SAMI, MAM, June & July issues

[TEXANTOMCAT]

If I might throw in me pennorth- I too for the reasons above won't be buying SAMI or MAM on principle any longer - SAMI in my opinion was very good - MAM had a lot of filler and some historic articles which sometimes seemed like edited WIKI entries. FSM is quirky and you never know what to expect with them - I do like their reviews which have pros and cons and are cleanly presented photograph wise. Meng AIR modeller has, in my opinion, the highest production values but has maybe only three or four builds (albeit usually of very high quality) and in my mind at least is a 'luxury' magazine at £7 a pop.

 

For build reviews I like Model Airplane in layout style and tone which has the balance right for them but has no where near the news that SAMI or SAM have (indeed their news/previews are a little 'filler' like)

 

AMW has fresh clean design in its favour and well photographed models with good historic content  IMHO.

 

I started buying SAM a few years ago and for want of a better expression it seems the most 'academic' of the lot with very well done historic articles etc - news section is about right too. If I may be so bold though its design is a little drab or 'washed out' - AMW, MA, MAM and SAMI are full of vibrant colours and normally good photos whereas SAM is a little dull and often the photos (which I grant often aren't taken in a studio like AMW) are on pale grey or blue backgrounds and are a little unclear. 

 

If I were SAM I'd have a design revamp and help snag all those disgruntled SAMI MAM subscribers!

 

I hope I'm not coming across as rude I dont mean to be - just my opinion!

 

I subscribe to AMW and MA but let my subs lapse for SAMI and MAM for obvious reasons- I usually buy FSM though its price increase from £3.75 to nearly £6 for what is quite a thin mag means I often give it a miss. MENG Air Modeller is an occasional treat and SAM I pick up at Smiths usually every month.

 

I'm a sucker for a freebee  for a new sub though...

 

TT

 

 

 

 

[Hardtarget]

Queston: Are Andy and Tim US still at MA Publications?

[Whofan]

In the middle of all this, AMW  hasn't appeared in the local Smiths (Kidderminster) when it should have (4th) or today, hopefully just a minor distribution glitch.

[Paul Thompson]

9 minutes ago, Whofan said:

In the middle of all this, AMW  hasn't appeared in the local Smiths (Kidderminster) when it should have (4th) or today, hopefully just a minor distribution glitch.

Well, at least you can rest assured they actually exist - my subscription copy came yesterday, and others have received it earlier.

 

Paul.

[Des]

7 hours ago, Whofan said:

In the middle of all this, AMW  hasn't appeared in the local Smiths (Kidderminster) when it should have (4th) or today, hopefully just a minor distribution glitch.

My set aside copies of AMW and Combat Aircraft , both with the 4th. as their intended issue date , have not turned up in my local newsagent yet and as of  half an hour ago the AMW slot in my local Tesco is still empty but with subscription issues arriving as mentioned above and both magazines having sent out their 'latest issue' email ads it would seem to be an unusual but not entirely unknown distribution hiccup.     Newsagent tells me that they now rarely get a magazine delivery on Saturdays and never on Mondays so might be early next week for me.

[christian Boehm]

8 hours ago, saxonrock said:

 

 

Out of the blue, I did receive May 2021 issues for both magazines, and in the last days, August/September 2021 for MAM.

 

 

 

 

hello Saxonrock ! hello Germany !

 

So I feel less alone as non british ! (just a joke folks !)

 

The quoted words depaint exactly my own experience in France

 

christian

[spruecutter96]

Am I the only person who thinks that modelling magazines represent pretty poor value for money, once you boil everything down? Let's look at what they tend to offer their readers....

 

A. 80 to 90 pages of content, with about 30-40% of the space take up by advertising. No-one would ever buy a book with this much advdertising and with good reason. I appreciate that (in theory at least), all the advertising revenue helps keeps the cover-price at a "reasonable" level, but more on that below.

 

B. Admittedly, modelling-magazines can present fairly decent "potted-histories" of an airframe's colour-schemes, but these are severely limited by the four or five page-per-article format used by most magazines. Why not buy a book, which will cover your favourite aircraft and have a MUCH more comprehensive overview of the subject.  Five pounds a magazine, against (maybe) £15 - £20 for a book covering the subject in much greater depth. Buy the book second-hand and make even more of a saving and have much better bangs-for-your-buck. Or, go internet surfing and get the required images virtually for free. 

