BillW@SRI-KL.ARPA (09/11/84)
From: William Chops Westfield <BillW@SRI-KL.ARPA> There was a recent NYT newswire article about this. (which I cant remail due to copyright restrictions). Basically there is currently a major shakedown going on in the computer magazine publishing industry. There are just too many damned magazines (estimates run about 200 seperate mags) to attract enough advertizing dollars to each one to allow them to remain in business. Some magazines have circulations of less than 1000, most are losing money. Experts agree that at least a dozen computer magazines will survive (6%). For example, BYTE is doing quite well. BillW
ROBINSON@SRI-AI.ARPA (09/11/84)
BillW: As opposed to newsletters which are doing quite handsomely. -------
BILLW@SRI-KL.ARPA (09/11/84)
Certainly - as long as there is no need to make a profit, you can probably publish anything you want. A magazine's production and shipping costs can usually be paid just out of subscriber revenue. The higher costs occur when you have to do fancier printing, and paying authors and such. in a newsletter, most of the authors are volunteers, printing costs are minimal, and postage is typically $.20 per issue. Note that computer based communications (including especially USENet, but also ARPA/DDN, CBBS, and RCPM systems) are also doing very nicely, much to the detriment of available disk space. BillW PS: Quite a bit of this data comes from Jerry Pournelles talks at a recent SF Con. SF magazines aren't doing so good either.