There are still

lots of moaners out there who won't let facts stand in the way of their worldview, though.  I find it irritating at best to read or listen to the dooms dayers talk about the decline of the model railroad hobby in spite of the growth in technology and overall increase in quality of the products available.  I hope you continue to put clear facts out there to demonstrate this hobby isn't doing too bad after all and certainly MRH is one of the leaders in this new era.

Paper magazines, books

I have always loved the feeling of holding a magazine, newspaper or book. The turning of the page or folding of the paper created it's own enjoyment. However, I am now 100% hooked on using my laptop or iPad for reading. 

Being able to bring my library with me where ever I might be is very comforting. Walls that had book shelves can now have train layouts! 

I was one of those people who went screaming and shouting into the digital world, and now wonder what in the world I was thinking. 

Gary

I miss MR, since I stopped

I miss MR, since I stopped buying it a couple of years ago. I just don't want paper magazines cluttering up my house anymore. it is the same with books, I haven't bought a physical book in a few years. I buy all my books and magazines electronically and carry my entire collection around with me on a kindle.

I spoke to Neil Besougloff at the MR booth at the Sacramento national train show this year about this exact thing.

He assured me that within 2 years MR would be available as a digital subscription.

Model Railroading is Not Declining! But It IS Evolving

Thanks, Joe, for this clearheaded and data-driven discussion about the future of media that supports the model railroad hobby.  

Your observations support my own view that model railroading is evolving and transforming--but it's not declining. 

I think there will always be a place for the venerable print magazines like Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman, which arguably have done more than any other institution to elevate and publicize our hobby over the past 60 or 70 years.  But fading dominance of the baby boom and silent generation demographics in our hobby--not the most enthusiastic adopters of Web 2.0 or even the early internet--means that model railroaders will be increasingly receptive to MRH and various other online hobby media and communities. The readership/circulation numbers you cite illustrate this shift. What remains to be seen is how or if our legacy model railroad magazines adapt.

The 'woe is model railroading' lamentations that cite those declining print magazine readership/circulation numbers are echoed even louder when the discussion shifts to the state of hobby retailing and manufacturing. Hobby shops are indeed closing, making it harder and harder to run out for that bottle of Floquil or packet of Kadees to finish off a project. And production runs of models seem to be shorter and more expensive. But never have we model railroaders had it so good in terms of product quality and selection.  In addition, eBay and online communities and retailers have further expanded the purchasing options for model railroaders.  Finding a rare or out of production model has never been easier. But shopping for model railroad supplies is different than five, ten, or 20 years ago.

Things in our hobby are changing. Not all of it is good--recall the fooferaw that broke out when a respected online reviewer pointed out inaccuracies on one of industry giant Athearn's upcoming releases earlier this year. But I am glad I am building my layout now, rather than any other time, and I am grateful for the best range of products, easily accessible modeling information, and community resources I have ever been offered.

Meanwhile, let me know how I can help out with the (r)evolution!

Stephen Lee / leestepr@gmail.com / http://updunesjunction.blogspot.com/

I've got to say

that I am among those leading to the decline of print.  I was an MR subscriber for about 20 years.  So much of the magazine was either oriented around beginning modelers or contained articles that were rehashes of the same articles from about 5-8 years ago that it ceased to be relevant to me.  Take that along with the introduction of MRH and the increasing cost of the subscription and I decided that I could better use those funds.

That being said I do sympathize with the print mags.  Theirs is a difficult situation right now.  But I also think that they brought some of this on themselves.  Even the online MR content is pretty much pay to play.  With so much free content out there why should I pony up for that?  My feeling is that they are unwilling to adapt their business model to current realities.

It would be interesting to hear from someone in the print industry to let us know if all this pontification is on the mark or not.  I personally hope the print media survives.  They have their work cut out for them.

I don't see paper going away

I must add that I don't see paper going away - just like TV didn't eliminate radio and DVDs have not eliminated movie theaters.

However, I dare say radio isn't what it was before the invention of TV, and paper publishing will never be what it was before the invention of digital publishing.

Plus I see the green movement and economics being a large factor. Killing trees, pouring ink-laden publication trash into lad fills, and filling the air with hydrocarbons from shipping paper publications all over the planet isn't doing the environment any good. And it's certainly not as affordable as publishing digitally, and it's not getting any cheaper.

In fact, it's the economics of digital publishing that helps make MRH free.

Yes, paper publishing will still be around for the foreseeable future, but most significant works with a large geographic distribution will be digital.

