dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) (04/10/91)
In article <1061@pallas.athenanet.com> wally@pallas.athenanet.com (Wally Hartshorn) writes: >I'm perfectly willing to pay good money for a good technical magazine. I Me, too. >What I'm not willing to pay for is a disk that I don't want. The first >AmigaWorld Tech disk, for instance, contained a PD C compiler (which I >don't want, since I already have Manx), a demo of PowerWindows (which I >don't want, since I already have the real thing), ParNet (which I don't >need), and SerNet (ditto). That's 500K right there that's a total waste >for me. [...] $16/copy, including the disk [...] You know, it wouldn't be nearly so bad if including a disk with a magazine wasn't automatic justification for doubling (or tripling!) the cover price. I mean, what gives? You've got your typical Ami-Mag (sans disk) which sells for $4 or $5. Mailing a disk in a mailer costs ~$.75, and magazines can buy enough disks to get a nice bulk discount. So say $1.75 additional cost for the disk plus extra shipping. Now, the few disk magazines I've bought contained almost entirely PD software, which means perhaps a bit of money to download or whatever, but that's a 1-time cost, and spread out over a lot of disks, the software should be virtually free. So what you've got is a $2 additional expense to producing and delivering the magazine, but a $5 to $6 hike in the cover price. Now, I suppose if I didn't have a modem and access to lots of nice BBS's locally and around the country, this might not seem like a rip-off. On the other hand, when you can get yourself a 2400 baud modem for the price of 10 of these disk magazines, you really gotta wonder. Personally, I'm not interested in paying $10 for software I can get for free (or quite cheaply) with my modem. Follow ups to c.s.a.advocacy. -- Dave Schaumann | dave@cs.arizona.edu | Short .sig's rule!
elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM (Eric Lee Green) (04/12/91)
From article <1366@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>, by dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann): > So what you've got is a $2 additional expense to producing and delivering > the magazine, but a $5 to $6 hike in the cover price. Now, I suppose if > I didn't have a modem and access to lots of nice BBS's locally and around > the country, this might not seem like a rip-off. Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account the Neanderthalic state of the publishing industry in the United States. "Computer? What's that?" They don't know how many they've sold until months after they're out the door, they don't know how much money they have in the bank for months because returns start dribbling in from retailers for quite some time, only 40% of the magazines sent to retailers are ever sold (i.e., $4 more in the cover price for a $2 disk) and then retailers want a percent of the profit too. $5 or $6 hike in cover price is pretty decent for a $2 disk, if the magazine is sold retail, considering that if they printed up 40,000 of these things they just sunk $80,000 into the venture that will have to be financed at 10-15% interest for the next four months. Now, for subscribers, I agree. $5 or $6 is outrageous. -- Eric Lee Green (318) 984-1820 P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM uunet!mjbtn!raider!elgamy!elg Looking for a job... tips, leads appreciated... inquire within...