 

C. Five pounds for a magazine? (OK, less if you have an annual subscription, but even so...). Or, £8.00 or 9.00 for the more "prestige" titles. Personally, I think the cover-price is getting beyond a joke now and is simply unjustifiable. 

 

D. Repitition. When you take a trawl through dozens of mags in one sitting, you start to see certain patterns emerging. Obviously, new kits will always make popular articles - folks want to know what they're like to build (all very understandable...). It's the secondary articles that get pretty repititive after a while. Looking through some back issues, I saw several articles about Spitfires of several different nations, which gave much the same advice on building each one.  It must be one hell of a job for editors to come up with new ideas for articles and I wonder if they get into a pattern of relying on "tried-and-tested" subjects as a result.  Personally, I would like to see a lot more "basic skills" articles in magazines - information is only really obvious once it has soaked into your brain. Modellers have individual skills-levels and enjoy the hobby at their own expertise thresholds. No-one knows it all (although some folks would like you to believe otherwise).  

 

What do you think?

 

Chris. 

[WarthogMKL]

2 hours ago, Hardtarget said:

Queston: Are Andy and Tim US still at MA Publications?

Nope none of the old team are. But we will all be at Telford where all will be revealed as a a Phoenix rises, but sneak peak on a new thread early next week I hope.

[Graham Boak]

Five pounds, or two cups of coffee, or a drink in London...  the price of a magazine doesn't seem too excessive.  Inflation just does your head in.  As for the actual value of the contents, well that depends upon what you are looking for, doesn't it?  The problem with the reviews is that folk may want to know what a kit is like to build, but do they ever find out?  Being critical has never been a strong point of kit builds in the magazine, with certain fairly rare exceptions.  Personally, I want to learn something new, something that will either add to my knowledge of aviation history or how accurately a kit represents that.  I've been down to just one magazine for several years now - and no it isn't SAMI.

[WarthogMKL]

Just now, Graham Boak said:

Five pounds, or two cups of coffee, or a drink in London...  the price of a magazine doesn't seem too excessive.  Inflation just does your head in.  As for the actual value of the contents, well that depends upon what you are looking for, doesn't it?  The problem with the reviews is that folk may want to know what a kit is like to build, but do they ever find out?  Being critical has never been a strong point of kit builds in the magazine, with certain fairly rare exceptions.  Personally, I want to learn something new, something that will either add to my knowledge of aviation history or how accurately a kit represents that.  I've been down to just one magazine for several years now - and no it isn't SAMI.

Worrying is the price of postage a 300Grm Parcel which is the average weight of a high quality magazine. Royal Mail UK is now £2 2nd Class in fact you can post two magazines for the same price. To USA £9 by economy and 8-10 weeks Delivery time, similar story with print cost. And if you want your title in WHS or Tesco you have to hire the shelf space and pay for unused titles to be returned to you.

As for reviews it is a fair point I always told my team at SAMi if you are going to slag off a kit try and get a positive in as well , nice box art LOL

I had a delivery from a foreign based manufacturer who as well as giving me £300 of kits also pad over £60 to ship it, do you think we would get any for next issue if all we did was slag them off, no matter how justified ? My point is I always ask for a balance and a fair assessment . Look at what some people have done with the 1/72 Airfix Heron a kit that due to its 1960s design is far from ideal but some can still produce a stunner from what is in the box.

 

[Graham Boak]

I think you are confusing critically balanced reviews with slagging them off.  But if it is justified, why not?  Perhaps you should think less of getting goodies and stop misleading your readers as to just what they might be paying their money for.  It might even do your magazine's reputation some good.  (To be fair, I did miss the "s" off the word magazine in my posting: I was not thinking of just one in particular.)

 

Some people produced stunners from lengths of wood and some wire.  I wouldn't suggest a magazine should start recommending that approach nowadays.

[spruecutter96]

3 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

The problem with the reviews is that folk may want to know what a kit is like to build, but do they ever find out?

I would think the probability of the review being genuinely critical will be inversely proportional to how much the UK distributors of that kit spend on advertising in a magazine per annum. It's not a good idea to bite the hand that feeds...

 

Chris.  

