Books or Magazines?

[Tomathee]

Hi folks, having a ponder after dropping another £4.75 on a magazine at lunchtime.

 

Do you guys go more for books or magazines?

 

I must have a decent pile of finished magazines (30+) and a few to catch up on, I used to buy around one a month, although I've slowed as similar subjects have started to pop up. I'm not loyal to a brand and my usual method of choosing is by the front cover highlights, I look out for at least two builds I'm interested in, and a quick flick through of those as I've noticed some of the headliners don't go past a few pages, and fairly often I leave empty handed if there's not enough of interest in any of the mags that month. The previews and all that sort of fluff don't really interest me as I don't need to spend the extra on new releases when there's such a wealth of older (cheaper) kits around, and it's 90% builds I'm interested in reading about. Every time I come out of the shop I think something along the lines of "for the price of a few magazines I could just get a book", with more fleshed out builds, less adverts and easier to locate once they go away onto a shelf or cupboard. So against the idea - a lot of the books I look at (using Amazon, never seen one in a shop) include a section for beginners. While I'm always on the lookout for new tips and ways to do things outside of through build threads, I don't need a few dozen pages telling me to buy sanding sticks and the other basics. Being a book doesn't necessarily equal a lot of content, many of those I looked at were around £20 and less than 200 pages, so comparing against magazines that seem to have around the 90 mark, even taking out the adverts I wonder if there's a great deal of difference. Taking a book with 5 builds, if one or two aren't of interest it's a decent chunk of waste paper, magazines with more builds in shorter form suffer less so.

 

Anyway, that's enough of my rainy Monday afternoon ramblings, just looking for other peoples approach. There's only so many different ways I can read about painting a tank green or brown and I'm always on the lookout for the cheapest/most efficient option of learning.

 

Thanks

[rayprit]

Hi - Their was a time I used to buy 4-5 magazines at a time, thats when they were cheap, but your doing the right things, no brand loyality.......I dont go by the cover as usually, the inspiration that gave you the insentive to buy it, may only be a 2-3 page article.  i tend to BROWSE in the shop at that very moment and assess whether its of use to me............I can now go 3-4 months without buying a mag which means at todays prices means I save about £20 and I can buy a book or two with more flesh on it..........I try to ovoid cheap book shops, such as "The Works" usually they are reprints on inferior paper and some of the photos are very, very blurred, so, I check out Ebay for an original.

 

If you want tips........tips on anything(not just to do with modelling)your friend is Youtube............you actually get to SEE how to carry out the action, not by one person, but many, many persons who think their method is quicker and easier than the previous person and you can try ALL the actions out and chose which you think suits your style, I learnt soldering, painting, airbrushing, white metal casting, resin casting, ................you name it, its on their, also, as an aside, learnt how to repair misted headlamps on a car, wallpapering ceilings, wiring a house, plumbing, carpentry....................................its a mine of invaluable information................just type in what your interested into the search bar and a mine of information unfolds in front of you - just to give you an idea...................I types in painting canopies and heres the result - Good Luck

 

 

 

[Max Headroom]

I stopped buying modelling magazines several years ago. Unless there is a specific reason for buying one, then it stays on the shelf. Most of my modelling inspiration comes from here. 

 

In the ‘good old days’ such magazines had lots of words (and cruddy b/w photos tho) and I felt I was getting value. Today, much of the written content amounts to product reviews and close-ups of models.

 

Meh.

 

Trevor 

[Tomathee]

Thanks guys, good to hear similar wavelengths. As said I've been cutting back as builds seem to re-appear, or they do the same article for different versions of the same model etc and you get different magazines picking up the same model at different months so its duplication to avoid. I agree YouTube is excellent and I subscribe to a few channels, and it's free of course and sometimes the comments on the videos are quite valuable. I'll stick with paper in some form as it's nice to read with breakfast etc, perhaps look around for some books to add. I've also had in mind to make a list or sheet of the magazines I've read so that I can find what I need, currently if I want to find articles of e.g. a ship build I have to flick through the contents of each one which is annoying, but that in itself is another task for the 'needs doing but I've several dozen things I'd rather do' list.

 

Cheers again 

[Giorgio N]

I also used to buy 3 magazines every months, those were  the days when UK publishers had IMHO reached the perfect mix of content, with some focusing more on builds, others on resources and others with news, in any case I was getting a lot of useful information of every type. There were also some foreign magazines, like the French Replic, that were absolutely stunning, giving the modellers ideas, teaching new techniques and supplying references like walkarounds and camo schemes.

Then, always IMHO, things started changing and today I rarely buy magazines. I have to say though that Scale Aircraft Modelling has in the last few years returned to be a very interesting publication and I buy it more often that I used to do. Mind, all my comments are based on my taste for aircraft kits, so I can't comment on the quality of publications dedicated to naval subjects or to those that cater for all types of kits.

Anyway, as a result, I'm spending way more money on books. Not that I didn't buy books before, but today I buy even more.

Now I should point out that most of my books are for reference, for example I may buy a book with a walkaround or one discussing camouflage schemes and of course books about the history and the technology of a certain aircraft. I generally don't buy books on modelling techniques. I bought a few when I was young but today I don't really feel like I need them. I have a few of the Osprey's "Building the XXX" series but only because I found them for a fiver or less.

The reason is not that I feel I'm too good to need learning new skills, I'm not that good at all ! The reason is that I feel that today the Internet gives way more information than I could ever find in a book. There are plenty of builds on the web, be it in discussion forums like this or in specific websites. And Rayprit is right, Youtube today offers a lot of step-by-step tutorials on pretty much everything (not only modelling related, I recently repaired a rifle following a youtube tutorial...).

As a ship builder unfortunately you will likely find less than what aircraft modellers can find, but I'm sure that there are sites specific for this kind of subjects.

Being in my late '40s I still love the printed page and  I agree that nothing beats having a magazine or book in front of me during lunch or on a train, still I now spend this time reading materials that can give me ideas for future models while leaving the "learning " to the time spent on the laptop

[spruecutter96]

Books win hands down, IMHO.

 

I used to buy magazines for one (or maybe two) article of particular interest, but then realised I was essentially paying several quid for just a few pages. Buy the right book and you can have dozens of pages of useful information. 

 

When you think of it in those terms, mags do not seem like a great buy in comparison. Having said that, when folks are selling off their old magazines for 20p a throw at model-shows, then I am more than happy to hoover them up. 

 

The Internet? Now, that's a whole new kettle of oysters...

 

Chris.