The Parlous State of the UK Modelling Magazine market

[Gerrardandrews]

Enjoyed reading all the above, very interesting.

 

I've bought thousands of magazine's since my first, Airfix, September 71, 15p, and became a hobby within a hobby, I truly believe, that model magazine's have helped the hobby a great deal, and gone from strength to strength.

 

I would think over the next few years, a few will fold, and I don't think we will see any new published to replace them,

I say this, as with the hobby, it reached its peak, and will level off, after all the hobby has grown for twenty years, so magazine out put will reflect this.

 

Few years back, we had some magazines turn in to catalogues of kits, with some badly made kits within, we know the culprits, and said magazine's have improved, so this doesn't happen now, or, not so much.

 

price wise, a magazine has been about the price of a packet of cigarettes, more or less, 15p in 71, got you a pack of twenty, £6.50, will do the same in 2017,

so price is about the same.

 

Best magazine now is Airfix, brilliant and so well put together, great everything, and has different and unusual projects within its pages.

 

I buy to many, as I have said, and my collection, is worth nothing to anyone else, but a coffee and a good model magazine read is priceless, and a good chill out from a stressful day at work.

 

Improvements, more Down to earth writing, maybe better detail about how the kit was made, and remember it's a fun hobby for relaxation 😊

[Des]

22 hours ago, Mike said:

I do wish people would stop using that tired, spurious argument "if you don't like the mag contents, then write some articles yourself". Not everyone wants to write for magazines, and even if you did produce articles you wanted to see, you'd still be no better off, cos who reads their own articles after they've been proof read? It's fatuous at best, disingenuous at worst.

 

As we have to my knowledge never met to dismiss my suggestion to anyone who is dissatisfied by current modelling magazine content to try writing for one as being  ‘silly, foolish, stupid, inane, nonsensical, childish, puerile, infantile, idiotic, brainless, mindless, vacuous, imbecilic, asinine, witless, empty-headed, hare-brained etc.’ at best or ‘dishonest, deceitful, underhand, duplicitous, double-dealing, two-faced, dissembling, insincere, false, lying, untruthful, mendacious and so on’ at worst while definitely in the current populist style of internet communication is rather telling.      If I had indeed intended to be fatuous or disingenuous rather than offering one solution to what many perceive to be a problem I would have been much more to the point.

 

However honour must be satisfied and I suggest rolled up aircraft modelling magazines at dawn and should I be late just start without me although I would suggest that any from your underwear drawer best be boil-washed first.

 

Having searched more than a few underwear drawers during my career I can testify to finding the illegal as hoped for along with the disgusting, the bizarre, the embarrassing and more often than not the merely mundane but never aircraft modelling magazines, one can only imagine the effect that they would have on the sniffer ferrets.

Edited August 20, 2017 by Des
change describe to dismiss

[Albert RN]

On 19/08/2017 at 1:27 PM, Dave Batt said:

 

I do not like being told that I must toe someone else's line in order to properly comply with the hobby's requirements.

 

 

Who is holding a gun to your head making you do that?

 

Modelling as a hobby always evolves, as the guys who used to carve 1/72 aircraft from wood will remember. You either move with it or stay in your comfort zone but no one makes you do either.

 

Edited August 20, 2017 by Albert RN
Yes

[junglierating]

Well further to my last I happened to take a look at SAM yesterday and waddya know an article about Sea king mk4 (a subject that I am fairly familiar with!) Anyway apparently it has orange crop RWR/ESM and the author managed to fit both pre mod and post mod maws sensors.....like make your mind up mate ...it's not as if it's a rarely written about aircraft.

Rest my case...who knows what other tripe is written

[Red Dot]

8 hours ago, Sabrejet said:

I suspect it's rather like the book publishing business: back in the day, publishers would pay authors a reasonable amount and/or royalties, and also fund the research/provision of photos etc. Most importantly, a proper editor was assigned and this person would vet the book proposal and also have a hand in ensuring that the manuscript made sense, was factual, pertinent to any accompanying photos and so on. That is my experience from writing six books. Similar for magazine articles of which I have lost count.

 

However my recent experience is that some (maybe not all) book publishers now expect the author to partially-fund their own books, or be given numerous copies instead of payment. This change also places less responsibility on the publisher, who in the past put its weight and faith behind the author, based on a proper analysis of the worth of the proposal and its likelihood of making a return on investment.

