New Platform For Scott Catalogue Digital Version. Mixed Feelings

I offered to pay Scott, and they still would not do it.

If you needed to get stuff into a database, then you just hire a bunch of summer interns in high school to do data entry.

Or, even better, you could buy StampManage or one of the other companies that already has all the data in a database.

I offered to give them mine for free but they were not interested.
Don

I believe you offer your pages for free and they would want a way to get revenue for every copy sold. You have no way to prevent reuse.

StampManage requires a unique paid license number to use so there is some control pirating.

This is the same company that tried stop providing PDFs for Linn's Stamp News. This is how they think.

Doesn't Amos own Linn's?

Yes.

Here is an interview with Jay Bigalke on Scott's new online digital catalog.

The fact that Jay states he scans many of the issues seems to show that the staff is quite small and likely a key limitation. This is compared to the crowd sourcing model of some other stamp catalog like web sites.

https://stamps.org/news/c/collectin...iption-model

I was pretty surprised by that interview. He was really excited about the upcoming ability to have photos from every stamp in a set, instead of just one stamp. He repeated this at least 3 times. I have never heard a catalog user bring that up.

He also justified the high price of the catalog, because it costs a lot to produce. He claims 75% of customers prefer subscription model. (Would rather pay $500 for one year of access than $500 for lifetime?) Was really excited about upcoming features which are shockingly not there already including keyword search and bundling of countries by region or colony instead of alphabet. Totally dodged the question about download/offline access because he claimed you can get internet anywhere.

He is just really out of touch. And he is much younger than I expected, but I guess not young enough to be somebody to lead technological change.

I believe that Jay is another victim of bad advice and information. Would love to know the source of the statistics.

Not a potential purchaser, but I find the Maury paper catalogues' inclusion of colour images of all stamps extremely helpful

I'm also curious about your "master pdf", Don.

Jay is the editor so therefore a spokesman for the company. I would not expect him to say anything different in an interview.

The interviewers (both likely to be on APS or APRL board in August) did not follow up on the question about online competitors.

Jay did note that there will be some grouping packages such as British Commonwealth.

However, he was not quite correct about Microsoft Office. Microsoft sells a one time purchase (I have the 2019 version) as well as the Office 365 subscription.

Scott's new subscription model looks more ill-advised every time I revisit it. I don't believe they understand who their customers are at all. This decision has all the hallmarks of something cooked up in order to try and meet a revenue goal instead of a need and it ends up accomplishing neither. For $550/annually you get the same info with new issues added. It adds no value to the equation for anyone really. A real head scratcher.

This is another topic that points out the lack of true philatelic journalism that asks hard questions and is not afraid to step on institutional toes.

I strongly suspect that they will struggle to get enough uptake of digital subscriptions at the new price points given the limited feature set (basically imaged Procrustean print pages and neither download nor perpetual access to the last paid subscription year).

I do believe they'll have to discount prices on this offering sooner rather than later.

It's a pity Amos/Scott didn't put their efforts toward at least starting work on a real database driven catalogue. Starting with the US Specialized (which is proclaimed as their best selling ) . But their IT staffing is skeletal -- in the interview didn't Jay Bigalke say that it's basically one guy and he...? And he can't be doing much if he, too, is scanning stamps in addition to all his other duties .....
Wouldn't surprise me if they are in real trouble in five years.