Virtual magazines

Recently I have been receiving some critics about what is the nature of Modelersite and what we aim with the magazine, even some messages have let me know that I have hidden what we really do. Here below the editorial I wrote for the January 2002 issue, six year ago.

Another year, and the beginning of another one for Modeler Site. As creator and editor of Modeler Site, I would like to share with you some thoughts and reflections.

When you buy a magazine at a newsstand, and I want to stress "buy", what you really buy is the result of the combined effort of a group of persons, we suppose that most of them are modelers, who have worked hard during one or two months, in the making of a well finished product; in our case we are talking about a modeling magazine.

Most of these people work full time, so it seems logical that they make their living out of this activity.
Moreover, paper magazines have a great deal of publicity, a lot more than we could wish, and if you divide what you pay for the magazine by the number of pages that you receive, you will see that half of what we pay for, and sometimes even more, is pure publicity.

I know that the price we pay for a magazine is not too high, only a few dollars, but I also know that most of the time, the publishers give a lot of space to the publicity, and that space was supposed to be for modeling articles and pictures. But the fact is that the notes and pictures don't pay money, and the advertisers pay something between several hundreds and thousands of dollars.

This has been happening during my thirty years as a reader of modeling magazines, and nobody seems to complaint about that.

I must admit that generally speaking, magazines pay good money to the authors of those notes and pictures, around $300 or more; but once more, if you divide the money the magazine receives for publicity, by the amount that they pay for the articles (the real "core" of the magazine), we modelers are the "loosing part" in this deal, and the final result is that those who "really" make the magazine "alive", are the worst paid in this chain.

This has been happening during my thirty years as a reader of modeling magazines, and nobody seems to complaint about that.

When you talk to an publisher about the publishing business, he'll tell you that he is "loosing money" and can hardly get along with the project; most of these people aren't modelers, but they complaint because the world of modeling "is not enough for them to make a living". Although I must recognize that this is true in "a few cases", the truth is that the majority of them are there because "it is a good business".

This has been happening during my thirty years as a reader of modeling magazines, and nobody seems to complaint about that.

Virtual magazines, like Modeler Site and some others, which offer very high quality material through the Internet, for FREE, demand the same hard work of a paper magazine. We are aware that the cost to produce and maintain one of our virtual magazines, is several hundreds lower than our paper counterpart. But we're also aware that in the best of chances, we only receive THOUSANDS of dollars LESS in publicity, so the publishers and editors must make their living out of other activities.

This has been happening just during some years, but I hear how all those "editors" and other "guys" protest arguing that our sites are really "business" or "commercial web sites".

Generally speaking, virtual magazines don't pay for the notes, or give a "sample" kit to the modelers in exchange of the note. It is not that they don't pay because they don't want to, the problem here is that they don't have enough money to do it. Manufacturers and retailers ignore, or seem to ignore, the existence of this extraordinary means of communication. Here again, if you divide the money that a virtual magazine receives, by the cost of the "sample", or some kind of monetary "help" that sometimes we have to offer to the modeler, you'll see that we pay a lot more compared to a paper magazine.

It is important that you, the reader, who month after month enjoy Modeler Site for FREE, be aware that this virtual magazine is the result of a great effort, and that the only thing we ask from you in exchange, is your monthly visit to our website.

However, the key word to all this is COLLABORATION. If you enjoyed in the past, and keep enjoying Modeler Site in the present, your CONTRIBUTION with articles and pictures is vital for us. We can say that SHARING is the most important concept, here and now. 

I want to give my deepest recognition to all of those who understand and support us, and to the creators and collaborators of all the virtual magazines; they are the people who give their best effort to our great plastic modeling hobby, so we all can keep enjoying the best articles and pictures, for FREE.