99 (RRP) publication in a cellophane bag, but only from ******* (insert supermarket name of choice.)

 

Well I stand corrected no need to rude about it Paul....bubble not burst! 

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1 hour ago, PLC1966 said:

Eleven.  He forgot Military Modelling magazine.

Ah but no: I only listed the titles that I thought fitted into the 'parlous' description. I haven't looked at MM for many a year, but it used to be very good. Is it still?

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10 hours ago, PhoenixII said:

 

Sorry to 'burst the bubble', but the 'big 4' supermarkets are PAID to take the magazines, they also insist on 'special' issues for themselves,

hence you get a monthly issue at £4.50 with a 'free' £12.99 (RRP) publication in a cellophane bag, but only from ******* (insert supermarket name of choice.)

 

Paul

 

I must admit I thought that ALL shops got paid to carry stocks of any given item.  It's called their profit margin.  Perhaps there's some other factor I'm not taking account of?

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Supermarkets make a charge for "premium" shelf space. Not paying for this means you get put on the top or bottom shelf, not on the middle shelves where people's eyes normally look. I know this happens on tinned and packet goods, and I believe something similar happens with magazines.

 

To quote the Economist magazine "...... the large and undisclosed rebates that T***o, like many other grocery chains, gets from its suppliers represent another close, long-term relationship whose role in the scandal merits examination. These payments mainly come in two forms. The first type, called slotting fees, are in return for giving the supplier’s products a prominent place on the retailer’s shelves, or indeed any space at all. The second type, called marketing or distribution fees, are suppliers’ reward to retailers when they boost sales of their products by running promotional offers on them.

Such fees have been around since the 1970s. But big grocery chains began to demand much larger rebates in the recession that followed the financial crisis. ......... In Britain, by some estimates the big four supermarkets receive more in payments from their suppliers than they make in operating profits."

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I've got to agree with just about all of you - having purchased only two British magazines this year, although I do subscribe to Aeroplane and Air Britain. Here in Oz is a splendid little mag called Plastic Modelart, run on a shoe string by Frank Morgan and always containing a variety of articles, a pleasant and interesting mix of all types of modelling and historical references. I get it each two months. The only other one  get when I see it is WIngmaster (Its FRENCH not German) and I fortunately can read the language. Great modelling, interesting references and history, although there are few build articles, just the finished model. but usually very well done and a good explanation of how it is achieved.

SAM and SAMI are both appallingly badly put together these days and are just full of advertisements and "Aren't I wonderful at using all these after-market bits and bobs!" style of articles, with few build shots. I treasure my Airfix magazines from 1963 to 1990 when it went bad, and similarly SAM which was a ripper publication until Jay destroyed it.

Must admit I now spend more money on books and more time looking at the wonderful step-by-step stuff done on this site and HS - much more of a sense of sharing techniques and discoveries than magazines engender.

Unfortunately I believe the days of the specialist modelling magazine are numbered

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2 hours ago, Nigel Bunker said:

Such fees have been around since the 1970s. But big grocery chains began to demand much larger rebates in the recession that followed the financial crisis. ......... In Britain, by some estimates the big four supermarkets receive more in payments from their suppliers than they make in operating profits."

 

This is very true.

 

I remember many years ago visiting a very large wholesaler in the Midlands for work and discovered, much to my surprise, that the only reason they made any profit was from suppliers' "bonuses" and volume discounts received.

 

On a more on topic related point, our local Sainsbury's has been revamped to include an Argos, and among the items sold they have ditched to make room for the Argos are about half the magazines they used to sell, including Airfix magazine and all bar one of the "flight" magazines.

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I guess it's a "But an Eduard Spitfire doesn't make money for Airfix" argument, but I think there are TOO MANY modelling magazines these days. One of the the reasons for the perceived decline in quality is that the advertising budgets of the people who advertise are supporting eleven mags instead of four, hence each mag is getting less, hence the budget each editor has to play with is less (and they need creative ways of getting more, like sponsored articles). And the model builders who can build great models out of the box (looking at you, Mike Grant and Spencer Pollard and various denizens of this parish), write an interesting article about it (including relevant and accurate history), and take excellent photos that can be used at large sizes, are few and far between, and also spread too thinly. Personally, AMW is the only one I buy regularly, because I like the mix of subjects, and the overall quality is literally second to none. Beyond that, I think the shelves would be better if there was only one Scale Model Aircraft World, one Military Modeller (with a quarterly "Figure and Diorama Modeller" special issue), and (maybe) one Road and Racing Car and Bike Modeller. The US seems to get by largely on Fine Scale Modeler and Scale Auto...

 

best,

M.

Edited by cmatthewbacon
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I guess what this thread shows is that the membership of Britmodeller, being people who consume much of their modelling information from the internet and contributory fora isn't representative of the main market for a magazine publisher; when you think about it it isn't surprising that a lot of people on a modelling forum don't buy modelling magazines.

