APS Board Approves Five-Year Strategic Plan

Well, I used to be a member of APS, but dropped my membership several years ago. I found that I wasn't using any of the APS services. I did try the circuit books, but they were very limited compared to what I find on e-bay, and having to pay $15 or so to ship the circuit on when 99% of the time I found nothing of interest made it uneconomical. The majority of my issues probably have to do with the fact that I collect only Israel, while the APS focus seems to be entirely on collectors of classic US.

I can describe what the benefits of a forum are. Simply put it drives people to the APS site and is the best means to new members.

I don't claim to be a typical collector by any means, but consider this. I visit APS maybe twice per year. I visit this forum more than 300 days per year sometimes multiple times per day. I visit another stamp forum at least 100 times per year.

Consider that probably less than half of the current forum members are APS members (not sure the exact number but I thought there was a survey done a couple years back). The number of visitors to this site probably is well above the membership count (lurkers). These are potential APS members waiting to be convinced to join.

The community of a forum can generate unexpected activity that itslef will draw more eyeballs. For example, the StampSmarter site was recently started, I think partly out of discussions held here at the forum. Then the 1847usa site was "rescued" and added there. The visits these sites currently get could have been APS's had they had the vision to look forward.

APS as a physical stamp club is of limited value IMO. How many times do APS members meet per year? You can probably count them on your fingers and those meetings do not include everyone by far. A forum is a 24-7 stamp club meeting. If APS cannot see the potential for membership growth from a world-wide online community that is on 24-7 then the APS is indeed doomed.

Digitizing APRL materials is a worthy goal. But as you say it is expensive. Is that going to attract a large number of visits to the APS site than a forum. I doubt it. Why not spend that money on what will drive the biggest increase in community and therefore membership?

The APS has plenty of knowledgeable members that could share their expertise both with the currently membership and the throngs of people that visit SCF and other forums every year with questions about the stamps they just inherited from Grandpa.

Access to the forum could be open to all, and maybe certain areas require membership. Membership in the forum drives online sales.
The list of possibilities is nearly endless.

I believe APS has to offer more to its members. The majority get little more than the magazine and pride of being a member. If you provide something they want they will join. I do not know the potential of new members you could ever expect to get but I cannot believe there are 15,000 easy to get people. Of course, for some that have been around, they do not want to join due to the politics. If I had not been a member for so long. I would have likely quit since I have not used the library, expertizing service, or stamp store/sales books. The magazine sometimes has interesting articles but as of late see 3 columns (ED, COO, Editor) at the expense of letters. I have heard rumors they like to avoid any criticism of the board.

Al

I have to say, I find APS a ponderous read sometimes, and at least lately have enjoyed Linn's far more (though to be sure I skip a lot of Linn's stuff).

It just seems Linn's is way more in touch with what the average collector enjoys reading.

HungaryForStamps, I agree 100%. Linn's had a low point (for me , anyway) about a year ago and they seem to be improving.

If anyone connected with The American Philatelist keeps up with SCF, here are two suggestions:

1.) find some articles from other world-class philatelic journals and reprint them in the AP. They wouldn't have to look any further than some of their own affiliate organizations/clubs. This could inspire members to collect other areas. I'm thinking that it wouldn't be overly difficulft to get permission from the writers/publications. It has been done before.

2.) Put letters to the editor back in the AP. It makes members feel like they have a voice, and it promotes discussion of contemporary issues and problems involving stamps and stamp collecting.

It is difficult not to be a little pessimistic about APS.

Linn's is Philately Lite, in my view. I find most of the articles so simplistic that they appear to be directed at children. Mostly what I read are the auction reports, reports of modern errors, organization news, and ads.

The editorial content of the APS journal seems, to me, to be properly positioned between the breezy, shallow newsiness of Linn's and the ponderousness of quarterly philatelic journals of the specialty societies. The longer articles in the last 4-5 issues of the APS journal have been excellent. For example, A-F Gruene, "Covers Linked to Sea Battle," December 2015 at 1138, was superb.

I don't miss the letters to the editor. Most of them consisted of quirky complaints or anecdotes. Few contributed to philatelic knowledge. If their elimination marks an effort by APS to appear more scholarly, good for them.

Pride of being a member? If you want to recruit the younger generations, that is not going to get it done.

Here is the complete text of a letter to the editor which appears in the back of the February 2016 American Philatelist (page 228).

