Epublishing is gaining - while traditional publishing gets another nail in the coffin

Is that the swoosh of hands waving in the air, and the sounds of dancing feet, in NW Oregon?

MRH is on the wave.  Stay on it; we're with you.

And thanks so much.  What a blessing to all of us in the hobby. 

One of my favorite magazines is now an online only magazine Legendary Ford Magazine.

Makes sense to go to a digital form.  Up to the date information.  Even if published bi-monthly or even monthly, small tidbits of info can be posted on the website or even thru Facebook or Twitter.

Can't beat getting info in realtime.  It's like the Time magazine and Sports Illustrated magazine reporting the Super Bowl or Olympics in June, when in fact the event were in February.

Josh

In the late 1950's and early 1960's many were saying that trains would soon be a thing of the past.  The interstate highway system had put frieght on trucks on the road, and most railroads were still doing business exactly as they did in the 1800's.  A few railroads did die, but most were bought out or merged into the larger systems we see today, and they adapted to the new expectations of their customers for service.

Looking at the publishing business, it is obvious that the $5.00-$10.00 cover price of a printed magazine or book is not paying for much more than paper and distribution.  If a publisher can eliminate the printing and distribution costs by doing an e-publication, they can make money from the advertising and eliminate the paper, printing, and distribution costs.  If the current publishers don't wake up to the new paradigm, new publishers like MRH will run them out of the market place.

The other advantage is that paper mags take up a lot of space, and are hard to organize and access articles for future reference.  E-mags store easily on my computer, and if my hard drive gets full, they can easily be moved to a jump drive, cd or dvd, or an external hard drive.  If I need a technical or how to article, or even a blue print to model from, I can easily print out the part that I need and take it to the work bench.

So far most publishers are viewing the internet as a place to put extra content for subscribers as an adjunct to their main business.  If they don't realize that the internet is the "main business," they will be gone.

What I find absolutley amazing is that we are living in the midst of a huge shift in the way civilization communicates.  Decades or centuries from now, the turn of the millenium will be looked on in the same light as when paper was discovered and books began to be published, or even when languauge was first being written down thousands of years ago. We are in a new media and there is an new language being developed. Just try to read a teenagers e-mail or twitter, or whatever. Those short forms WILL become the new norm. I note that my sons, 12 and 15, print like they were in preschool, and being a formerly trained draftsman with disciplined printing skills, it drives me nuts. But they can keyboard the pants off of me, without looking at the keyboard. So the change is happening. My folks (of course a different generation) say the computer is not a good thing, that kids need to learn how to hold a pencil properly. I told her that thousands of years ago there was propbably a mother saying to her son that the new paper he was using was no good, and he should learn how to write with a chisel and a rock. My mom laughed. The times are a changing!

Steve    

I took a typing class in high school in 1963.  My biggest problem with a computer is that the keyboard is compressed to allow the extra keys located to the right of the standard keyboard.  I can type without looking a t a normal typewriter keyboard, but even after using a computer keyboard for at least 10 years, I still have to look at the keyboard to keep from hittinhg 2 keys at the same time.

Russ, I basically agree with you, but I think there's still some hurdles yet to a full-scale transition to epubs.

FACTORS TO STILL OVERCOME

First is the convenience factor of paper. I regularly Google for references to our magazine on other forums. Almost every thread in those other forums has several posts that go something like this:

"Nice idea, but I don't want to sit in front of a computer any longer than I have to. I still prefer a paper magazine I can browse in my easy chair or take into the layout room. You can count me out ..."

In other words, free isn't compelling enough for me to endure the discomfort of reading at my computer.

Then there's what I call the luddite factor - this means readers and publishers who aren't "into" computers and the internet. While this group is shrinking every year, they are not an insignificant part of the market.

THE ANSWERS 

The answer to the convenience factor is about to spring upon us as Apple and Google enter the personal media reader market. Amazon's Kindle has been enjoying near total domination of what so far is a niche market of early adopters. MRH is also still constrained to mostly the "early adopters" - the intersection of model railroaders and those in the population who "live" on the internet.

The answer to the luddite factor is time. I look at what happened in the music industry with the iPod as my guide for what's about to overtake the paper publishing business.

THE IPOD EXAMPLE

Apple introduced the iPod in October of 2001. For the first time, the portable music player was small and convenient - and when coupled with iTunes, getting music to your iPod was a cinch - and highly affodable at 99 cents a song.

Prior to the iPod and iTunes, people bought music on CDs and CD music stores dotted the landscape (LPs were long gone, and cassette tapes were on the way out). Five years later, the iPod and iTunes had completely revolutionized how people get music - and CDs dwindled to a distant second. CD stores have likewise dwindled to a shadow of their former self. Today the recording companies *first* deal with their iTunes distribution, then they think about CD distribution as "oh yes, and let's not forget CDs".

THE PRINT TRANSITION WILL BE SLOWER

The same thing's about to happen to print publishing - however, I think it's not going to happen as fast. Paper printing is everywhere and touches everything. The music business was much more self-contained.

The visual element of print publishing adds lots of extra complexity to the transition to all-electronic, so I expect it's going to take roughly twice as long (nearly a decade) for all electronic to become the near-total-replacement for paper.

And like the way TV has not replaced radio, epublishing will not replace paper. Both will co-exist, but professionally produced publications (books, magazines, newspapers) will be almost completely epublished. Paper will be seen as something you do locally as a quick-and-dirty option (as in a flee market flyer), or to supplement an epub. If you need to publish more than a page or two, you'll target epublishing.

Well for once it seems I am riding the leading edge as I follow MRH into the future.

I rather enjoy reading MRH on the computer.  I just feel sorry for those who refuse to read it because it's not printed on low grade paper.  They obviously don't realize what they are msising or are just too darn stubborn to embrace something great that's coming as sure as tomorrow is, regardless of what they do today.

And another bonus of reading 'online' are the links to the various manufacturers / advertisers etc. No more having to take the magazine to the computer and typing the address in!

Brian

As nice as the e-stuff is, there is one aspect that it can't replace and that is the archival value of magazines. It would take a lot of disk space to hold as many years of magazines that most of us keep under the layout. I often refer to MR's and RMC's of the 40's and 50's for construction projects.

I think there is room for both types of media and don't want to root for the demise of the paper stuff. Both exist to enhance our collective progress as model railroaders.

If my calculaions are correct, you can store 7,000 magazines on a typical 700 MB diskette based on the last issue of MRH. That's 194 years of monthly publications from three different magazines! For now paper will co-exist with e-files, but with lap tops becoming more the norm as well, blueprints, instructions, guides, whatever, are all the more portable by the work bench and layout. Not in our time, but it is coming.

Steve