 

To support a dozen different and competing publications the market must be in rude health in the UK- someone is buying enough copies of all of those magazines for them to stay in business, notwithstanding the poor content and production values of many of them- even if the funding from advertising covered all of the costs and produced a profit for the publishers surely the advertisers wouldn't be daft enough to place their adverts in magazines with no readership.

 

 

21 hours ago, John Aero said:

why do they have to place a black text on a huge gray-scale photo, making the text hard to read

Try reading bed time stories for young children- dark text on a dark illustration is the bane of my life, putting on the brightest light to be able to see is counter-productive to the ultimate aim of bedtime (getting offspring to sleep promptly so I can go and build models in peace).

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14 hours ago, PLC1966 said:
23 hours ago, 73north said:

I bought Aeroplane Monthly recently a month ago , for the ' in-depth ' article on the Mitsubishi Raiden - apart from 2 pages covering the different units that used the type in  action -

and a small picture of the lone survivor in the USA on the final page ........ which you could find from the internet ! - however the rest of the article was 

clearly all copy and pasted from the exact same text of Air Enthusiast from 1972 !! - that covered the same aircraft !!!

 

In short - the 1972 magazine was actually superior to the state of the art magazine from 2017

 

that tells you whats wrong with magazines - they are not getting the cash to do the job - or the love and attention

A good friend became the Editor of a modelling magazine last year, and the expectation of 'the management' was that he would recycle old articles rather then commission new subjects for publication.

Apologies for a consecutive post, another thought occurred to me: I'm not sure recycling articles from 45 years ago is that reprehensible, so long as all of the content is still relevant- most people won't have a copy of the original article. It was recycling articles from only a year or two ago that got my goat and stopped my buying magazines regularly.

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Many of the views expressed in this thread are thoughtful and considered.

 

I think it would be interesting and helpful to the discussion if the editors of some of the magazines mentioned would post a response. In that way both sides would get to offer their thoughts and hopefully for the benefit of all. 

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It's interesting how times do/don't change. My hazy memory seems to recall that similar complaints were raised against the then current magazines back in the mid to late 80s. Back then this led to the publishing of what could be termed (in an absolutely non-disparaging way) 'home-brew' magazines for both general and niche subjects. I suppose the modern equivalent is fora such as this one.

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For a small firm my advertising budget in our heyday was a real pain.  Editors replying? Hmm heads above the parapet! It might be wiser to read, evaluate and keep under cover then see if any comments are useful.

 

So far the comments have been mainly about the layout and content breakdown rather than "more Spitfires" or "less Spitfires" camps. Another simple fact is that all of these magazines are largely military biased and only the old Scale Models and the early Airfix mags ever really broadened the spectrum. I'm not a modern big Airliner fan but I do like general aviation stuff and especially pre-war civil stuff which hardly gets a mention anywhere. One might comment that there's no interest but if you want colour and variety, go to Old Warden or a P.F.A. rally. (now the Light Aircraft Assoc). Perhaps some of the magazines will leaven their bread a little.

Elsewhere in the world, the US, and Australia, and Europe the lighter scene has greater appeal and many of the available models actually come from European makers. This is one of my gripes with Aeroplane. Under Richard Riding's editorship it flourished for many years with a largely pre-war content,. Now it's another glossy photo of another glossy Mustang. Where have all the wonderful pre-war photographs from the old Aeroplane archives gone.

 

One thing I wish Editors would take more care over is the re-hashing of old scale drawings or new re-draws of these as so many are not fit for purpose. but who's to evaluate them.  I realize that this all takes time and expertise, that the magazines staff don't necessarily have. One of the things I'm spending my time on now is creating new drawings for pleasure including some specifically for model companies.  I'm currently converting Imperial fractions to decimal in 200 odd megabytes of old Percival drawings and the same with Westland, Hawker and Fairey stuff and trying to learn CAD.

 

One great advantage that sites like this have over magazines is the latent pool of specialist and helpful talent which can be drawn on very quickly. The downside is that when someones research is aired in ether rather than ink, some erseling will soon be spouting it as 'his knowledge' on other forums with no regards to credit, if only for politeness.

 

Over the years I have supported magazines by advertising and also buying them to broaden my knowledge bandwidth and now I can specialize, I think the bottom line for me is that I will buy magazines but it has to keep my interest.

 

John

 

 

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53 minutes ago, John Aero said:

One thing I wish Editors would take more care over is the re-hashing of old scale drawings or new re-draws of these as so many are not fit for purpose. but who's to evaluate them.

I know members of this forum have provided invaluable advice to the likes of Airfix on their model kits and Xtradecal on their profiles, I'm sure at least one has mentioned that it hasn't been remunerated in much more than a credit in the instruction sheet.

