My sub recently autorenewed without any warning or emails. Kinda shady if you ask me to do it that way. I like having the mag, but I am worried they will up and pull another Scale Auto on us here and POOF, its gone. The fact that they dropped the digital portion of the sub is also quite concerning. I guess I’ll see how this year goes and decide from there. But ya, not overly thrilled with the way it’s all being done ATM.
BK
I’m not renewing. I think March is my last issue. Love the magazine, don’t trust the organization any longer since they did a bait and switch with cutting the number of issues and promising digital issues, which I was okay with and appreciated the content and production - and then they revoked that.
You know what’s funny, I must have re-subscribed (after about 10 years) to FSM a few months ago and forgot, and the day after I post the above, I get my first copy in the mail. Have not had much of a chance to go through it yet, but I did hit the reader gallery and it actually was not bad…
The mag itself isn’t all that bad. A bit too many subjects, but they are trying to cover all the bases with members. I’m just not pleased with how they keep reducing what we get. I would like to see some sort of special perks for being a subbed reader here on the forums. We should get some sort of special ability or frills on the site to help make us “readers” feel more special when we log in. Just a thought.
BK
I called for a clarication on the renewal terms as my upcoming May/June issue will be my last issue. The reponse is that the subscription is per year and the number of issues are subject to change. I expressed my concern that I, as a subsriber, I have no control if the magzine decides just to reduce the number of issues per year at will. They can just become a quaertly magazine without telling the subsribers. I think they probably will go quarterly later this year… I have been a subscriber since 2010. It is unlikely I will renew as the May/June 2024 issue probably will be my last FSM in the mail.
Scale Auto was my ‘go to’ magazine at one time and it was a pity it got axed and ‘absorbed’ into FSM. The online gallery that so many contributed to on it gone in a flash when the magazine finished.
Seen a number of one subject modelling magazines get ‘absorbed’ into another general modelling magazine title and the content quickly dwindle to almost nothing having to jostle for position with all the other unrelated content.
Scale model magazine production has always been a bit of a fickle world and I have seen quite a number come and go over the years. The internet now being the main challenge with so many dedicated forums to access.
thanks for this letter. I’m also canadian. I can buy issues that look interesting for $12 (Canadian $) at the store. I usually don’t buy every issue. I started to look into subscribing, but it never indicates whether it’s US or CDN $. I’m guessing US. Which, even if I wanted every issue - it’s less at the grocery store.
$12 an issue,that’s why paper magazines are going the way of the dinosaur,I just won’t do it,not for any magazine.
I was very much on the fence about renewing, but after hemming and hawing and generally procrastinating, I decided to renew for another three years. Come 2027, who knows?
Hi Murph,
I’m not sure what you would like me to say. People subscribe and let subscriptions lapse on magazines, it’s the nature of the beast. Would I like us to be able to just add, add, add subscribers without anyone every leaving? Sure. But that’s not how it works.
So, I guess we can go through your list:
… only ONE article that picqued my curiousity [sic]: Everyone wants more of what they want. We get emails everyday from aircraft modelers who want more aircraft, tank guys who want more tanks, car guys wondering why 50% of the magazine isn’t devoted to cars, and ship guys demanding that they get more than one ship story a year. Yep, content mix is hard business, and we can’t make everyone happy all of the time. But we do endeavor to make most people happy most of the time.
… digital issues … now being discontinued: I think Brad brings this up in a separate post. The DLC issues were my idea, whole cloth. My hope was to continue to bring the four print issues we had to ice to the digital realm. I was excited at the prospect and thought we’d be able to get enough subscribers to jump on board because they really wanted those extra four issues. Subscribers wouldn’t want to miss those, right? Turns out, my thinking was naive. We never cracked more than 1,500 downloads for any single DLC issue. Every subscriber who has an email in our database was sent a reminder to download those issues whenever they were released. We reminded subscribers four times a month in our email newsletter, which has a huge open rate. It wasn’t that people didn’t know they were there. And no, it would not have been any more feasible to drop the PDF in recipient’s inboxes because those issues were huge. With no ROI to speak of, we had to discontinue them to allow us to work on other aspects of the brand.
New Products page … all text … no graphics: This is a concession to the internet. Basically, the New Products section is now a reminder that some new kits have come out. Companies are pushing kit announcements on their websites, social media, and everywhere else. By the time you see it in the magazine, that kit has been out for a while–and if it hasn’t, something has gone wrong in the pipeline. We made the decision to make sure we fit more kit announcements on the New Products section and did away with the images because they were eating up space that could be used for information. You’re going to Google the kit anyway or search it at Sprue Brothers or Squadron, so, we provide you with enough information for you to do that. If you head down to your local store, there’s still enough info for you to find what you’re looking for. So, either we get more info in New Products or we put in more eye candy. We came down on the side of more info.
