When can we expect to see issue 226

[iangilly]

6 months is a very long time between issues. Might want to think about becoming a quarterly magazine.

[BIRDMAN1]

Why is it hobby shops, model round up, iceman etc get the magazine for resale before subscribers.?

226 is out, they have  it.. I as a subscriber do not.

Why have a subscription  when you can go to these sources, and get the magazine faster..

Asking  for a friend  and myself 

 

[sfhess]

Buy a copy at the LHS.  For sure your subscription copy will arrive in a day or two.

 

[tim boyd]

On 3/22/2025 at 1:37 PM, BIRDMAN1 said:

Why is it hobby shops, model round up, iceman etc get the magazine for resale before subscribers.?

226 is out, they have  it.. I as a subscriber do not.

Why have a subscription  when you can go to these sources, and get the magazine faster..

Asking  for a friend  and myself 

 

As some of you already know, I have been freelancing auto magazine stories for what...nearly 50 years now.  (Can that really be ???)  Even though I have never been an employee of the publishing houses I worked with, a number of them brought me under the fold, so to speak, and shared with me some of the challenges faced by the magazine publishing businesses.   The question that Wayne poses here is one that those magazine publishers have faced for decades, and I don't really know that it has ever been fully resolved.

Basically, when a magazine comes off the press at the printing house, it gets shipped to the post office for routing to subscribers, and to the retail magazine distribution network at the same time.  Subscriber copies go into the US mail system, which does not give top priority to delivering magazines to subscribers, which results in widely divergent delivery dates at homes across the U.S.  For magazines to have top priority, the magazine publisher would have to pay first class mail postage, and the cost of the subscription would be way higher (in the pre-Kalmbach days Scale Auto Enthusiast offered a first class mail option, IIRC it was about three times the price of regular subscription, but copies were always received before the mag appeared for sale on the newsstand or hobby store).  To try to partly address the issue, some magazines (including Fine Scale Modeler) include an embargo date with copies supplied to retailers, wherein the magazines are not to be sold until a date that approximates when subscribers might get their copies, but experience suggests that it is widely disregarded, including at major retailers like Barnes and Noble.  So, the problem continues.  Not to mention that it seems to me that over the last few months, mail deliveries of all types seem to be experiencing a lot more delays than they did in the past.  (Dave A. or other mods, weigh in here if I've mentioned anything that is different from the MCM experience...) 

Bottom line?  If you want to be assured of getting your magazine regularly and not having to watch the newsstand to get a copy before it sells out, and you want a lower price overall, a subscription is the better way to go but with the tradeoff that there may be instances where the most current issue shows up on the newsstand before you get your copy in the mail.  Tradeoffs, tradeoffs, just like life in general, I guess.

Thanks for posing the question, Wayne, and on a personal note, great to hear that you are still involved in the hobby after all these years!   Cheers...TIM 

Edited March 26 by tim boyd

[rrb124@sbcglobal.net]

Thanks for this information. Working in publishing must be maddening. I enjoy every hard copy magazine I receive. I probably subscribe to around 7 different magazines over a variety of subjects and I enjoy them all.

[Straightliner59]

On 3/23/2025 at 8:37 PM, sfhess said:

Buy a copy at the LHS.  For sure your subscription copy will arrive in a day or two.

 

Works every time! Even with SAE, back in the olden days!😄