 

Given the expert knowledge on this forum in pretty much every area of scale modelling I'm sure a sufficiently motivated publisher or editor could identify someone to give an opinion on the accuracy or otherwise of plans from the archive- for example there's already a whole thread here dedicated to the lineage of Hawker drawings published in old magazines- a quick PM to the obviously well-informed posters could do the trick.

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9 hours ago, Nigel Bunker said:

Supermarkets make a charge for "premium" shelf space. Not paying for this means you get put on the top or bottom shelf, not on the middle shelves where peoples eyes normally look. I know this happens on tinned and packet goods, and I believe something similar happens with magazines.

(Very good stuff clipped for space. DB)

Thanks Nigel.  Think It needed to be spelled out.  I was vaguely aware (from a previous life) that such things went on with WHS (which I think is very naughty as they are in a monopoly position) and it is disappointing to learn that the big four supermarkets do the same.  However, to learn that the magazine publishers are prepared to make this sacriifice shows how focussed they are on getting the hobby visible to the greatest number of people.  (Look at that; :clap2:to the mags!)

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18 hours ago, Sabrejet said:

Ah but no: I only listed the titles that I thought fitted into the 'parlous' description. I haven't looked at MM for many a year, but it used to be very good. Is it still?

Blimey you do buy a lot of Mags !!

 

As for MM, it comes under the good to browse in WH Smiths category for me, seems to have been updated recently and looks much more modern, but not enough Aircraft builds for me.

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On 18/08/2017 at 9:19 PM, Sabrejet said:

Yes, yes and yes! Makes me realise how bad some of them are.

 

On the subject of fees for authors, I do find that strange. For WW1 enthusiasts there is a small society - Cross and Cockade - which produces a quarterly magazine whose production quality would be the envy of most magazines you'd ever see on a newsstand. C&C's journal is globally respected for its well-researched and authoritative (and interesting!) articles. Photographic reproduction is market-leading despite the obvious fact that most of the photographs are 100+ years old. None are published across two pages and most are deliberately published as large as possible so that they convey the maximum of information. And all done on very impressive-quality paper and with a lot of colour content (side-views etc) too.

 

But I think the crux with C&C's magazine is that all articles as provided gratis by their authors (I have had two published and felt honoured to think that they were worthy of publication), and thus it attracts only authors whose main aim is to broadcast the products of their research and passion for WW1 aviation.

 

So I'd suggest that were a modelling magazine to pursue a similar line (i.e. no payment for articles other than the satisfaction of seeing your work made available to a wider audience), we might just find that only enthusiasts would submit, and thereby you'd likely have a magazine for enthusiasts rather than just funding those seeking the easiest way to a quick buck. Added to that, you'd save money on fees which could instead go into higher production values, page count etc.

 

And I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find many authors submitting yet more articles on Spitfire/Bf.109/F-18 etc.

 

Just an idea. 

Would you be prepared to go into your work this week and tell the boss- I'm going to work 100+ hours for you, you can make money off me and I'll do it for free. No- thought not. Why would you expect authors to be any different? I am one of these authors- I am an enthusiast also. I get some kits sent to me or different paints, but it is a lot of my own also. I spend hours away from my family, building, taking photos of every step, then sitting to write an article. I love doing it but I also paid for my work which helps ease the burden of the time spent. Are you for one second suggesting that because an author gets paid we don't put the same effort in? Poppycock. These are the only models I have time to build. When I attend shows these have my name next to them- I want them to be the best of my work. I used to post all my work here but I've moved away over the years, more to do with the actual hassle of uploading the photos, and to be honest I won't be in future due to threads like this. 

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2 hours ago, Alan Kelley said:

Would you be prepared to go into your work this week and tell the boss- I'm going to work 100+ hours for you, you can make money off me and I'll do it for free. No- thought not. Why would you expect authors to be any different? I am one of these authors- I am an enthusiast also. I get some kits sent to me or different paints, but it is a lot of my own also. I spend hours away from my family, building, taking photos or every step, then sitting to write an article. I love doing it but I also paid for my work which helps ease the burden of the time spent. Are you for one second suggesting that because an author gets paid we don't out the same effort in? Poppycock. These are the only models I have time to build. When I attend shows these have my name next to them- I want them to be the best of my work. I used to post all my work here but I've moved away over the years, more to do with the actual hassle of uploading the photos, and to be honest I won't be in future due to threads like this. 

Yes, what he said.  I've had some articles (which took somewhat longer than a weekend to write) published, and I admit it's gratifying to see your name in print.  Yes, I want every one to be the best it can, as my stuff goes to shows too.  In fact, I think I put more effort in to a model for publication, as a: it's going to be seen by the magazine buyers (and maybe dissected in threads such as this), and b: If I'm being paid, I want to feel I've earned it.

 

As to why most aircraft magazines contain predominantly military subjects, I tentatively suggest that simply reflects the plastic kit market, at least where aircraft are concerned.   Like John, I'd love to see some more inter-war civil stuff - how many DH (any variety) Moth kits are actually available?  But how well would they sell if they were?

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