Do you support shutting down the RAA magazine?

[fly_tornado]

So I have come up with 7 possible directions to take a monthly magazine. There are some other options we can look at.

 

If you feel like you think there is another direction we can go, say so below...

 

 

[fly_tornado]

The problem I have with the "I don't have internet access" argument is that it doesn't wash much anymore, especially when we are having the argument online. Old people can get free internet @ the local library, with training and staff that are geared to answering basic questions. And yes they can print out pages at most libraries

 

 

[kgwilson]

I like getting my Mag each month even if it is late. I can browse through it at any tim e without having to log in etc. Its Good. leave it as is.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Another question I should have put in there but perhaps is better served as a discussion, if the mag went online, how much would you pay a year to have a printed copy?

 

 

[fly_tornado]

So shall we slug them $120 pa for a print copy?

 

 

[Tomo]

I wouldn't read it if it's online.

 

Nothing better than sitting in the lounge in front of the fire, reading a book, at your own pace etc... even now I hate being on the computer to much as it's just not a relaxing thing. If there is something on the net that is lengthy to read I print it off.

 

On the side of costs... it's nothing, in some cases a years membership is less than an hours aircraft hire.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

so you are happy to pay say $365 pa for the luxury of being able to read at your leisure?

 

 

[fly_tornado]

To give you an idea of how much it would cost to host it online.

 

Say 10,000 downloads per month. magazine is 50mbytes, total data is 500,000Mbytes or 0.5Gbytes.

 

If you hosted on a US content delivery network labout 19 cents a Gbyte

 

or

 

free on amazon http://aws.amazon.com/free/

 

This reduces the cost of the magazine quiet significantly

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Well, the annual fee at the moment is only $185 for the certificate and everything it comes with, including the magazine subscription. Yes, I am happy to pay that.

so if you have the option of not taking the magazine and getting say a $120 discount on your cert every year would you be interested?

 

ie your cert is $65 and your mag $120 same price you pay now but for me its going to be a lot cheaper, ie $65?

 

 

[Tomo]

so you are happy to pay say $365 pa for the luxury of being able to read at your leisure?

$365 is a bit rich, if it got to that I may as well not be an RAA member! I'm happy paying the $180 or whatever it is, yes.

 

Either way, if it was online I wouldn't bother reading it.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

but what if $365 gets you a big glossy magazine in that larger size that fashion magazines come in with slightly larger font so that you can read it easily by camp fire and has lots of pictures of planes?

 

$365 is still only $1 a day and less than an hour in a decent GA plane

 

 

[Turnerj]

Where did you get $365 from?

 

The magazine is fine, leave it alone

 

 

[winsor68]

I like reading any Aviation Magazine... Online doesn't really do it for me. But I think we should let it sink or swim... If I choose the option of a subscription with my membership it should cost less then the general public not more...

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Where did you get $365 from?The magazine is fine, leave it alone

I just picked the figure of $1 a day or $7 a week or $14 a fortnight.

 

What I wanted to know is if the RAA produced a premium "heirloom quality" magazine would tomo buy it. Considering its so attractively priced!

 

Is there demand for a better magazine ie add in more articles, improve the print quality, pretty pictures, larger format, maybe include a DVD every now and again. So you have something to leave on the coffee table to impress the neighbours with.

 

No one has asked the question

 

 

[Chris Tarran]

I think the magazine is OK and hopefully will improve as promised by the publisher. I am happy to wait and see. Even though I read lots on line (including this forum) I like reading a magazine or book and you can't beat the print format for portability. (I can read it on the loo in a free moment , one of life's little pleasures)

 

One of the goals of the magazine is to have it be attractive to people who might browse it in a newsagent and consider becoming Rec pilots or getting involved in some way. I think this is a valid goal for the magazine.

 

Hopefully the new publisher will be able to sell plenty of advertising negating most or all of the cost of production.

 

Cheers

 

Chris

 

 

[facthunter]

Research has shown that provided the price is not set substantially above the comparable articles, the sales are not particularly price sensitive. At this stage the plan was to upgrade and improve the magazine, over time and assess. After 2 prints only, surely it is a bit much to be proposing to "dump" the magazine.

 

Lots of older people are not impressed with the view that they should go online for everything. It can be a pretty daunting thing for some and can waste a lot of time.

 

From what I have seen, the board have approached, and dealt with this matter in a proper, thorough and timely way. Nothing is set in concrete, but give it a chance. Everyone concerned knows it is a hard world out there on the magazine stands. To be talking of quitting the printed form at this stage is unnecessary. IF I was an advertiser, I would have to wonder?

 

Personally, I would be prepared to subsidise the non digital members and the magazine on the stands, whilever there was a perceived benefit in recrecruiting new members. I would also feel very uncomfortable about leaving the noncomputer people who are some of our members stranded.

 

There is an official need to provide members with operational information from time to time and the magazine currently serves this function.

 

Nobody really knows the final precise cost of the magazine as it has not settled down since the revamp. As it WAS, it was going noplace. The general view seems to be of approval and it should only get better. Nev

 

 

[Tomo]

I just picked the figure of $1 a day or $7 a week or $14 a fortnight.What I wanted to know is if the RAA produced a premium "heirloom quality" magazine would tomo buy it. Considering its so attractively priced!

 

Is there demand for a better magazine ie add in more articles, improve the print quality, pretty pictures, larger format, maybe include a DVD every now and again. So you have something to leave on the coffee table to impress the neighbours with.