"The first thing I do when a new issue of a magazine hits my mailbox is turn to letters to the editor: Why? Because there I find out many stamp collectors' secrets and new developments that can't be found in other places in the issue. The recent reference to micro printing in G. R. Morse's letter in the December issue of the American Philatelist is a case in point.
Similarly, the first hint that there were "soaking problems" with newly released stamps first got my attention in a letter to the editors in another stamp magazine. Many of the tricks to overcome the soaking problem have appeared in the APS letters column.
I have relished the APS's past devotion to the extensive coverage to reader's input and do not mean to detract from the excellent content from current article writers. However, I did notice the reduction of the numbers of letters to the editors in the recent December issue. I beg you to reconsider this editorial move and continue to publish more of the "collectors' voices.""

APS members, like SCF participants should be able to judge for themselves whether or not the words of fellow collectors are quirky, anecdotal, or insightful.

Philately Lite or ponderous work of a specialty society. I wonder which one will attract more members? Frankly I can barely get through the long dry APS articles, so much so, I dread opening the magazine. I "read" as many Linns as I have queued up, do the NY times crosswords that have piled up and then finally I'm stuck with the APS. One more article on airmail routes of ... and I'll shoot myself (no offense meant to the author of these fine scholarly articles BTW, just not my cup of tea).

Did you guys not read this month's AP where editor Jay Bigalke specifically addresses the letters to the editor reduction and says it's because they haven't received as many as they have in the past. I one applaud the reduction in letters to the editor.


As for the APS as a whole, it does bring up an interesting question as to what does the APS provide to people in the hobby that they can't get anywhere else? There is a wealth of information available on the internet and a lot of that isn't through the APS.

I used to be a member of the APS but now I am a member of one of their affiliated specialist societies. I used to have membership in several different stamp organizations but now I only have membership in two of them since I had to cut down because of costs.

As I mentioned earlier, the current APS strategy is to compete with the internet. They didn't decide to do this, restricting access to information has always been an APS profit center. The issue is that the internet has changed everything while APS stayed the course. APS is not alone in having their profit centers impacted; the recording industry, the publishing industry, the movie industry have all had to change or face the inevitable loss of income.

While I understand why an organization like APS didn't move quick enough to meet this challenge, but I am at a loss as to why they still seem to be not driving faster changes. Surely they see the handwriting on the wall by now. They need to make a large commitment and change of course. They have the potential to turn their web site into the 'go to' site for many hobbyists. If they had this traffic, they would be able to sell ad space on the site (replacing the loss of ad revenue from their hardcopy publication). And while they would need to start offering a lot more information for free, there are still many other ways to add value to their members and others who desire to pay for it.

Look at the link I supplied earlier in this thread to the philatelic library search. Say you willing to pay for some information from the APRL. You go there, find that the info you want is available in digital format, and place it in your cart. Now check out. Oh wait, the 'check out' isn't really a check out, it simply forms an email that gets sent to the APRL with your request. So instead of getting real-time access to the info you want, you have to wait until they get back to you.

This seems like a tepid online commitment to me; it is like APS is only dipping a toe in this digital pool instead of jumping in. Are they still not sure that this internet thing is real and here to stay? They have watched as other online resources have grown and flourished yet cling to the legacy approach for retaining members and making a buck. As every month passes, more and more info is freely available online; making the challenge of competing more and more difficult.

Of course there are quite a few hobbyists who also do not believe that information should be more freely available. They paid the price for their experience and feel everyone else should too. These folks often are not willing to share info in this forum for example. They certainly have that right but I would find it disturbing to feel I am taking advantage of the community knowledge but not 'giving back'. I guess some folks are ok with taking their knowledge to the grave with them, I find this a real shame for our hobby.
Don

I do like that one can go to several different stamp specialist societies online and have free access to most of their journals before the most recent ones along with a search engine that helps find what one is looking for.

Information, whether it's in printed or electronic form or in its members' heads, is basically the most valuable (only?) asset that any society has. Therefore I don't blame them for building a wall around that knowledge. But they should make it easier for dues-paying members to access as much of it as possible, as easily as possible.

Why would you say information in members heads is a society asset? Seems that would be an asset of the person whose head it is in. The value in the society may be in providing a forum where collectors could interact in order to share such information, but the APS asset would be the forum, not the information. And by forum I don't mean site like this, but any venue (workshops, journal, etc) where members gather.