Which Philatelic Periodicals Do You Read?

Yes, very much so, A "newspaper" type format, I rellay liked that, and they employed very good journalists.

I have a piece on the "Nigerian Scams" from that production, would it be OK to post it online now that they have closed?
I thought about it before, but did not want to offend copyright.

Stamp Collector was purchased by Amos, which decided not to continue publication (the old, buy the competition to kill the competition strategy). OK, well in all fairness, Stamp Collector wasn't going to make it anyway.

The copyrights are still valid and now owned by Amos. And we all know how Amos is when it comes to copyrights.

Anyway, I won't tell if you won't tell.

k

What makes you say that? what could you see that would default them?
or did you know their subs rate?
Interesting, I found it a great braodsheet and If I lived stateside I would have subscribed.

Re the copyright, Judge Judy's words ring, "if it doesn't sound right, and doesn't look right, it's not right"

I was subscribing to both Stamp Collector and Linn's for awhile. If I remember things right, Stamp Collector was doing quite good, but then suffered a sustained significant drop in subscriptions that the 2 years for the price of 1 promotion and the free weekly ad promotion couldn't head off. Linn's was also suffering a modest subscription drop at that time. When Linn's did a minor increase in rates, I think that pushed a number of collectors to make a decision -- Linn's could handle some more attrition, but Stamp Collector could not afford another subscription drop.

Mekeel's had a much much smaller subscription base, but survived for a long long time because it had a small staff, was only about a dozen pages, and had a pretty die hard following.

While Stamp Collector was slightly smaller than Linn's, they still have a basic staff and printing costs that could not be met with the subscription level they were getting. The subscription costs basically goes to cover mailing. They rely on ad revenue. With the free weekly ads, they obviously were getting little from that. So they had to rely a lot on dealer ads. But the rate they get depends on subscriptions, which continued to head down, meaning advertising revenue was going down. It's a death spiral to the inevitable, unless there is a major paring down of staff and revamping of coverage. They tried that, including sending free mags to me. While that stopped the dive, it wasn't enough to sustain profitability.

It was a very good magazine. While Linn's had better general coverage, Stamp Collector and Mekeel's had much better specialty coverage. I do miss Stamp Collector.

i just read some members posts here. no need to waste time and money reading periodicals when I can get the expert opinions distilled first hand

Spock1k has an excellent point that I hadn't even considered. I had thought I had cut down on my reading Linn's because it was online. And yet, the fact is that I spend quite a bit of time online reading the posts at SCF because there is a LOT of excellent info, stories, and just plain sharing of stamp pics here! No wonder I hardly ever read Linn's anymore!

k

Excellent overview Khj, really well done. Thanks.
You know I would have thought a different approach, in fact any approach, rather than courting the scrooge in us, would have been better.
I cannot ever being influenced by a 2 for 1 discount, it somehow cheapens the product. Personally I would have gone the "giveaways"
route, something to influence the reader from the newstand.
Anyhows, it has left us, and we march on.

I'm a die-hard cheapskate. So, they did snag me for another 4 years that way. When you get stuck with subscribers like me, I guess that doesn't bode well for the future.

k

Scott Stamp Monthly for a couple of years ran what I thought was a really good promotion to their subscribers. Scott would receive stamps from the various postal agencies around the world to add to their catalog. These stamps would just pile up. Somebody came up with the brilliant idea of offering to give away these mint stamps to the subscribers if they would mail a SASE. I think there was a limit of one per month per subscriber. A nice way to clean house and get new subscribers. While they supposedly ignored catalog values, the pitch was that the catalog value of the stamps received through the year would assuredly exceed the cost of the subscription.

Of course, being 10 years behind in my Things To Do list, I never got around to mailing off for those stamps.

Dear K

century behind still are we?

Dear K

century behind still are we?

Spock1k, I don't have enough time to do things once, let alone twice!

k

That's funny, I thought it was just an echo

That's funny, I thought it was just an echo

That's funny, I thought it was just an