There are basically three reasons an article is rejected by MR or any 
other publication.  I submitted a layout feature asrticle for a large HO 
club layout.  Their answer was they had several similar articles "in 
stock", so they're not going to spring for my fees until needed.  I most 
recently proposed another layout which they bought into because it 
apparently fit a spot.  I'm putting the final touchs on it now, but the 
financial conditions are tighter than they were in the past.  Overall, 
we probably receive our fair share of S layout features of about one per 
year based on the subscriber base of the magazine.  Right now if we're 
2-5% of the subscribtion base they will run about that per cent of 
articles.  Another reason is simply that if there were 10 full pages of 
S ads in the magazine, you could be on a S article every other issue 
plus product reviews of the items in those ads--money talks!

So those three reasons--1) they've got articles in stock, 2) we'll only 
get our share, and 3) S doesn't advertise, will keep us out of gaining a 
larger foothold in that type of publication.  A fouth but much smaller 
reason might be that Kalmbach distributes the S Gaugian and therefore 
still makes money without having to listen to our needs the way we think 
they ought too!

If you check out the current remaining modeling magazines, you will find 
them fairly thin, meaning they're feeling economic pressures due to the 
economy and internet based competition.  Unfortunately this isn't going 
to change this November or even two years from now for those who study 
politics and election cycles.

What has surprised me are the overall quality of the various historical 
publications dedicated to a particular railroad.  They use thick high 
quality stock coupled with all the benefits of a smaller publishing 
setup.  Face it Kalmbach has a full staff with benefits while the 
historical publishers typically handle  couple of such magazines plus 
perhaps some local work for other kinds of firms, meaning lower 
overhead.  These magazines typically run a couple dollars more than the 
RMC/MR crowd but they're closer interest wise in many cases.  I just 
finished some photo work for Remember the Rock magazine again which is 
one such magazine that seem to be making it for the present time. 

If you look at the bigger picture, it doesn't take long also to find 
that any grouping of models builders of any kind all you generally find 
are really old guys.  At the train show this weekend, my wife pointed 
out all the guys (gals too) with their Hover/Rascal motorized 
wheelchairs, oxygen tanks and the like. 

Bob Werre
BobWphoto.com




Roger Nulton wrote:

>  
>
> Brooks Stover's fine layout is in this year's (2011) "Great Model 
> Railroads" by Kalmbach. I just got it in the mail today.
> Roger Nulton
>
> From: Tom Hawley
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 11:34 AM
> To: [email protected] <mailto:S-Scale%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: {S-Scale List} Magazine interests
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Gary Chudzinski
> . . . . . . . . There are a number of S modelers who have written 
> articles
> for the leading model railroad magazines, except one, but are rejected 
> for
> no good reason. . . . . . . . . . . .
> > > > > > > > > > > > >
> I caught up with some Kalmbach people at the NMRA convention in Detroit,
> said something similar to them. Their response was "You people have 
> your S
> Gaugian." But they also said we need to send them something good and they
> will publish it. Not letting it drop there, I got a professional
> photograher in our club to photograph a very nice scale layout one of our
> members has. But I don't think photographer or layout owner ever sent the
> pictures to MR.
>
> Tom Hawley -- Lansing Mich
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>  
> 




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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