# Cost of Magazine subscriptions.. why higher then print ??



## Bob327 (Nov 17, 2011)

The only magazine that I have subscribed to so far is Sports Illustrated which cost me nothing as I am a print subscriber 

BUT is it common to have to pay more for digital then for print

I just received an offer for Car and Driver for all of $8.00 a year for the  Print edition....

Zaino or whatever their name is wants $12.00 a year for the digital edition only 

And Amazons Newsstand wants $1.99 PER Issue..no offer for a yearly subscription that I saw....

Guess who ordered the print edition 

Bob G


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## FloridaFire (Nov 21, 2011)

I was wondering that myself. I got several offers for many different mag titles.. all for $5 each. But the e-subs? Much higher.

Just curious, that's a vette in your av, right? What year? 60s?


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## Bob327 (Nov 17, 2011)

Linda:

That one is 1964  365HP Rarest Color sold in 64 &  .. 99.5 percent "correct" Originally ordered in Saigon and I have all the original paper work ... BTW it originally sold for $3400.00 and was delivered In North Carolina 
  
One of 6 Corvettes I have in the garage (Old Boys must have their toys) 

Bob G


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## FloridaFire (Nov 21, 2011)

Love the car and love the back-story!

I've owned a few corvettes in my time (I still do) and they've always fascinated me. I had a '64 convertible, 327 cu. in. 365hp in Riverside Red with the separate auxiliary hardtop (used to hang from the ceiling in the garage). Original everything, down to the cast aluminum knock-off wheels. Very sweet car 

Would love to hear about the other ones you have...

Staying on topic, I just saw Kindle Fire owners get an exclusive "90-Day Free Trial on Select Premier Magazines". Might be worth looking into?

http://tinyurl.com/c8lztzu


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## Malweth (Oct 18, 2009)

This is just a conjecture on my part:

The list price for a print magazine could be $30-40/yr and the cover price $100 or more. That's beside the fact that nobody in their right mind pays list price. Meanwhile, the list price for an e-magazine could be $10-15... or even the same $30+. 

To the publisher, it looks like $2/issue is a big savings off the $5-10/issue cover price, just as $12/yr is a fraction of the print list price.

In other words, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.


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## Meemo (Oct 27, 2008)

I've noticed that the prices of subscriptions to print magazines have dropped dramatically for the past 2-3 years - I got subscriptions just because they were so ridiculously cheap.  I'd dropped my last subscription, to Southern Living magazine, a few months ago - have subscribed for years and years, but found I just wasn't reading them as much, and they'd gone to a new format that I wasn't loving.  They offered me a "we want you back" price that I couldn't refuse - 2 years for 83 cents/issue.  (And now there's an app for iPad & Fire for print subscribers - so I'm happy I didn't refuse.)

I suspect people just don't subscribe to the print mags like they used to, so the publishers have dropped the prices.  And they hope people will pay more for the convenience of digital.

With Zinio, though, I wait to get some "Zinio dollars/bucks/cash/whatever" - they occasionally send credits and I've got a couple of subscriptions that ended up costing me $3 each for a year because of those credits.  And I read some of the freebies they put on the app.  Mostly, I find that those digital magazines languish waiting for me to get around to them, much like the print ones.  But that's a personal problem......


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## fuschiahedgehog (Feb 23, 2010)

Some of the e-reader versions don't have the ads that are shown in the print editions - perhaps this is why the price is higher?


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## mom133d (aka Liz) (Nov 25, 2008)

I'm annoyed with the magazines that want to charge you for both. Martha Stewart Living started out this way. The app was free, but you paid $3 for a digital copy, even as a print subscriber.

And then there are the magazines that only offer the digital to print subscribers. I want to get rid of the paper in the house!


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## BluesGuy (Dec 10, 2011)

Meh.....if I want to read a magazine I'll do it at the doctors office...............heh


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## CrystalStarr (Jan 17, 2011)

I too am aggravated by the magazines that only offer digital subscriptions to print subscribers. I stopped subscribing to magazines a while back because of the mess they made in the house and since I rarely thought to take them with me I didn't read them as I should.  