… Brutal: Reader Gallery is mostly handled online these days. It’s a popular spot on the website. When we can, we will squeeze in a Reader Gallery, but if faced with including a Reader Gallery or using those pages to accomodate a how-to article, we’ll choose to fit the how-to article. FYI: A how-to feature will always win when deciding how the pages of any individual issue are divvied up.
… Canadian subscriber: Our U.S. subscription prices for 1 year are: $45.95 digital + print or $39.95 digital only. Our Canadian subscription prices for 1 year are: $54.95 digital + print or $39.95 digital only. Our international subscription prices for 1 year are $61.95 digital + print or $39.95 digital only. A year’s subscription gets you 6 issues. (You can see them here.)
… irrelevant: Huh. I hear this sometimes, and my response is to shrug. I could refute your statement and provide proof to the contrary. But it’s not going to matter to you or anyone else who wants to say otherwise. That’s fine. It may be irrelevant to you. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve graduated from FSM. Congratulations! You’ve learned all that FSM can provide you. Now, write an article for the magazine. Write an article that you think would be useful to other modelers who haven’t achieved your skills and abilities. Write an article you would like to see in FSM. And submit it to us. That’s how we keep FSM vibrant.
… stick around on the forums: I’ll be blunt–the FSM Forum exists because of FSM. As goes FSM, so goes the FSM Forum.
TK
The U.S. cover price for FSM is $8.99. If it’s a big issue, $10.99. Special, 100-page issues like Paint Award-Winning Figures that just came out are $13.99.
Thanks, Brandon. We don’t think we’re all that bad, either.
The Forums are free for everyone, so perks here aren’t likely to be a thing. We used to keep a good amount of content behind the paywall on FineScale.com just for subscribers, but we’ve had to balance that with ease to get to reviews and other stories that we’ve moved online from the print pages.
We’re looking at replatforming the website, and we’ll consider what more we can do for subscribers in the way of special content as that process nears. Before anyone asks, I have no dates on that yet, but it is on the horizon.
Hi Murph,
Customer Service is a separate department from Editorial, and, as such, I didn’t realize you had decided to leave the FSM family. But after reading this extensive thread, I’m here now.
TK
I believe I’ve answered the cover price question in a response to Tojo.
TK
I wonder what you mean by “thinner”? That there are fewer pages? Or that the stories aren’t as meaty? There’s no denying that we’re running leaner on page count (60 pages per issue, except specials like Jan/Feb at 76). Interestingly, Aaron and I ran an audit on story pages as opposed to ad pages compared to issues at the beginning when FSM was quarterly and then bimonthly–we’re roughly the same, even though those issues were thicker because of page count.
The reason? There used to be a formula in magazine publishing that the number of ad pages had to equal or exceed 33% of the total pages in the magazine. So, when ad pages declined, the size of magazine print issues declined, too. There came a point when we tossed the rule entirely, because, if we had a 60-page issue, we’d have to run 20 pages of ads (well, 19.8, but let’s round up). In the March/April issue, we had roughly 7 pages and we heard complaints that that’s too many. Can you imagine the uproar if we ran 20 pages at the old standard?
But here’s the thing, if we were ever to consider going up in pages again, that’s what we would have to see–a move back toward that kind of advertising support for the print mag. Impossible? No. Unlikely? Yes. However, we will keep trying.
If you mean the stories aren’t as “meaty” as you would like, that’s a different topic and a criticism we can actually engage in a meaningful way. However, similar to my response to Murph, if you’d like to see a change in FSM’s content, which relies almost entirely on submissions from modelers who are not otherwise engaged by the magazine, then please submit a story. But, in the main, we continue to work with our current contributors, we encourage new contributors, and the staff will write stories when we have the time to do so.
I’ve gone over the DLC decision a few times in various posts, and again in a response to Murph’s initial post.
TK
A note about the renewal notices…you might want to stop printing “FINAL NOTICE” on the outside of the envelopes, as if it were a dunning notice for a debt. Or if Kalmbach uses a third party for this, direct them to change it. Not very discreet. How 'bout something like, “Subscription expired”, instead?
I’ll pass your suggestion along to our Director of Circulation.