Amos Publications Is Completely, Utterly Useless.

You cannot print from the eCatalog; you can only take screenshots. What I did last year, which is time consuming, is enlarge the view as much as I can, take screen captures, and stitch them together in Photoshop, convert to PDF, and then print.

One major problem with the eCatalog version compared to the old iPad version is that the new version is NOT vector based. It's just raster images which can only be zoomed in on so far (and actually take up more storage space), whereas the iPad version was vector PDFs under the hood, meaning if you zoomed in tightly on the text there was no loss in quality.

Since the text size in the Scott catalogs is so darned tiny to begin with, it means you get very little zoom range before the fonts start to break up.

Bottom line is that Amos does not want anyone printing ANYTHING from their e-versions and have deliberately made it so its only usable on a computer screen... and only online at that.

Idiots.

Can't call them idiots for protecting their material. We all want too much for free. Human nature

I'm not suggesting it be offered for free. I am more than willing to pay for the content; it just needs to be usable. They have erected so many barriers to usability for fear of losing sales revenue that they are ultimately reducing possible sales of the content. Decline becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For example: They are still insisting (for the most part) on a complete-volume cost model for the eCatalogs, which cuts out a lot of people in terms of ability to purchase. Yes, some of the larger countries are available as individual purchases, but the pricing is arbitrary and most countries are not available ala carte. If you want Switzerland or Thailand, you have to buy the complete volume 6. That's the only way to get it.

There's no excuse for not making countries available individually using a per-page pricing model, even if the per-page cost ala carte was more than the per-page cost when buying an entire volume. I bet they would sell a lot more than by forcing people to buy entire volumes. A collector might not spend $79.99 to get the entire volume, but I bet they would pay $5-15 to get just the country they want.

Same thing with the U.S. Specialized. They need to make multiple sections available Front of book vs. back of book vs. revenue vs. proofs & essays, etc.

It's an archaic mindset keeping them firmly entrenched in the 1970s.

[sarcasm]Computers are just a fad [/sarcasm]

If I could buy individual countries on an a la carte basis, provided the content was presented in a more usable way and accessible to me from any device, they'd probably get quite a few sales from me, likely enough to equal the purchase price of a print volume or two. Right now they get zip, nothing, nada, because I'll only buy 1-2 year old used copies.

Amos seems to focus much more on what they could lose rather than what they could gain, for example someone might spend just $20 or $30 for Denmark instead of dropping a C note on a complete Vol 2. Some of that probably would happen, but my guess is that they'd make up for it in sales from people who otherwise wouldn't buy at all. If the lowest priced item on your menu costs $100, you're going to lose out on a lot of sales. I mean, Amos is in the information business for crissakes. Nothing in the world is easier to slice and dice and package whatever way you want. They could sell just, say, watermark images if they wanted to, or all worldwide stamps issued in 1952 - and I'd bet they'd have some buyers for those!

If I want useful information, I'll buy Michel, Stanley Gibbons, or Facit. If I want a "checklist"' Of a country, I'll buy a Scott country section from Chirokmd on ebay.

No way on this green Earth am I paying Amos serious money for 10 lbs. or so of pages and pages of countries I don't collect.

The eCatalogs are back online as of this morning. 2 day outage not the end of the world, just annoying and inconvenient as heck.

Great points. I buy one print catalog every five years. And that is it. I use about 5% of the catalog. I do the same for Unitrade as I collect Canada also.

I go to shows where there is no internet access, and often I have to pull out my hard copy print catalogs to look something up. Not a problem, but I can't do that with a digital edition on my iPad at the same shows, or in the same stamp shops? Plop, plop, fizz, fizz!

If Amos sold only what I was interested in at somewhat lower prices ($20 per section is reasonable) I would be willing and more able to buy the update EVERY YEAR so long as I can view the purchased content at all times deemed convenient to me. Also, with such a model Amos could learn through demand which countries they should focus on for pricing updates which would then further increase value for annual purchasers and less wasted time researching pricing in areas that are of little general interest. In effect they could get more accurate market data useful for their own purposes of increased revenue by following such a model.