 

The recent move towards the author shouldering more of the financial burden has meant that publishers seem less bothered about whether a book is actually researched, written and put together with any real effort. In fact in many cases it has led (in my experience) to books which have been 100% plagiarised from the internet with maybe 75% of the photo coverage coming from the same place. 'Extravagances' such as editors and proof-readers have likewise been thinned down. As a result these publishers pander more to the 'vanity publishing' author who just wants their name in print than those who have done proper research and would like their work treated with respect. Of course there are authors in both camps, and I have been tempted by the lure of a quick buck (I was asked to write a book on the F-84 with an advance of £2000 but decided that I didn't really know anything about the F-84 and so declined the offer. But it was tempting). First-time authors are often tempted by the 'publish at all costs' route and it's sad when good books like that are spoiled by poor editing, photo coverage, reproduction etc. I also have experience of one of my books being considered as "...another plagiarised work", because the publisher involved was seen by enthusiasts as a vendor of production-line publications (which often included plagiarised errors) and which offered nothing new - and I had been tarred with the same brush.

 

The same I suspect exists with modelling magazines: the odd great article amid yet more hackneyed builds with lots of pretty pictures. It's certainly true that poor editing (for me) often spoils a good article. The only thing I don't understand - getting back to Calum's comment above - is how these magazines seem to pay their authors and still stay in business. It seems to go against the book publishing business model.

 

In the meantime my criteria for getting my stuff published is simple - will I be happy with the result? If the answer is 'yes' then I don't care if I get paid or not. But it's a complex thought process for many and I can see why novice authors would just want to see their work out there in the public domain.

 

For now, BM seems a far better resource than most magazines, but I can't read it in the bath!

You can if you have a tablet or laptop!

[Sabrejet]

5 minutes ago, Red Dot said:

You can if you have a tablet or laptop!

How do they stand up to a good dunking when I inevitably fall asleep though?? 

[Dave Batt]

3 hours ago, Albert RN said:

Who is holding a gun to your head making you do that?

 

Modelling as a hobby always evolves, as the guys who used to carve 1/72 aircraft from wood will remember. You either move with it or stay in your comfort zone but no one makes you do either.

 

Who said anything about guns being held?  However, we might debate the use of the "Modern Gulag" in today's modelling, and whether or not modellers should be obliged to stand to one side as they see their hobby driven in unwanted directions.

[John Aero]

The irony of this thread, is that the subject (Model magazines) is being debated in an entirely different media and incidentally the one that most threatens their existence.  

 

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).

 

Both of these mags, which I have bought since 'Pontius (Pilate) was a rear gunner' and they are now not giving me much satisfaction as they are full of gloss and no great content of value, unlike the earlier issues. I still buy other stuff off the shelf when it interests me and I'm a member of Air Britain (Historians) and until recently Cross and Cockade.

 

As a retired former manufacturer I have amassed a large library of books, magazines and drawings, some of which (reflecting my own core interests) are fairly exotic. All of this was essential to my acquiring a depth of aviation knowledge. Could I have garnered this knowledge from the internet?  No way. it's got a long way to go yet. The internet only stores information, both good and bad, it doesn't make it or authenticate it. The contributors and their core sources such as first hand experience and their repositories are the fount of this information. I can only share my library because I built it up in the first place .

 

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.  Feed back on the Internet is instant!  Feed back to magazines is glacial (if readers bother) 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. The glossy catalogue format was started by one and then copied by others so editors must have thought it had some merit. Oh and don't get me started  on the accuracy or otherwise of drawings in magazines.

 

Yes, the hobby has evolved and the magazines reflect just that.  The scene has changed with the difference between mainstream products and those from the smaller companies becoming blurred and hand crafted conversions a thing of the past. You now have add on's galore of which I claim to have played some small part.

 

I started in the 'carve from balsa days' and at least this taught me the hand and eye skills and the subtleties of shape. Now the designer works with a 3 D cad program and apart from the touches on the keyboard the finished product might well appear almost totally untouched by human hand. If the base information is wrong then the model is wrong. Even if a real plane in a museum is scanned, if the designers don't know that it might have the wrong tail cone fitted or the under-carriage legs were not at the correct pressure when scanned, the model will be wrong. The future modeller will expect the skill to be built into the model and the seat belts to be pre painted.

 

John

 

Part of my library.

 

 

 

 

 

[Panzer Vor!!!]

