AU Tiger
I'm one of the Scale Auto Enthusiast subscribers that was moved over to Fine Scale Modeler for the balance of my subscription when SAE was discontinued. I decided to give FSM a chance, hoping much of the SAE content might show up here. I am disappointed to say it hasn't.
My subscription expires with the May/June issue of FSM, and I won't be renewing. There's simply not enough car model content for me to continue subscribing to this magazine.
Hi AU Tiger,
As I have posted elsewhere and said in numerous conversations with former Scale Auto subscribers, closing Scale Auto (SCA) was a painful experience for us all. It was my pleasure to serve as editor of Scale Auto magazine, and I could not have ever dreamed of having a more ardently loyal readership. However, publishing is a business, and Scale Auto's numbers could not sustain the cost of producing it.
I fought hard to make sure that content that appeared in SCA would be part of the mix in FineScale Modeler (FSM). We continue to work with scale model journalists familiar to SCA readers like Tim Boyd, Jeff Bloomhuff, Tom Valenta, Mike Klessig, and more. We continue to support NNL model shows as well as model car shows in general and publish Contest Cars (the pandemic made CC 2022 a challenge, but we did it and CC 2023 is shaping up nicely).
There seemed to be a sense that we were going to make half of every FSM issue a car story. Publishing is a business, and that was not ever a possibility. Cars are included as part of the mix, no more or less important than any of the other topics we cover, whether it be tanks, planes, or sci-fi and fantasy. Scale modeling is a continuum: Skills and techniques can be used across multiple topics. In fact, I used a painting and finishing technique I learned from car modelers on an R2-D2 model over the weekend.
All of this is to offer some context and to say that I'm sorry to see you (and anyone else with similar feelings) go, and I'm sorry that FSM isn't able to meet your interests or needs as a scale modeling resource. We can't meet everyone's expectations all the time, though we do try. However, we will continue to work with our contributors to present a broad range of topics that interest a wide audience and champion scale modeling, as we always have.
I'll leave you with words written by FSM founding editor Bob Hayden in his November/December 1985 Editor's Note: "[FSM] is, first and foremost, about modeling techniques, but sometimes this isn't as obvious as I'd like it to be. We ask FSM authors ... to orient their articles toward modeling methods, and to explain those methods in paintstaking, step-by-step detail. We edit with the same thing in mind, often eliminating pages of background on the real thing in favor of keeping every scrap of how-to modeling information.
"Many readers have told me that they notice this, and they often learn as much from an article on a subject they have no interest in as they do from something right up their alley. One reader reported finding over a dozen useful hints and tips in a single feature!
"[Read] one of the articles that falls outside your main areas of interest. See if the author has a trick you can put to work in your modeling."
Editorially, we think Bob had it right.
Stay well and keep building models,
TK
PS. On a related topic, before someone jumps in here to say cars were never part of FSM's portfolio before SCA closed and don't belong, that is simply untrue. A tour of past FSM issues, particularly before Kalmbach purchased SCA, will demonstrate the inaccuracy of the claim. It was an editorial choice to minimize the presence of car models in FSM once SCA went from compeitor to sister brand in order not to cannibalize the audiences. Obviously, painfully for many like AU Tiger, SCA is no longer a going concern. However, cars (bikes, trucks, etc.) are here to stay, as are sci-fi and fantasy, along with military and commercial subjects.