New Digital Model Railroader

I am a Model Railroader Newsletter subscriber and just received an offer to upgrade my Model Railroader subscription and receive a digital version for $10.00 per year. I am assuming that this is in addition ot my paper subscription, but I am going to check.

Anyway I went ahead and did it and it is nothing short of fantastic. You do have to download a reader from a company called Zinio, but once that is done, your set. I set mine to automatically notify me when the next issue is ready.

What to me is the neatest part of this is that you can click on web links and be taken directly to an advertisers website. Coffman (the Right Clamp people) have a new clamp that was featured in the New Products section and at the end there was a link and by clicking on it I went directly to their website.

Bottom line, I guess I will now be taking my laptop to the bathroom with me. No more curled up magazine corners.

 

I personnally do not think it is such a great idea. I subscribe to the Digital version of PC magazine becuase they stopped the print version. It also comes through the Zinio Link. It costs me far more in paper and ink to print out each issue than the printed version ever did! I guess i am too old, but I like to get my magazines in printed form so I can read them, then store them for future reference. I sure hope the does not mean MR is going totally digital and stopping the printed version, i would really hate that.

 

Honestly, I agree with both of you. Having said that, what I have been doing lately is going back through my MR's and tearing out the pages that I feel I could use for future reference, putting them in acetate sleeves, and then in binders that pertain to the subject matter. For instance I have a binder on weathering. There is a great article in this months issue by Charlie Duckworth on weathering freight cars so I will just print those pages and put them in my binder.

I also might mention that I believe the 75th Anniversary compilation of all of the past issues has a search feature and one can type in a search for our friend Richard Napper and find everywhere his name has appeared in MR the last 75 years. The download version has that feature for the specific issue. Also, the click on link that I mentioned earlier to connect to manufacturers websites. I can't tell you how many times I have ran back to the computer to type in a link to view an item.

Bottom line, to each his own!

 

A while back I became disgusted with Model Railroader. I usually bought mine at hobby shops rather than subscribe, but now they have features only for subscribers. So now I just go to Barnes and Noble and browse (Through MR and all the other RR magazines) and just buy what I might think is interesting. Lately, I've been receiving the "Model Railroad Hobbyist eZine," and if there should happen to be something of interest (Not very often), I print just those pages out. I only subscribe to N Scale Railroading, which is about the only decent magazine left in any scale. It never bothered me to buy a magazine that wasn't my scale if it was good (HO, O, S whatever). I bought Mainline Modeler for years.

Tom G.

 

Personally, I think KALMBACH wants too much money for the digital versions of their magazines. Yes, adding $10 to a print subscription may be reasonable, but If you look at going with an all digital subscription, they want the same price as the print subscription. (The current subscription rate for one year is $42.95, print or digital).

I don't mind paying for content, but if I go with a digital subscription, I expect to get some discount because the publisher a) doesn't have to print the magazine and b) doesn't have to mail the magazine.

Kalmbach hasn't figured this one out yet.

Paul