I know I'd read them on my Fire. But I refuse to accept the paper subscription. Hopefully they'll learn some day.


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## jbcohen (Jul 29, 2011)

Here is what I have been told: the trouble is that some companies think of electronic publishing as a fourth step in the publication process. They have simply taken their old processes and added the electronic publishing on the back of the older processes and as such electronic publishing represents an added step and additional labor needed to create the digital edition and as such warrants a higher price. Now what more tech savy companies (such a the Wall Street Journal) have done is that they recognize that digital publication does not represent an additional step in the publication process rather an earlier step in the publication process. They take the draft copy that they need to create anyway before it is sent to the presses for printing and publication and format that into kindle, apple and what ever format they need. As such the digital publication does not represent an extra step, rather it represents an earlier step in the publication process and as such does not warrant a higher price rather a lower price then the printed edition does. The trouble is not that they are attempting to kill the digital revolution its that they have not figured out how to make use of the digital technology and how to properly produce a digital edition. I think that you will find that technology publications and some financial publications will have a better handle on the publication process than others do. I will shortly be turning my wall street journal subscription over to the digital edition since it a) costs less in digital form and 2) its a whole lot easier to carry around and find in the morning then the printed edition is. I also tend to like more technologically advanced thing better than the 20th century equivalent.



FloridaFire said:


> I was wondering that myself. I got several offers for many different mag titles.. all for $5 each. But the e-subs? Much higher.
> 
> Just curious, that's a vette in your av, right? What year? 60s?


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## FloridaFire (Nov 21, 2011)

jbcohen said:


> Here is what I have been told: the trouble is that some companies think of electronic publishing as a fourth step in the publication process. They have simply taken their old processes and added the electronic publishing on the back of the older processes and as such electronic publishing represents an added step and additional labor needed to create the digital edition and as such warrants a higher price. Now what more tech savy companies (such a the Wall Street Journal) have done is that they recognize that digital publication does not represent an additional step in the publication process rather an earlier step in the publication process. They take the draft copy that they need to create anyway before it is sent to the presses for printing and publication and format that into kindle, apple and what ever format they need. As such the digital publication does not represent an extra step, rather it represents an earlier step in the publication process and as such does not warrant a higher price rather a lower price then the printed edition does. The trouble is not that they are attempting to kill the digital revolution its that they have not figured out how to make use of the digital technology and how to properly produce a digital edition. I think that you will find that technology publications and some financial publications will have a better handle on the publication process than others do. I will shortly be turning my wall street journal subscription over to the digital edition since it a) costs less in digital form and 2) its a whole lot easier to carry around and find in the morning then the printed edition is. I also tend to like more technologically advanced thing better than the 20th century equivalent.


Great post, thanks for sharing your knowledge  I'm probably one of the few people (in fact, I just might the only person), who still prefers printed books, magazines, etc. over the electronic editions. Most of my magazines, (ok, confession time.. *all* of my magazines) are cooking related. When I'm in the kitchen, I don't want my fire around where I'm cooking (splashes, spills, what have you).


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## jbcohen (Jul 29, 2011)

An old pal of mine likes to be a 21st century mom and she has taken a rather different tact to cooking.  She has gotten rid of all her cookbooks and instead parks her kindle fire in the kitchen when she is cooking, she web surfs to the recipe that she is going to make and looks at the screen occasionally as she cooks.  She says that it has several advantages: first is that it takes up less shelf space since her old cook books are gone and the one fire gets her access to a lot more recipes then the older cookbooks ever did.  Second: she has access to a lot more recpies then the old cookbooks ever could possibly given her.  Lastly, adding additional recpies costs $0, far less then the cost of the old cookbooks.  And its all thanks to, she says. the information superhighway.


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## FloridaFire (Nov 21, 2011)

I surf the net for recipes that I want to make, print them out.. and cook  I make notes on the paper and then, after the meal is done, decide if I want to keep it or not (depending on my notes). 

I adore my hardbound cookbooks and treasure them. Many of them are signed by the chefs who wrote them.


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