One of the problem,s today is with falling readership and loss of revenue the magazines have looked elsewhere for income

You can,t bump up advertising without scaring off  advertisers 

But on way is sponsored  features

Company pay for a article to  featured hence Mig products, Takom kits built and painted  

Weather these type of articles fulfill what the readers want is debatable  looking at this thread the answer is still no 

[rayprit]

Seems many of these magazines, if not all cannot see the wood for the trees?  Many subscribers and readers are voting with their wallet and keeping it closed, i think the only buyers of these mags must be new modellers who no no better and think the magazines will have the answers.  as many of these glossy mags lose more and more readers, so they will throw open the pages of the magazines to advertisers and manufacturer, turning into one of many, many catalogues lacking content but only offers from other parties.

 

As an after thought, browsing through old dusty black and white magazines in my collection, how many of todays magazines have readers letters or modellers asking for advice?

 

Also as pointed out by john Aero, as the internet continues to improve and more information is becoming available, magazines will have to think hard and fast about keeping customers................with the advent of free newspapers, internet, a few established newspapers went to the wall and ceased publication.............same things happening here.

 

I have reams of reference material for just about most things that I am interested in, BUT when I get around to building it, the first thing I do is browse the internet for a day or so gleeming as much info as possible abaout said subject..........only to find out during or after the build, I have said information in my own reference material in my stash or libruary and its possible more accurate.............I find I look to the internet first then magazines afterwards

[Eric Mc]

I still buy most of the aviation model magazines. Sometimes I wonder why but then I realise they are really handy when sitting on the loo.

 

I do recognise that they have changed over the decades. I actually remember when there were no specific scale aircraft model magazines. Both Airfix Magazine and Scale Models covered most genres. Scale Aircraft Modelling (1978) was the firs scale aircraft model only magazine as far as I know.

 

At the moment we have four (Scale Aircraft Modelling, Scale Aviation Modelling, Model Aircraft Monthly and Model Airplane Monthly. I'm always surprised that the current market can support four titles - but for the moment anyway, they seem to be surviving.

[Red Dot]

11 hours ago, rayprit said:

I have reams of reference material for just about most things that I am interested in, BUT when I get around to building it, the first thing I do is browse the internet for a day or so gleeming as much info as possible abaout said subject..........only to find out during or after the build, I have said information in my own reference material in my stash or libruary and its possible more accurate.............I find I look to the internet first then magazines afterwards

how very true!

[junglierating]

Hmm. Well looking at this thread it's all very negative and that includes my earlier input.

So looking at stuff from the positive perspective.....well there are more magazines not perhaps of the quality of  previous years....maybe tastes have changed and I am not privy to sells figures so I no idea how popular they are but if you go to the UKs biggest supermarket well they are all there and that can be only a good thing for the hobby.

As for adverts well necessary evil just look at what you can buy these days......stuff you couldn't even dream off in days past. 

So I think the hobby is in a better place....whether young people are joining in....I guess they must be else magazines and the explosion in model companies wouldnt happen.

The airfix brand is still on the high street (what's left of it) and is the name for model kits....at least in the UK.

That said still miss the old airfix,scale models and SAM....but things move on.

 

 

[Marvel Onkey]

22 hours ago, spruecutter96 said:

After reading most of them, it struck me just how much repetition goes on. There were some examples of the same magazine printed a multi-page build article on the latest Tamiya/Hasegawa/Revell "headline" kit release and then they would do a VERY similar article about the same kit in different markings maybe a year later. 

This is why I stopped buying magazines; once upon a time I was an avid golfer and subscribed to Today's Golfer and Golf Monthly; after a few years I realized that most of the articles in the most recent issues were re-treads of things I'd read before; at that point I cancelled my subscriptions.

 

I've only bought an occasional magazine in any genre since- usually when I've forgotten to bring a book to read on the train or very occasionally when there is a specific article I really want to read and keep.

 

As for modelling magazines, whenever I pick one up I end up putting it back on the shelf on the grounds that all of the information in it is probably available for free via the internet.

 

 

[73north]

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

Edited August 21, 2017 by 73north

[Des]

4 hours ago, junglierating said:

Hmm. Well looking at this thread it's all very negative .................  That said still miss the old airfix,scale models and SAM....but things move on.

 

 

The Internet negative !!!!   .......... surely that must be fake news !!!!     But unfortunately it does provide a platform for a perhaps particularly British inclination to denigrate.

 

But joking apart you did identify what lies at the root of the print/digital dichotomy expressed by many here ...... nostalgia.