But as it is, I am glad rev posted the gripe, so I can avoid a digital purchase, and I can stay on course to buy my used semi-decade hard copy on the aftermarket in two more years... which does Amos's bottom line nil.

Amos is catering for people still having 1970's mentality when it comes to technology and/or stamp collecting. Why? because they make money doing it. Simple as that :-)

People embracing 'other options' can probably get their needs fulfilled using free online sources. I am one of them. True for both the generalist and the specialist.

There are two key components to selling content, and that is a big part of Amos' business - selling content.

1) Value. Is the content they right kind of content and of sufficient quality to help me?
2) Distribution or platform. Can I get the content in a manner that is useful and convenient to me?

From what I've heard about the electronic version, they fail on point #2. I still don't understand why they can't take their enormous database and create a good collector inventory management system, dealer inventory management system, computerized ID assistance, valuation, integration with ebay and other platforms, and more (this seems to be a good opportunity to develop a deeper partnership with someone like EZ Stamp). Regardless, I can see little to no advantage - other than portability - at this time of the electronic over the print.

Value. I consider there to be value, but they are losing without a subscription model, because there isn't sustaining value to make a collector like me dish out money every year. It is 2015. I currently use a 2007 set of Scott. Why? Because my primary interest is in identification, not in valuation. I have no need to upgrade and when I do, it will be with a set off ebay, that is a couple years old, and for a fraction of the cost.

However a dynamic, constantly updated, robust system that helps me in various ways with my collecting needs might be worth an annual charge on my debit card.

That's just it: by my understanding, it's not a database. They still update the catalogs using antiquated pencil & paper methodology. Both the previous iPad version and the current eCatalog version are simply wrappers around the final printed product.

Before they can even think about all the other niceties, they need to address the (literal) elephant in the room: the Herculean task of converting their legacy data to a relational database. Not a simple task. The data modeling alone before the migration work can actually begin is no small feat, assuming they do it correctly.

No, I think they are much farther away than anyone anticipates, at least based upon what has been shown publically....

So... you are saying their accumulation of data resembles the order of my collection?

Could I ask whether anyone has used the online catalogues available from Gibbons and Yvert (or Michel, assuming it offers them too)?

Basically, yes. Their database is the printed catalog. They probably have some information in some kind of electronic format (they would have to, just to get it to print), but apparently the catalog data is not in any kind of format that they can use to develop other apps around. They're basically using 1920's technology to put the catalog together and if they don't improve soon, they'll be like most other people that were around in the 1920's - dead.

Amos Press is so focused on their catalogues that they neglect the Album side of the business.
Personally I would like to see Amos Press sell off the albums and accessories to someone who is willing and capable of keeping those things more current. If Steiner can update the entire world every year so should Scott be able. With modern technology Scott should be set up to print any country or portion of any country, any time, on demand and ship to its customers.
No more missing countries and no more situations like "we only have this group of years and this other group of years but none of the years in between."

An Amos person has previously posted in another forum how they publish their catalogs; if I recall correctly they use Adobe FrameMaker to layout the pages. So if they change or need to update a catalog, they have to jump through hoops to do so; making multiple changes to both the catalog files, the album page files, and then make the same changes to any online content in their apps. This is a late 1980s/early 1990s approach.

As previously mentioned, this cries out for the content to be listed once in a SQL database. If Amos has any other plans for moving forward then they are simply treading water until they slowly die off. This is not rocket science nor does it require a person be a visionary, any first year IS/IT professional would say the same thing. The issue they face is being so late to porting their content to a database format; they have greatly limited their current options for getting this done compared to doing it at a more leisurely pace 15 years ago.

To get this done now they need to hire a good DBA, a group of database programmers to develop the correct relational tables and write queries/routines, and a group of data entry people to populate the databases. This would take at least 3 man years of effort. Developing the database and coding it is not as big a time consumer as the data entry effort.

I am unclear if Amos feeds the printing machines directly from their current files. If so, they may be facing additional changes in the printing process. This may require using different printing machines or a different printing subcontractor.
Don