LEADING EDGE
WIL BYERS
H
ello. It has been seven months since the last issue of this now-digital rag was published. Much has happened in RC circles since our last issue. Additionally, the news has been filled with the changes in all the social media channels, which has over the previous few years had such an impact on Kiona Publishing, Inc. For me, it feels as if events in publishing are changing almost at light speed—some for the better and some for the worse. Oddly, finishing this issue reminded me of when the magazine was just starting—way back in 1994. At its launch—then titled Scale, Slope & FAI—we had no advertisers! It was launched as a quarterly publication, which I funded—no bank loans or such. At that point in time, I was crazy mad for the hobby and didn’t have a clue as to what it costs to publish magazines. Unfortunately, as a result, 1,000 copies cost me $5,500 in printing alone. Don’t even say a word about getting estimates. I absolutely don’t want to relive it. I was merely following the lead of someone I thought knew the business. As you can well imagine, at the time that money would have bought me a beautiful model and RC gear. Let’s just say the first issue was a serious learning experience. By the second issue, we were starting to understand the publishing business a bit more. Even so, we were burning thru cash because the printer was not well suited to producing magazines. Fortunately, however, Rick Stephens along with Eric Meyers of Horizon Hobby stepped in and bought a page of advertising. It was a massive vote of confidence for our title, which by then had changed its name to Sailplane Modeler. It is worth noting that neither Rick or Eric asked a word about how many copies of the magazine we were being produced and distributed. Rather, reflecting on it now, it seems that Horizon Hobby just wanted to help us promote our facet of the hobby, while at the same time developing their brand within the niche. How big was it? It was HUGE! Current Affairs Knowing where to start with respect to Kiona Publishing, Inc. and RC Flyer News at this juncture is like picking up lead bb shot ballast that’s dropped on the workshop floor. So much has happened in the last year or so that it is literally overwhelming—if not entirely taxing. So, I’ll pick up with the first bb in January 2018 and review to date. There was a time once when our pages were filled with advertisers. As of January 2018 it is not the case anymore, as most in the RC industry have turned to online social media channels as their new-found, resplendent marketing tool. As a result of the loss in ad revenue, RC Flyer News has had to scrutinize its future business model. There has been some serious number crunching going on, as well as soul searching for me. Understand that RC airplanes has been and remains my passion. I’ve pretty much dedicated my life to it since about 1980. This became especially true when
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RC FLYER NEWS • Sept/Oct 2018
the company was a DBA in 1994 and incorporated in 1998. It was a bit more challenging to maintain my passion when I was forced to buy out my partner in the year 2000, with the company’s debt approaching $300,000—that was a burden for a small publisher with only one title in its queue. No matter, I was confident we could grow the company because we were leading in the area of quiet flight, had a pretty good website, and we had advertisers searching us out, rather than the other way around. Consequently, my passionate remained high pretty much thru the 2000s because hardcopy publishing was dominant and we’d paid down our debt. Then on April 3, 2010, Apple introduced the muchtouted iPad. Apple promised publishers and readers they would love content and presentation delivered by a tablet. They also pledged publishers their lives would be rosy and filled with profits. They said this at pretty much the same time they refused to share subscriber data with those publishers that adopted their digital distribution platform. Recognize that subscriber data is extremely valuable to publishers because it can be used to offer “premiums” to the subscribers, which obviously helps the publishers’ bottom lines. Suffice it to say, publishers like Kiona—that spent significantly to create user-friendly iPad apps—pretty much took it in the shorts because all was not what it was promised. Furthermore, during this metamorphosis, industry marketing managers the world over became convinced that hardcopy magazines had gone the way of the dinosaurs. So they pulled in their advertising dollars. They then opted to spend those dollars on social media channels they deemed revenue generators. Over the last months I’ve found it oddly amusing—if not sadly so—to see Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Google admit that their advertisement statistics were manipulated by Internet bots. Sometimes they even just used estimations or guesses based on regional demographics to predict clicks and views. Note bots are applications designed to perform automated tasks, such as viewing a web page or online advertisement, or for that matter answering an online question. It is not, however, a human interaction. Think about that for a minute concerning losses to publishers of magazine advertisement purchases by marketers. It feels similar to fraud to me! Regardless, the results of this paradigm shift in product marketing have been disastrous for those of us that were publishing hardcopy. The lack of ad revenue has even transitioned into our digital publications. The result is that many publishers have merely chosen to close the doors because they could not compete with the digital elephants on the block. I’ve been contemplating the results of these changes as to how they have impacted RC media distribution and marketing. The 64-dollar question is if the changes in media consumption, distribution, and ad sales have contributed to the negative impacts of the RC industry. I’ve pondered, is this one of the contributing factors in the demise of companies like Great Planes/Hobbico, and to the other RC companies that have either downsized or opted to go out of business? Maybe it is a generational change as I’ve heard over and twitter.com/rcflyernews
