April, 2010

A letter to our subscribers

Many of you are wondering what has happened to Extra 2200 South. While you may not have heard from us we have actually been very busy.

The first thing we should tell everyone is that Dick Will, who has been our associate editor and one of our hardest working staff members, is in failing health and has been in no position to continue helping with the magazine for the better part of the past two years. His name on the masthead of Extra 2200 South will continue as an honorary position in appreciation of his hard work over the years.

Over the past several years we have noticed gradual but pronounced changes taking place. Our costs of doing business have risen dramatically. Our revenue has not. Since we took over Extra 2200 South in 1991 the number of dealers handling our magazine has dropped dramatically. In some cases we have cut off dealers because they failed to keep their accounts current. In other cases the dealers closed up shop and retired, simply went out of business, or were forced into bankruptcy. The circulation figures for our dealer network were slowly declining. Most of our dealers paid their accounts on time but we were spending more and more time chasing down delinquent accounts, often from the same dealers.

As dealer sales were declining so were subscription renewals, a situation other publishers report as well. This is the result of fewer and fewer people entering one of the railroading hobbies and/or taking an interest in trains. Many older people that were involved in one or both are less active than they were in the past and there are fewer and fewer young people taking their place. It has become harder and harder to effectively advertise and attract new subscribers, new readers and new dealers. Most of the places where we could advertise only worked well for items that attracted a high volume of sales and we noticed that ads we did place seldom recouped the cost of the ad itself.

One of the worst moves we ever made was changing from mailing renewal notices to including renewal information on the cover sheet with the magazine. Almost immediately we noticed a major drop in subscription renewals and an increase in the number of phone calls, letters and emails from subscribers wondering why they did not get the last issue. We also experienced the opposite, some subscribers read it and sent in a renewal every time. We talked to other publishers and almost every one had the same experience when they tried to combine the cover sheet and the renewal notice. The object was to save us (and you) money and time as it is very time consuming to prepare and mail renewal notices.

Other costs of doing business have been ever increasing as well. The cost of paper has been escalating, we would often be notified of several paper price increases from one issue to the next. Postage rates have been steadily rising also. These are costs over which we have little or no control and they often have risen faster than we could adjust our subscription rates. Additionally the company that was doing our printing has closed their department that did all of the pre-press work.

The end result is we need to do something. After a very long and careful deliberation and discussion we have decided we have no choice but to go on-line with the magazine. It has taken us far longer than we ever expected to make the transition. We expected it would take about three months, instead it has taken about a year and a half. Some of the delay was getting our domain name transfered from the hosting company where the site was located. Once that was accomplished things have progressed at a fairly reasonable pace with a few bumps along the way.

In digital form the magazine will be posted to our website and subscribers will receive an email when new issues are available. Each subscriber will have their own account and password for accessing the website. We plan to accommodate subscribers who do not have a computer or internet access by making a limited number of hard copies available using the print-on-demand printing process.

In the long run the subscription cost for those taking the magazine electronically will likely go down, and for those who requre a hard copy it will likely go up. We will only print enough hard copies by the print-on-demand process as are needed for those who want a hard copy. We will adjust our subscription rates and everyone's subscription expiry date after we get the first issue out and we have a better idea what our costs will be.

The result is that we will not be able to supply our dealer network with a printed magazine anymore. The only printed copies will be the print-on-demand version for subscribers who want or need a paper copy. This will also mean we will not have to spend a disproportionate amount of our time chasing down delinquent dealers who are slow or do not want to pay their bills.

THIS NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS ARE VERY IMPORTANT. PLEASE READ AND ACT ACCORDINGLY

We need to know if you prefer your subscription to be for the digital or print version of the magazine. We also need to every subscriber's email address in order to set up your account on our web site. If you do not have an email address or access to email then we need to know that as well. It is imperative that you send us this information as soon as possible. If you do not then you will not be able to get the next issue. Once we know how many people require hard copies we can finalize the arrangements to have a proper number printed.

Please do not phone it in to us. We also have a full time job and are often not in the office during the day.

You can provide us you email address or say that you will require a hard copy by:

Fax (778-737-3508)
Email (extra2200south@shaw.ca)
Postal mail at our regular mailing addresses

 

The change to an electornic format will have many positive results. We will be able to get an issue out much quicker -- with a print magazine it would often take as long as a month from the time we sent an issue to the printer until subscribers would receive it. We will now be able to "publish" an issue with the news being as fresh as same day. We will also be able to include more photographs and place them better. Most importantly we will be able to get an issue out more frequently than in the past as there will be far less preparation time. As we now have our own scanning equipment we will be doing our own photograph scanning and layout work.

Making the magazine electronic will offer new possibilities. We are looking at creating a blog or something similar to allow us to keep in touch with subscribers and other ways for people to keep in touch with us. The possibilities are nearly endless. We may eventually be able to keep a running index on the web page so articles and features can be located quickly. Features that are regularly updated could be separated from the regular issue and up dated separately so much of the material does not have to be repeated each time.

All of this will not happen overnight. As we gain experience doing things this new way we will be able to introduce more improvements. We should be able to spend more and more time actually working on the magazine, or things directly related to it, rather than administrative and other time consuming administrative or beaurocratic matters. This is still largely a one man effort but we should be able to spend more time doing productive things.

Doug Cummings
Publisher, Extra 2200 South