Paperless = green?

Now I know all the greenie meanies would make every argument in the world against "killing trees."  However...

I'm coming around to this idea that paper and indeed wood products is in actuality one of the greenest resources that we have available to us.

Think about this: computers may be nice, and ink may be "hazardous," but compare this to the heavy metals that are in many computer components.  Look at the manufacturing methods of electronics - and you see systems which are nasty in and of themselves.  And the mining for these metals, well, logging may remove the forest,but mining removes the forest AND THEN removes the mountain along with 1000 or 2000 or more feet of dirt Under the mountain.

Now our forested areas in the midwest and the south have the water resources necessary to grow large crops of trees and very quickly on 10, 20, 30 year cycles.  Add in any other crop we discover from which we can make paper, and well, I do not believe going against paper is the answer - we just have to get better at growing it, managing those trees, and then making it!

I will further say that "paperless" has been Brilliant for really only one thing in my job: LOSING STUFF!!!

And I do find it a bit ironic how the tree people are all for renewable ethanol for fuel, but have blinders on when it comes to the renewable resource that is timber...

I think the print media will

I think the print media will slowly go away as the digital age continues to evolve. I am not sure the comparison of radio and television works very well. They are different mediums. I think the comparison of film photography and digital photography is a better example. Digital photography has taken over the world of photo taking. Kodachrome, my favorite film, is long gone and now commercial photography is digitally. 

Borders books went belly up because they made the mistake of selling the digital rights for books to Amazon. More books are sold digitally than printed. 

I feel Model Railroader has not kept up with the explosion of the digital world and that is a mistake that may cost them dearly.

The information age has provided us with great information at only the cost of our internet connection. We have come to expect this aspect. In my humble opinion MRH is leading the way in the digital age and the other publications are struggling to try and catch up.

Gary

Paper vs digital not quite the same as film vs digital

Gary:

While the film vs digital analogy is interesting, I don't think the dynamics are quite the same. Film is a messy, annoying, and time-consuming recording medium - while paper is a fast, easy, and convenient recording medium.

The problems with paper are most visible for large full-color publications that need a wide distribution. Cost and complexity mount fast. Digital neatly solves most of the full-color / wide distribution cost and logistic problems by making it very affordable, easy, and fast to distribute.

But it's hard to beat paper for getting something recorded that fits on just a few pages and doesn't need color. That's why paper won't go away like film has as a recording medium.

No Batteries Required...

The number one reason paper will never go away is because it takes zero translation devices to read the information.  Every time the power goes off, I am reminded just how close we still are to the age before electricity - because we have so rampantly removed so many of the devices that came between the two!  take for instance this last transformer crash we had down here, the families in the sub division all lost everything in their freezers.  12 hours no power is an amazingly simply yet crippling problem!

Think about all the issues you may have trying to find a device that can read a file so you can then read the file yourself - and compare that with what it takes to read a piece of paper.  No batteries required...

Benny - the next big breakthru - no recharging needed

Benny:

Yes, recharging batteries is a problem, but devices like the iPad (10 hrs) and Kindle Fire (8 hrs) with a long battery life helps.

The next breakthrough we will see in the next several years will be high-efficiency solar cells. They will keep your device's batteries charged just from room light. They're coming ... see:

http://www.ecofriend.com/entry/rohm-introduces-efficient-dye-sensitized-solar-cells-harvest-room-light/

Once you have very affordable, very portable tablet devices that can hold entire libraries of content and that will just stay charged all the time, paper will be used a lot less. But like I said, I don't ever see paper going away completely, the stuff's just too darn convenient.

MR Digital?

Interesting! MR (maybe all of Kalmbach?) is going to go digital??? Well partly digital. Notice he said "… would be available as a digital subscription." In other words they aren't giving up the print edition; they are just adding another format! Also notice they haven't given up on the idea of getting paid twice, once to run an ad and once to read an ad .

Paper publishers have the same problem that many manufactures (steel and auto companies come to mind quickly), huge capital investments. In a sense they are too big and too invested in 20th century technologies to make a big change like this without much pain. Print publishing may always be around as Joe says, but it will be just for certain items that can be cost effective.

Is it possible that Kalmbach is also too big (like GM) to adopt change? This may well be a classic case of Who Moved My Cheese (Spencer Johnson, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1998). This transition will be a difficult for them to negotiate. It will be interesting to see if they can make it.

