Books, Magazines & eZines

Whether you publish a print publication or an eZine (either free or pay-subscription), if it's to do with the model, toy or collecting world, Toy Collector's tools and platform can be a huge help to you. Now, we're able to assist book publishers too!

We've recently begun serialising Barney Brown's book Introduction to Britains Plastic Farm Models in blog form. In this case, we're featuring the entire book, but we can also publish excerpts or shortened chapters to publicise books that are in print. We've also worked with publishers The Crowood Press and Ebury Publishing to publicise their new titles via Prize Draws.

If you're a free eZine, why not consider moving into blog format and using Toy Collector's blogging platform to do it?

Leading diecast eZine Tales of Toy Cars has just made the switch from its old Web 1.0 format to blog using the Toy Collector platform. Blogging allows for easier upload, rolling updates (no more waiting for "one new issue a month" when you put up new articles easily and quickly anytime!) and much easier interaction with your readers through the comments section and forums, as well as easier edits post-upload.

For paid-subscription eZines or printed publications, why not consider using the blogging platform to advertise your content by posting old articles, or abbreviated versions of upcoming ones? Readers like nothing better than to see what they'll be getting before they buy.

Whatever your publication format, you can use our profiles to tell the collecting world all about you, your publication and what you write about - and if you sell subscriptions or single issues, you can link to your own site from your profile, your blog and an entry in our Yellow Pages directory section, to allow easy purchasing.

All publications using the Toy Collector blogging platform get their own site section, like that of Tales of Toy Cars and the new Dinky Toys Blog, and can use their own branding and logos (among our future site updates is the implementation of functionality to make the site's look even more customizable). If you have a recognisable URL you'd like to keep, we can easily set it up to forward to your Toy Collector blog. And, of course, you can enter yourself into ToyPedia!

In addition, you can take advantage of other site features like the Galleries, where you can build your own image libraries, Competitions, where you can use our easy-to-use voting software to host your publication's contests and the Event Calendar to promote your real-world or online events.

Lastly, if your publication appears on Issuu, we can now syndicate it in our hosted e-publications section.

Clubs, Groups & Forums

Shortly, we plan to launch our Groups Section, which will allow users to create their own Special Interest Groups. For publications, this will mean you can set one up for your readers to join, but if you aren't a publication and currently have a club, eGroup on a service like Yahoo! or run an existing forum, this platform will offer you more fun and functionality than any of those!

You'll be able to select your desired level of security settings, so you can either allow free and easy joining of your group, or restrict membership as you like. You'll also get your own internal forum, use the Competitions section to run your competitions (the specialised voting software makes it far easier to rank entries than in a forum or similar), can update the sections of ToyPedia relevant to your group (and add an entry for yourselves, of course!). You can also set up a group blog to which members can contribute or which mods can simply use to keep everyone up to date.

The member profiles and connections system will make it easy for your members to find each other and let everyone know what they're into, while the private messaging system lets you keep in touch privately with ease.

The Bayko Collectors Club have already moved onto the site in advance of the new functionality and are making use of the existing forum and profiles. You can see their profile and their general-area forum here.

And if you currently print a newsletter, why not consider moving it to blog format and attracting new members through websearch, just as The One True Scale 1:200 Model Aircraft Collectors have done here.