Fancy Buying The Company Rather Than The Stamps?

Because it would undermine the sales of their printed album pages, which is where the real money is made.

Artful,
I concur, especially in the context of the multiple posts regarding shipping hassles and headaches.

Humans simply do not like change and push back when faced with it. The obvious first step for a legacy philatelic publisher (or other organization) is to develop a free high traffic website. This sets the foundation for then adding paid features and tools. But like Dan said, their vision is stuck in 1980 and they can only do today the same thing they did yesterday.

Ask yourself this, how many times a per week do you visit the SG or Amos website compared to one of the forums like this one? Or compared to a site like Swedish Tiger, Frajola, or Eric Jackson's?

Therein lies the problem, many of the publishers and organizations have simply missed the opportunity in putting websites into place which attract a lot of traffic. And of course now they can sit back and say, "well, gee...there are already plenty of forums and other websites."

But for whatever reason(s) our hobby has publishers and organizations which instead choose to simply maintain a "web presence" even when one of their primary services was to deliver philatelic information to hobbyists.
Don

I would tend to agree with you but many album pages are already printed by the publisher on demand, so it would just be a matter of shifting where that printing occurs. They also wouldn't have to follow Steiner's pricing model (i.e. one really cheap flat fee to access everything). I suspect some of the reluctance is that most pre-printed album pages aren't formatted for 8.5"x11" paper. Even though digital files for Scott albums likely exist somewhere, they'd probably still have to redo them so they'd fit on a standard page. And if they sold them formatted for 9x12 or some oddball size like that, they wouldn't sell very many downloads because most home printers won't print pages of that size.

The proprietary size and Scott numbers are key aspects. This offers some exclusivity. They would also be concerned that their pages would be all over ebay 10 seconds after provided them - printed or PDF.

I do not think Mystic is making much off their albums (they sell lower than they could to bring in sales). It is sold below market value (like a loss leader) and doubt they could offer their pages as PDFs with the Scott numbers on them. The primary complaint most have is the Mystic pages are just mid-weight.

Steiner is fine but is not close to what a 'killer app' could be…

A first class album maker app would support making your own pages by 'drag and drop'. First, users would select the catalog numbers they wanted to add, customizing the catalog numbers with just the ones they desired (rarer stamps, coil pairs, booklets, etc.). Then they would select the page size. Then page border and whatever page details they would like to add to each page. Then they would be able to choose the page density. And of course user would be able to upload and add their own images if desired. The album could then be generated on the screen and allow the user to move things around as desired. Users could also start with a set of predefined templates. And of course they would be able to save their album(s) on the server for future revisions.

Frankly this is not a huge project once a database is in place that contained all the info to pull from. For example, assume that Amos/Scott had an existing catalog database with all the typical stamp data (Scott number, description, images, etc.). They would then only need to add the frame dimensions (I already have this for all US stamp through about 2001) for each stamp. To code the interface would take an experienced coder about 400-500 man hours. A significant project but not anything that should cost more than $50k.

A smart catalog publishing company would develop this as an online app to keep support costs down and keep its database IP protected. This is the kind of profit center that could easily offset the loss of income they are currently seeing in hard copy album sales. It could be setup as a subscription service or 'pay per use'.

The beauty here for users is that they could have a customized album that fits exactly what they need. No more buying a bunch of extra pages/sections that you do not want or need.
Don

The problem with this is that nothing Scott has is in a database. If there data was in a database, there are lots of possibilities. How about being able to click on a stamp in the catalog and get the pricing history of the issue? Or how about pairing up with E-bay to allow sellers to enter the ID number for a stamp then have all the information filled in for the listing (you can do this now for many items with a UPC code on E-bay). Listing added this way could then feed sales and pricing info back into the catalog.

True, but if they contact me I will give them what they need.
Don

The music companies were (and still are) getting ripped off big time, and I fail to see how this is relevant to your wanting stamp catalog publishers to go digital other than the fact that they fear getting ripped off if they go digital.

Printed news publishers have certainly been affected by digital news (both real and fake) and Linn's has certainly been affected by sites like this one.

As for printed books, yes there has been a shift towards digital publishing, but a catalog is a very different thing than a read once and move on book.

No doubt the music publishing industry took a hit during the transition from physical to digital. Many companies struggled to make the transition and as a whole the global recording industry saw more than a decade of significant decline. But they finally got their act together in the last few years and completed the move from physical to digital; from downloads to streaming; from ownership to access. Global revenue grew 6% last year and the digital share of revenues passed the 50% mark for the first time ever. For the music publishing industry, the key was putting into place the innovations and support for music streaming. Streaming has been the key driver of the growth and the number of users of paid subscriptions broke the 100 million mark last year and is continuing to rise.

And a correction, I don't 'want' stamp publishers to go digital. Saying it is only something that 'I want' trivializes what is obviously a global paradigm shift. Don't shoot the messenger, this messenger does not own any stock in SG.
Don

I think it's to a certain extent an apples and oranges comparison, philatelics vs. music. For one thing, in music the content creators (musicians) are forced to go through a handful of centralized distribution services (iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc.) that take the lion's share of the revenue. One thing the digital transition has done to mueic revenue is to focus the revenue even more to the platforms, record labels, and major artists. The independent and/or minor artists are shut out even more than under the traditional physical media model. With revenues per playback of a song at fractions of a cent in many cases, it's virtually impossible for artists to make meaningful money from digital distribution.

So in music, it's many of the content creators being shut out, whereas in philatelics we're talking about the content creators being the ones doing the actual digital distribution. So while there's the cost of creating the mechanism for the digital distrubution, there's not a third party taking away 90+ cents on the dollar of revenue generated.

It's possible for a small or independent philatelic content creator to "do their own thing" more so than in music.

Hi Dan,
I agree there are some differences but I view the underlying processes of 'access' and 'delivery' as being the same. I am a IT person at heart. I do not view IT as the brain dead person who runs about fixing printers and computer problems. IT is about the access and delivery of information when and where folks want it.

If a person wants to self-develop music and distribute it, they can do it for free and in a matter of seconds by simply publishing it on YouTube or their own website. If a person wants to self-develop and distribute revenue stamps content; they can do exactly what you have done with your site. The access and delivery process is the same for any type of content.
Don

I got an emailed adlet this morning from Gibbons offering 30% off selected items, including 'Stamp Albums'. I clicked on the link and found a listing of close out catalogs. The term 'albums' was used more than once in the ad to denote catalogs.

Gibbons has had this issue for years. People I assume are well paid, writing the ad copy and making decisions about their stamp operations who don't know smack what they are doing. In itself it is not a big deal but seen in context it suggests this is a company ignoring their stamp division in favor of 'investment collectibles'. It also makes me wonder if they know smack about those as well.