 

Back in 1971 while training as one of Her Majesty's Aerial Assassins (Tuesday evenings and one-weekend a month only) I used to travel by train regularly to courses held at the other Troop locations around the country and towards the end of the year to Aldershot to undergo P Company.      Most of these journeys seemed to coincide with the publication date of the latest Scale Models which I picked up at John Menzies in Waverley Station in Edinburgh and which over the second half of that year published a series of articles on the F-4 Phantom, initially the UK versions and later USN and USMC and they were to me then at least groundbreaking stuff.   

 

However looking back over them this morning I feel that they would not honestly be considered so by many today - the photographs were small and all in black and white, the text is pretty average , the drawings are OK but not great, the US parts at least heavily promote Microdecals and the modelling is based on the  Airfix and Revell kits of the day with all their shortcomings (albeit with advice on how to improve them).     The major difference however was that back then it was all new,  aviation and modelling imagery was only available in print and both newsagents and bookshops back then were a pale shadow of what they are today hence my having to source Scale Models thirty miles from my home town and additionally there were far fewer publications actually available for them not to stock so anything was an improvement on nothing.     Imported modelling materials were not always that easily found and aftermarket decals even less so and in any case mail order was a pain in the neck involving letters, cheques or postal orders and only worked if items were actually still in stock between the advert being sent to the printers and the magazine hitting the shelves.

 

Today we are flooded perhaps even overwhelmed with and can with the click of a mouse source new products, new ideas and new information from around the world although to be honest there is far more recycled dross on the internet than there could physically possibly be in print and so we protect ourselves by looking back to a supposed idyllic 'Golden Age' when all was well with the world and everything was better although Wagon Wheels really were bigger and don't get me started on Curly Wurlies.

 

Modelling Magazines are not in reality any worse than they were and just like so many actually important parts of our lives are just a bit different from what they used to be , knew that the OU stuff would come in useful one day!

Edited August 21, 2017 by Des
moved and and and an are , more or less?

[M1ks]

(Sigh)

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

 

[rayprit]

9 minutes ago, M1ks said:

(Sigh)

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

 

Nostalgia is expensive

[Seahawk]

15 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

At the moment we have four (Scale Aircraft Modelling, Scale Aviation Modelling, Model Aircraft Monthly and Model Airplane Monthly. I'm always surprised that the current market can support four titles - but for the moment anyway, they seem to be surviving.

Which takes us back to Graham Boak's point: if there's room for 4 mediocre magazines to exist alongside each other, the business is not in a parlous state, in terms of "being in imminent danger of collapse".  Lamentable, maybe.

[armored76]

If we are going to summarize all that has been said so far what would be the key points to "make magazines great again"? I picked up the following:

• less repetition
• better researched builds/articles
• less grammar and spelling errors
• larger images; less and larger text
• more weight on building than on painting the subject at hand

Have I missed anything?

Let's filter out the constructive feedback from all of the above in case editors are reading. Any one fancy filling in the list with more?

[John Aero]

Reading through some of the other posts, it struck me that perhaps modern modelling magazines have developed into colour catalogs because of the huge amount of stuff churned out by the international marketplace in recent times and it's an easy way of filling pages. A lot of modellers actually don't bother with the net. I have often asked customers "do you go on Britmodeller" (for instance) and an amazing number, and not always seniors, admitted to not using the online model sites. 

 

Nostalgia, well at one time the only serious real players in the modelling game were the UK and the USA, with Japan slowly claiming the quality ground, again reflected in the mags of the time. There was also becoming plenty to write about as new small companies gave us more diverse models and conversions by using simpler manufacturing methods such as Vacuforming and then an accessory market for the more detailed hard to make bits. These new ideas needed to be disseminated and people hungry for different models, and skills, bought the magazines 'how to do' articles.   

 

This was until someone in Berlin took the bung out of the bottle and released the latent manufacturing talent of eastern Europe. Well the Genie grasped new technology by the bells and it proliferated in countries where they still produced engineers, We in the meantime had changed to 'service industries' and our early talent of the vacform era such as Gordon Sutcliffe, Gordon Stevens and Joe Chubbock had sadly started to follow Bilbo Baggins to join the Elves across the Western sea.

 

Initially the newbies made the mistake of producing little known (to most folks) indigenous aeroplanes but free of the Red gripper they soon found that western aircraft and particularly WW.II made money... But they eventually gave us the first accurate Spitfire and even the cartoons in my latest magazine copy!

