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Do Modeling Mags still met our needs?

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Jo:
Each year about this time I get my renewal notice from Model Engineer and I start to question is the ?80 a year good value for money and should I really bother with renewing my subscription. I am not sure is it me or are the press not meeting our needs any more? Or as a result of forums like this one do I have unreasonable expectations of these publications?

At this point I should admit to owning 48 years of Model Engineer, all of Engineering in Miniature and 12 years of Live Steam. I gave up with Live steam in 2000'ish when they mucked up my subscription and I decided it was not worth the effort of sorting it out for and increasingly model locomotive biased publication. I regularly read through all of the years of ME and EIM from the first volume I own to date. Each time I find it useful but I find that the more recent years take less time to read as I have less interest in their content. Maybe it is the wealth of subjects in the early years, which has been lost as the various publishers looked to spin off more and more specialist publications.

Thoughts?

Jo

metalmad:
Totally agree Jo
in the modern mags, if you rip out the adds there is not a whole lot left. :facepalm:
Pete

steamer:
It's funny you say that Jo.   Model Engine Builder is going electronic only.....and I'm actually suprised I have not seen anything about that here....
The cost of doing business is far too high to publish as a magazine anymore.

I guess I welcome it.     Though I am very pleased with my latest HSM with the MacBeth engine in it, and the conclusion of the scraping series...good read!

I suppose paper will go the way of the dinosaur........but I do like it
I agree with you regarding Live Steam....what they did to that was a shame...and I cancelled my sub because of it.

I've let my ME and MEW subs lapse.....and at the moment it doesn't seem to bother me that much....

Dave

sbwhart:
Interesting ? Jo

I must admit that I find myself skimming through a lot of the articles in ME, as a lot of the stuff doesn't really interest me, at times I think they struggle to get enough content, hence the resurrection of LBSC builds, as good as LBSC design and articles are they are, of their time, and things have moved on.

I myself do contribute articles, something I do enjoy doing, even tough writing and spelling is a skill I have struggled with all my live, if it wasn't for computers with spell checkers etc I just couldn't do it. Which brings me to something that has been puzzling me, with the advent of computers supposedly making things that much easy-er, why are more people not contributing?, I'm sure quality and interest of magazine contents would increase if more of us contributed to them.

I started making models over 10 years ago now, having served an engineering apprenticeship the basic maching had no problems to me, but I did and still do come up against problems on how to do things that   that you only come up against in a model context. I've picked up countless tips and techniques by following forums like this, magazines and books and from model engineering friends. It is in this respect that I think that many of the mags are lacking. Quite a lot of the stuff is about show casing peoples work, how many times have you looked at some of the marvelous work that you see on display and ask yourself the ? how did they do that, where can I find out. If only some of those people could take the time to share some of their secrets.

I'll get of my hobby horse now.

Stew

b.lindsey:
I share the feeling as to Live Steam and though I have subscribed for at least 20 years, that is one I will not be renewing unless it changes drastically. In some ways we expect too much from these publications like Home Shop Machinist. Admittedly, they have to balance the wishes and interests of 20,000 plus subscribers...not an easy thing to do!  If I find one article or series that caters to my interests in each issue then to me it is worth it. The Bruce-MacBeth article is a good example. As to the amount of content submitted...at least in the case of HSM, I don't think that is a problem...they are about 2 years behind now. That however can be a turn off to prospective contributors as most of us have moved on to other projects in the interim between submission and publication, and there are now other, and often more timely ways to share with fellow hobbyists, such as forums, shows, and entrepreneurship via the internet.  It may well be that as the change to paperless magazines marches on that some of these issues can be improved upon...quicker turnaround, more content, wider variety. Even if that happens, I am sure not every article will be of interest, but hopefully there would be more to choose from, and possibly at less cost to the readership. The trick there will be getting advertisers on board and supporting digital media as fervently as they support print media. I suspect such changes are coming...and sooner rather than later. But in the meantime I will likely keep my subscription to HSM at least, if only to silence that small voice in my head that keeps saying..."If you don't you just might miss something GOOD!!"

Bill

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