I like both

I read MRH religiously, including the forums.  However, I also devour every issue of RMC, and my wife knows it's a special treat for me when it arrives in the mail every month.  I'm less of a fan of MR - I like what they do for the hobby in general, but they don't hold my interest.

It is exciting to see the MRH readership increasing, and I agree that this is the model for the future of the industry.  I do find it very interesting that MRH seems to manage to survive and even prosper doing what other publishers seem to think impossible (giving away content).  Of course, the broadcasting industry did it successfully for years, so I don't know why it's a surprise to anybody.  Then along came cable TV, and companies figured out that people would pay for the privilege of being advertised to.  Let's hope the fine folks at MRH never realize that many of us would pay for what we get here, sticking with the radio model instead.

In all honesty, I might pay, but somehow it's a hard sell mentally to pay for something I cannot hold in my hand.  I know intellectually that I'm paying for a service, for value received, but it's a little easier to justify when I can look at the magazine on my shelf, and in my hand.  That may somewhat limit the appeal of online publishing from the publishers' points of view.

Thought on E-pay...

No matter what it is, in general I will not pay for electronic content.  That's the end of it...

If you wanted to see MRH circulation drop, add just a $0.99 to the cover. 

"Is it possible that Kalmbach

"Is it possible that Kalmbach is also too big (like GM) to adopt change?"

Does that mean that Kalmbach will get a government bailout is things get too rough?

User focus

I am a boomer coming back to the hobby now that I am retired.  I subscribe to Model Railroader, but the reality is that I get my best info on the hobby on-line.

I posted a single question on DCC wiring on the MHR discussion.  The responses I received were extremely high quality, and could easily have filled a chapter of a book.  And all of it was specific to my need.  A print magazine simply can't match that.  I'm wondering if even a book can.  Plus, there is the opportunity for back and forth discussion.  Plus, there is the benefit of a variety of viewpoints.  Plus, I get what I need as soon as the need pops into my head.   

I still like getting MR, but I doubt that I will renew my subscription when it runs out.  There is 1000 times more info online.  Even if the info isn't already on line, a question posted on the MRH discussion group will produce it almost instantly.

Best resource

Forums, MRH in particular, can have very helpful and knowledgeable members. Your example is very telling, you had a question and were able to get specific information very quickly.

Not waiting two or more months for the magazine to be written, printed, distributed,

No one has mentioned MR having a preorder of a special edition. $8.95 for print and $8.95 for digital. If they mean a digital download that is really good profit. Can not help but wonder how they came up with the price.

Reader Feedback

I know a local Model Railroader who has very high quality work and to his credit no less than 60 articles in the major publications [MR, RMC, Etc].  He stopped writing, however, because he received literally No feedback from the readership on his article. 

Now he doesn't have an email address nor does he sit on the forums, so I doubt he'll be able to adapt to the new mode.  However, I should note that in the "old days" you had to wait 1-3 months to read reader's feedback in the MR post box section.  And even then, the amount of reader feedback was really quite restricted to only perhaps 5 or 8 letters at the most.  If you were a reader, you really were just a member of the audience - and that was all you perhaps could hope for.

Today, every reader has as good a chance of being heard as the authors, the photographers, or even the editor of the magazine.  That glass wall has been removed - we've gone from the silver screen to the glass theater [MR's forums, you have to pay to get in] to now what we may as well call "the convention hall."  And anybody can be in it!

I full heartedly agree with the value added by the forums and the bloggers here.  There is some really exciting work happening in the blogs!

Still like paper

While I do enjoy reading MRH on my desktop, I am too cheap to get a laptop or e-reader, I like paper. The books that I read will more than likely not come out in a digital format.  I am a historian by training and trade and I can not see the old books I read being digitalized.  Plus many of the old books that I have seen this done to, look pretty crappy.  Will it get better it the future, probably, but I can not wait for some institution to get all their books digitalized.  The same can be said for the Morning Sun books and the volume of train reference books that I have.  Not everything is on the internet and I do not think it every will.

I subscribe to MR and have many years of back issues that I would love to unload someday. I get tired of moving them from state to state, but I read my MR when I am eating breakfast and I really do not care if milk splashes on the pages, I am not so certain what milk would do to a e-reader.