[Whofan]

4 hours ago, Des said:

My set aside copies of AMW and Combat Aircraft , both with the 4th. as their intended issue date , have turned up in my local newsagent yet and as of  half an hour ago the AMW slot in my local Tesco is still empty but with subscription issues arriving as mentioned above and both magazines having sent out their 'latest issue' email ads it would seem to be an unusual but not entirely unknown distribution hiccup.     Newsagent tells me that they now rarely get a magazine delivery on Saturdays and never on Mondays so might be early next week for me.

 

I was pretty sure it was a distribution hiccup, but am happy to wait till next thursday.

 

Cheers, 

 

John

[treker_ed]

When I worked in the News retail (RS Mccolls as it was - Mccolls as it is today!) Saturdays was just Newspapers, and the Sunday magazines. Never had any magazines published om a Monday. From conversations with staff in the local Smiths, it is still the same in that they do not receive any periodicals (which is what the industry name for monthly/weekly published magazine or other printed material (comic etc) is called) on a Monday. Tuesday to Friday. The vast majority (for some strange reason) being a Thursday!

 

With regards to AMW, I am a subscriber, and I happily received my copy last weekend - well in advance of the "on street" sale date. So they are available, just because they are not for sale on the high street yet, does not automatically mean there are any problems. This is what was meant at the beginning of this thread when it was stated about sticking to the facts and NOT jumping to conclusions. News Distribution is yet another industry that relies heavily on HGV drivers getting from printers to distributors, then to retail. I would often have (working at my branch back in the day) 20 or 30 large bundles of papers or magazines to deal with in a morning, multiply this by the number of retailers that they will have to deliver to, and all you can use is a HGV with either tote boxes or carry cages on board with everything crated up in a specific order ready to off load at each location!

[MikeC]

9 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

I think you are confusing critically balanced reviews with slagging them off.  But if it is justified, why not?  Perhaps you should think less of getting goodies and stop misleading your readers as to just what they might be paying their money for.  It might even do your magazine's reputation some good.  (To be fair, I did miss the "s" off the word magazine in my posting: I was not thinking of just one in particular.)

 

Some people produced stunners from lengths of wood and some wire.  I wouldn't suggest a magazine should start recommending that approach nowadays.

 

I'll declare an interest here, I was one of @WarthogMKL's team of writers at SAMI.  I can vouch for the fact that we were told:

12 hours ago, WarthogMKL said:

... if you are going to slag off a kit try and get a positive in as well ...

 

which when you think about it applies to many things in life such as staff appraisals, not just model kit or anything else reviews.  In my experience there is rarely a kit that is so bad there is nothing good at all to say about it.  I think we'd better leave that particular debate there, or this thread is going to divert into "You need some modelling skills" vs "Manufacturers should do better to give us Tamiya-P-38-standard fit." 

 

In my own articles I've tried to strike exactly the balance David specified - I hope I achieved that.  It goes without saying, of course, that any adverse comments had to be backed up with evidence: for example not just "There are mismatches between the instructions and plastic", but "There are mismatches between the instructions and plastic, for example in step 25 where the undercarriage door is shown as part A9 when it's actually B79". 

 

It's not about ensuring the editor is able to continue "getting goodies" as you so disparagingly call it - it's about realism and trying to be fair to both the kit and the reader.

 

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by MikeC

[Whofan]

6 hours ago, treker_ed said:

So they are available, just because they are not for sale on the high street yet, does not automatically mean there are any problems.

 

I know that I simply said it looks like a minor distribution glitch or hiccup, which to me doesn't sound like I think there are problems. I don't.

 

I think there's a minor distribution glitch, which means I should get the magazine next week. Not a problem.

[Hardtarget]

19 hours ago, WarthogMKL said:

Nope none of the old team are. But we will all be at Telford where all will be revealed as a a Phoenix rises, but sneak peak on a new thread early next week I hope.

 

How can MA/666 publish forwards/introductions by previous team members who are no longer current employees? It also just shows you how old the content is but they still pump it out as 'issues'.

 

I wont be pushing anymore for magazines, still owed June/July or say 2 issues on top of the additional 2 issues for the 'combined' issues, so this year we have been done 4 issues.

 

Look forward to what you will be revealing. Please issue the Mirage F1 book that was due in MAY! which i believe is Andy's work.

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

18 hours ago, spruecutter96 said:

I would think the probability of the review being genuinely critical will be inversely proportional to how much the UK distributors of that kit spend on advertising in a magazine per annum. It's not a good idea to bite the hand that feeds...

