Mike,

This is a subject which has been aired before.

Buying from your newsagent does not make you a subscriber, simply a regular reader as you are not committed to purchasing the magazine and if you choose not to then the newsagent can send the unsold copy back for a credit. In any event, how could MyHobbyStore possibly distinguish between people who buy every issue and those who just buy it when there is something that particularly interests them. Your newsagent orders from a general distributor, not MHS.

Magazines sold via subscription are much more attractive to publishers as they represent a secure income up front and incur much lower distribution costs being bulk mailed by the subscriber organisation. Around half of the retail price of a magazine bought in a shop goes in costs to the distributor and retailer. That is why there are always ‘special’ offers encouraging readers to take out subscriptions.

Making the contents available online to all and sundry is effectively giving the magazine away for free and no commercial organisation could work on that basis, you have to sell copies or subscriptions to cover the substantial proportion of editorial and production costs which are not covered by advertising revenue. That I’m afraid, is basic economics.

Our policy on the Model Boats website is to publish a selection of articles, some of which are a few months old and of general interest for all to read while others are current items for subscriber view only. The intention is to give a feel for the content of the magazine and encourage viewers to subscribe or buy it in retail outlets.

The online digital editions can be subscribed to at a lower rate for those who do not wish to buy or cannot obtain hard copies and they are made available to all subscribers as a ‘reward’ for taking out a subscription and to encourage new subscribers.

As a reader, you have the choice of buying copies retail as and when they appeal to you, supporting your newsagent via a regular order or taking out a subscription which brings additional benefits. It is entirely up to you how you ‘enhance the knowledge of your chosen subject’. In fact a good way of doing this at no cost is to participate in the various Model Boat Internet Forums including this one.

Yes, you could ‘Google’ the articles in the hope of finding them (rather unlikely) but if everyone took that attitude then there would be no magazines and no articles to Google. All the editorial content in Model Boats has a cost attached to it, staff and contributors expect to be paid, the magazine has to be printed and then distributed and the advertising revenue will not cover all this – again, just basic economics I’m afraid!

I hope this rather long post explains the situation.

Colin

No intention to unduly admonish you Mike!

It's just that most people don't appreciate the ins and outs of the situation, I was one of them myself until not very long ago. Niche magazines run on very tight budgets so they have to be very careful in balancing costs against income.

I accept that it is important to you to support your local newsagent, I have one too. But essentially they are to some extent in competition with MyHobbyStore when it comes to selling magazines. But that applies to most publications I'm afraid.

As you say, if you buy the magazine every month then you will have all the content anyway. My copies go back to around 1961!

Colin