Steve

I still like paper, but MRH is valuable as well

At this point in my life I don't see any need to eliminate paper despite the appearance on the various reading devices that have become available. I subscribe to Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman, NMRA Magazine, N Scale Magazine and N Scale Modeling magazines as well as MRH. Each of these fulfills my needs for modeling subjects and they each provide some interesting information and points of view that I may or may not agree with. But MRH is really the only one where you can get almost instantaneous feedback or answers to questions that aren't always forthcoming from the print magazines. Sure, the print magazines are often put together several months before you see them on the magazine rack or newstand. But I am pretty sure it takes time to put MRH together as well. It's just the ultimate reader of each article is closer to the source of that article and the production folks at MRH. So you can get an answer or a response from the writer in a much shorter time than it would take to get a response to something Railroad Model Craftsman or Model Railroader. I haven't tried this with either N scale magazine so I can't say what their response time is.

Now with MRH I am as likely to print out an article as I am to read it on-line. The only major difference would be that if I find I have a question or observation I am more likely to print out that article because I will keep it in front of me while I post my question or observation. Maybe its a generational difference but it is more likely I will have something to say over stuff I see in actual print than stuff I browse through.

Irv

Sic et non

While I appreciate holding paper, not needing batteries (although let's note that paper requires light to read it), and so on, I also like not having stacks of paper sitting around, stacks where it's difficult to find what I'm looking for. I converted my professional library to electronic materials as fast as I could simply for the ability to conduct a search and to carry it all around on a flash drive. I am getting to be the same way with hobbies. It's great to mark or scan an article for later, to be able to categorize things the way that makes sense to me, and, if a new interest develops, to look it up quickly. It's great to share ideas with people whose interests are similar without having to read the rehash of beginner topics (which certainly has a place if we expect to increase our numbers) or endless articles about something that doesn't grab my interest.

I also appreciate the timeliness and cost reduction of electronic materials. I wish there was a similar magazine for railfans.

Hey Joe, time to startt another magazine!

I also appreciate the timeliness and cost reduction of electronic materials. I wish there was a similar magazine for railfans.

 You need to expand like the print media with your own version of "Railroad and Rail Fan" or "Trains!"

Paper vs. digital

I made my living thanks to computers and technology. My last project before retiring was converting printed manuals for the Navy to digital format (CDs). Unfortunately, the Navy still printed volumnous manuals as well because the electronic technology had not reached the e-reader stage it has now become. I am not a luddite but I have not yet purchased an Ipad, Nook, or any other electronic reader to date. I still subscribe to MR and RMC because I am old-school. I enjoy sitting in my easy chair with a cup of coffee and a good book. I like to take an interesting article to my workbench and apply it without the "batteries" dying or screen-saver kicking in just as both hands are hopelessly involved in the project. With these old eyes, using a 4" screen from a cell phone is like trying to kill an elephant with a fly swatter. The initial investment of an e-reader is "pricey" for something that will probably be obsolete in two years. Different formats for proprietory equipment also limits what is available until a completely universal format is decided upon. I am a HUGE fan of MRH and look forward to every issue because it provides me with great articles AND videos for new items like the TAM Valley equipment.

My biggest problem is storage of my magazine collection dating back to the 1950's. I've moved twice on 30 years and the collection has grown too big to move again. No one wants old magazines any more and dumping them into a landfill is not a good solution. I'll probably continue to get hard-copy magazines until they are no longer available. I can still use a flashlight under the covers to read them after light-s out. < grin>

Nick Kulp

Cornwall Railroad Superintendent and Hired-Lackey Grade 3

Kindle Fire and iPad

Nick:

iPad has a 10 hour life and the Kindle Fire has an 8 hour life, so they last quite a while. With my iPad, I charge it every 2-3 days. My android phone gets the charger every evening at bedtime.

Everyone needs to make their own choices of course, but I find the "will be obsolete" argument to not hold a lot of water. Every electronic device will be obsolete in a few years, including the current models of DCC decoders.

If becoming obsolete is a good reason, then you'd better stop using all-things electronic. It's an affliction common to them all.

Time will tell on the Kindle Fire, but for the iPad, the closest equivalent is the iPhone / iTouch / iPod. The iPod was introduced in 2001, and the iTouch and iPhone came in 2007. All these devices still work today - my iTouch that I got in 2008 still works great - and yes it's now obsolete.

Denying yourself of the value of these devices because they may become obsolete should also apply to your PC or Mac. Computer hardware turns over about once every 18 months, and cell phones even faster - once every 9 months. A computer that's 3+ years old is totally obsolete these days, as is a cell phone that's 18 months old or older.

However, the media file formats (MP3, PDF and ePub, which is based on HTML) are going on 20 years old now, and I don't see those going away in the foreseeable future. There's too many documents now archived in these formats - and HTML, of course, is what drives the web and enables you to be reading this post!