 

Chris.  

I can tell you straight-off that that isn't the case. You'd actually be surprised at just how few kits are sent by distributors for review anyway: there's an idea that working for model magazine results in piles of free kits stacking up across the modelling room floor, but it just isn't the case.

As others have hinted at - and to give you an example. At SAM we try to be fair, and it's possible to be critical without being savage. Most of the articles we produce at SAM concentrate on giving the reader articles about building and producing a finished model; rather than just reviewing per se. What sort of happens is that our contributors tend to work around, or through, problems rather than finding them earth-shatteringly fatal. We leave the latter type of hyperbole for social media! LOL

I hope this helps alleviate your concerns.

cheers


Jonners

 

[HartDeco]

1 hour ago, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

I can tell you straight-off that that isn't the case. You'd actually be surprised at just how few kits are sent by distributors for review anyway: there's an idea that working for model magazine results in piles of free kits stacking up across the modelling room floor, but it just isn't the case.

As others have hinted at - and to give you an example. At SAM we try to be fair, and it's possible to be critical without being savage. Most of the articles we produce at SAM concentrate on giving the reader articles about building and producing a finished model; rather than just reviewing per se. What sort of happens is that our contributors tend to work around, or through, problems rather than finding them earth-shatteringly fatal. We leave the latter type of hyperbole for social media! LOL

I hope this helps alleviate your concerns.

cheers


Jonners

 

I can confirm this as a contributor to SAM and other magazines. With over 40 articles done by now, I probably only received little over 5 kits to build.

 

René

[John B (Sc)]

Following up on the comments by MikeC and from Jon Kunac-Tabinor, as an occasional review and article contributor I was clearly told by editors to make constructive criticism when required and I have tried to do so whenever necessary,  If a kit fails badly, it should be called out as such, for everyone's benefit, manufacturers as well as modellers. That is all we can do.

 

At no time have any of the editors I worked with sought to change my writing to influence such critical comment.  My grammatical errors, yes...

 

I'd hope that my occasional blunders and sometimes deliberate (honestly!) changes of build order have helped a few readers, either with their purchase decisions or their own  builds. 

 

John B

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

 

 

On 11/2/2021 at 9:54 AM, Ade H said:

I summarised a sincerely held personal opinion, formed by reading most of the British (plus several foreign) modelling magazines on and off for the last few years, but if you think that it was "bandied around", you're not exactly encouraging me to "elucidate further" are you?

 

On 11/2/2021 at 10:20 AM, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

Then my apologies for an ill-considered turn of phrase - please do elucidate further.

Jonners

 

I'm genuinely interested in your opinion here, so please, please do feel free to comment further. You can send it to me in a PM if you feel unable to comment openly.

cheers

Jonners

[WarthogMKL]

And what I have been working on since I left

 

Same Production team no owners just us doing our thing,  on our own and better, come see us at Telford Hall one

 

https://www.facebook.com/phoenixscalepublications

 

More in News section

[Hardtarget]

17 minutes ago, WarthogMKL said:

And what I have been working on since I left

 

Same Production team no owners just us doing our thing,  on our own and better, come see us at Telford Hall one

 

https://www.facebook.com/phoenixscalepublications

 

More in News section

 

Dave,

 

Website not working as yet?

 

Look forward to see what you got planned.

 

Any idea when issues are avaliable via subscription and in shops?

[WarthogMKL]

8 minutes ago, Hardtarget said:

 

Dave,

 

Website not working as yet?

 

Look forward to see what you got planned.

 

Any idea when issues are avaliable via subscription and in shops?

Have started a new thread where all is explained. Website will go live either Friday or Monday. Will find out exactly on Tuesday I hope. Facebook is up now and will be updated all this week with some content TEASERS. What we can not show you is the high quality of the printing a paper used, we think it is the best in the market.

 

[Tony C]

On 08/11/2021 at 12:53, WarthogMKL said:

Have started a new thread where all is explained. Website will go live either Friday or Monday. Will find out exactly on Tuesday I hope. Facebook is up now and will be updated all this week with some content TEASERS. What we can not show you is the high quality of the printing a paper used, we think it is the best in the market.

 

 

Dave, please can I request that you don't purely reply on Facebook, there are some luddites here, including myself (whose more troglodyte than luddite) that don't use that format and I am always interested in supporting new ventures!

 

Good luck with the venture