 

No one has asked the question

If it was a good price, I probably would... though for me it depends on the quality of the articles, not necessarily the flashiness of the cosmetics, though that does help entice readers, it doesn't make the quality of the contents of the magazine.

 

A hard copy is good to get new people to the sport, or recreation (whatever floats your boat). It's actually how I found out about Recreational Aviation in the first place, having bought a copy of the mag (due to some article that I found interesting), then coming across the add for this forum... and there you go. If it was on the internet in download format only, would I have had that exposure? Highly unlikely.

 

The CASA Flight Safety magazine is available for download, but I much prefer reading my copy that comes in the mail. Maybe have the two options, those that want a hard copy, and those that would prefer download. And vary the member costs to suit... just a thought.

 

Lowness of production costs is in numbers... the bigger the number the cheaper it is per copy.

 

Members would get their magazine cheaper than the newsagent stand costs I would have thought, because us members get ours posted to us (not a cheap exercise in itself) and we pay the same as the news stands as far as I'm aware, Including postage. It needs to be cheap for people to buy. Profit is in quantity sold.

 

Anyway, just a few of my thoughts...

 

 

[Yenn]

Ilike the magazine. Ifind it useful to be able to look at back copies, particularly for advert fo something I don't often require. Most organisations like RAAus have amagazine and I get one that is not as good as ours.

 

It seems to me that there are a few people who inhabit this site that have a main agenda of knocking the RAAus. If they can come up with constructive criticism, all well and good, but it doesn't appear that way to me.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I think we are in a transition phase.

 

I have previously much preferred hard to read and absorb, but realised with some surprise that not only had I developed a habit of skimming through the City paper early each morning, but was also boning up on local activities by reading the three local papers each week, which were not available in hard copy in my area.

 

I read a heap of books, but recognise that I'll be transitioning to IPAD/Kindle within the next year or so, because I can then just download a book if I'm caught in a hotel/airport etc interstate or overseas.

 

Things are moving so fast that today as I mentioned the dailies are available online in Australia, but have progressed so much faster in the UK, that when I tried to get online with the London Times this week I was asked to register at a cost of a pound upwards.

 

So the big picture is we are transiting very fast from print media to electronic and a Kindle with 3G is easy for even elderly people to operate let alone Facthunter's multi-BILLIONAIRES who fly aircraft.

 

That's the big picture

 

On the RAA scene the financial reports indicate that the RAA magazine is not costed separately (eg salaries expended in managing, preparing writing etc), so we don' really have a clue what it costs, which is not good management practice and something for the new board members to get their teeth into.

 

Its viability really depends on (a) what the members are willing to pay out of their subscriptions, how much revenue is raised from advertising, and what the costs are.

 

If those things form a reasonable balance there's no reason to close it down. If the cost per member rises to the point where we could better spend our money in attracting new members elsewhere, different story, but we should also keep an eye to the big picture change which is already seeing traditional book sellers and newsagents closing down in favour of smaller operations with a narrower selection of product suited to a wider audience (= social mags, more women=more profit). So a major factor could actually be trying to keep enough sales outlets.

 

 

[Guest turnbase]

Having worked in the publishing industry for some years now there are two things that dictate what a good readership responds to. Good quality content with a sound knowledge base.

 

The best editors that I've ever worked for were the ones that breathed the subject matter and had a very good knowledge base to call upon when sub editing the stories. The problem with industry based publishing is that this knowledge base is one of publishing and journalism and not for arguments sake aviation. What pains me is that we are now going down similar paths where articles are submitted and while they might be of good journalistic content they suffer from the fine points and lack depth of knowledge. Thereby making the job all the more tiresome when deadlines loom.

 

Most publishers now are relying on the advertising dollar to cover their costs rather than the dwindling readership, but as they say you get what you paid for so only time will tell.

 

So how does this effect our own little title. How can we help out . Well why not start submitting more readily available content that we all seem to be wanting. Get off the couch and put pen to paper and start submitting the type of articles that you want to read. This would make the publishers more able to fill the sheet with great stories of why we all love aviation.

 

I'm sure there a plenty of forumites that would be clearly capable (from the posts that I've read) of turning the magazine around, rather than just complain.

 

By the way this is not meant to be a rant but rather an observation.

 

 

[winsor68]

Tornado... Step away from the Poll button nice and slowly... Now turn around and place your hands against the wall... lol

 

 

[fly_tornado]

I tend to agree as most people have chosen the option of "do nothing". Its easy for a you old guys, if the RAA falls into a heap you can go back to GA or retire and look back on 20 yrs in the air.

 

Look @ how many people want the magazine to be funded correctly

 

 

[turboplanner]

I tend to agree as most people have chosen the option of "do nothing". Its easy for a you old guys, if the RAA falls into a heap you can go back to GA or retire and look back on 20 yrs in the air.Look @ how many people want the magazine to be funded correctly

Back to your homework then

 

 

[Tomo]

Its easy for a you old guys

This age things is creeping onto me... I'll be 20 in three months!

 

Sorry tornado, just playing around

 

 

[fly_tornado]

20 yrs ago when you where born, there was no internet, you had 4 TV channels, you would go to a shopping center on a Saturday morning and the Newsagency was crammed with people buying magazines. You where literally elbow to elbow or reaching over people to get to a magazine racks. If it wasn't for gambling economy now most newsagents would have gone bust in 1999.

 

The core problem with a magazine is, no matter how outstanding, people simply don't go into newsagents anymore, certainly not the sort of people that can afford to put down $125K on a weekend toy.