 

Nostalgia, is also Black and White.  For the first seventy odd years of aviation photos are gray-scale but it seems that magazines layout editors now have to sell "impact" and not clear history, so why do they have to place a black text on a huge gray-scale photo, making the text hard to read and the photo pointless. Colour printing is now cheaper but why over use it. Yes colour profiles (providing they are accurate) are much better than the old Letraset cross hatching profiles of the late Mike Keep, who did a great job with the techniques of the time.  I do personally dislike garish over coloured layouts.  Aeroplane for a time had a female art editor (memo to thought police, gender mentioned for historical accuracy) who tried to flood the magazine 'with arty farty' touches. Why it's only read by boring anoraks like me.

 

Perhaps the magazines are produced by bright young things who forget that they're mainly bought by dim sighted older people and not everyone has a fortune to spend on their hobby or they might want something that doesn't carry weapons.

 

John

 

 

[TheBaron]

On 18/08/2017 at 7:22 PM, Darby said:

used to buy Sea Angler many years ago but now its just 'Catch early cod/know your cod rigs/catch bigger cod/ know your cod baits/catch winter cod/catch late cod. For the other 6mnths of the year substitute the word cod for bass.

I dropped reading it years ago for similar reasons Darby. Too many articles on beefy geezers competing to see who could throw the biggest lump of bait out from the English shoreline in the hope of hitting France.

 

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

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.

I'm not pretending to the slightest expertise in magazine publishing but have found myself largely uninterested in what I see presented in most current modelling magazines.

 

The WWW has hugely widened public access to material, the distribution of which used to be controlled by commercial publishing alone, not least of which is being able to discuss matters directly with each other on forums like this rather than the letters page of a magazine. Most of my modelling knowledge has in fact been acquired from friends here and elsewhere on the web, not from magazines at all.

 

As you mention Sabrejet, there is still a place for well-informed and thoughtfully produced material intended for a specialist audience as a viable publishing model, but in my own experience as a one-time reader of many magazines (across a range of areas, not just modelling) generalist publications seem frequently bland and shallow in prioritizing advertiser-friendly copy: I rarely buy such magazines of any kind now, for these very reasons.

 

That's not the same as looking back nostalgically at some kind of illusory 'golden age': due to technology there is, thankfully, far more information to be had nowadays than used to be controlled by commercial publishing alone, simply that when measured against the extent of contemporary options, magazines (for me, and as others have noted) constantly recycle too much and at the same level to be of much lasting value to me personally.(author's italics )

 

John's comment is really interesting:

Quote

Reading through some of the other posts, it struck me that perhaps modern modelling magazines have developed into colour catalogs because of the huge amount of stuff churned out by the international marketplace in recent

Does it not seem likely that modelling publishing - like so many other areas of society in terms of work and leisure activity - simply reflects back the dominant free-market neo-liberalism pervading everywhere (and is simply trying to remain/afloat in the midst of it)?

 

[Albert RN]

18 hours ago, Dave Batt said:

Who said anything about guns being held?  However, we might debate the use of the "Modern Gulag" in today's modelling, and whether or not modellers should be obliged to stand to one side as they see their hobby driven in unwanted directions.

 

"I do not like being told that I must toe someone else's line in order to comply" which implied you were forcibly being coerced, which you clearly aren't, that's just overwrought hyperbole.

 

That's since been topped with "stand by and see their hobby driven in unwanted directions."

 

Unwanted directions by whom? I wasn't aware there is a "proper" direction modelling should be heading.

[Dave Fleming]

I think you have to go to what Jonathan Mock said in a recent Op ED piece in MAI:

 

" "frankly, no one should really care how people are making models, so long as they *are* making models." "

[Sabrejet]

3 hours ago, Seahawk said:

Which takes us back to Graham Boak's point: if there's room for 4 mediocre magazines to exist alongside each other, the business is not in a parlous state, in terms of "being in imminent danger of collapse".  Lamentable, maybe.

Four? I may have missed a few but the following 9 UK-based/available model magazines (some aviation, some mixed and some AFV-focused) all suffer from the issues I mentioned in previous posts:

Model Airplane International

Model Military Magazine

Tamiya Model Magazine

Military Modelcraft International Magazine

Scale Aircraft Modelling Magazine

Scale Aviation Modeller

Military Illustrated Modeller Magazine

Meng Air/Meng AFV Modeller

 

And I was glowing in my praise of the current Airfix magazine!!

 

I haven't bought a copy of FSM for some time but used to subscribe and liked it.

Edited August 21, 2017 by Sabrejet