There’s some great conversation going on over at the Tor site about magazine models again. John Klima is tackling the whole print vs. electronic delimma.
Personally, I think if you can do print, do it. But electronic editions should be a given. It costs maybe an hour of your time to take your files and convert them into the popular formats. There are websites that do it for you. If anyone wants to know about those, I’ll dig up the links.
Cory Doctorow has talked about this in the past, and I agree with him. Sell a normal subscription for print, but those people get a free electronic version as well. The electronic version supports the print version. It’s easier to search, and, honestly, easier to share, which at the size we’re talking about? People pirating your stories around is a good thing. Anything that makes it easier for people to spread the word about your publication is a plus.
Also, sell a cheaper straight electronic version. If someone really wants to just get a PRC file every month, then let them. But I think you’ll find that the electronic version is a selling point of the print version. I can’t guarantee it will increase sales, but I think it’s the best of both worlds. It’s your chocolate in my peanut butter, my peanut butter in your chocolate. Mmmm!
I’d be ecstatic if every book I bought came with an electronic version so that I can search it afterwards, or even better, while I’m waiting for the book to arrive via Amazon. In fact, yesterday, I ordered some web application design texts and after I placed my order, Amazon tried to sell me a $15 e-book copy of one of the books so I could start reading right away. That’s great–only I sure as hell ain’t going to pay another $15 for a $50 book for that promise (and probably find that it is full of DRM that prevents me from really using it).
There are things I can do so much better on a computer or e-reader than I can do with a book. But paper is still easier to read until we see e-ink really take off (the Kindle is apparently cool, but I’ve never seen one in the wild). The two formats are complimentary, and I’d really like to see someone try out the model I’ve outlined above. I’d subscribe, anyway, and I currently subscribe to no magazines (although that’s a factor more of my recent unemployment than it is any problem with the magazines).
Are you publishing a print zine and giving away e-copies to your subscribers for archiving and easy indexing? Let me know in the comments.
Interesting to note that a similar discussion is currently ongoing for many of the scientific journals, but that it is often even more schizophrenic. I don’t honestly know why any of the journals still distribute paper copies of their gazettes, as there are incredible costs associated with printing and then shipping what amount to blocks of low-density wood that will be read only by a limited and select audience. Stranger still is it to consider that the image quality, resolution, and print size of text are often larger and easier to read in the digital editions of printed journals.
This does not prevent many journals from requiring the purchase and shipment of the printed edition of their magazine. I suspect that this is a holdover from old-school scientists who still like to hold the physical paperwork in their hands, but even beyond the significant issues of intellectual property this has made distribution and access to papers something of a nightmare. Sometimes you can read the digital paper if you login from one network, and sometimes if you login from another. Strangest of all is that one of the requirements for any publication is that the principal authors must provide a copy of their papers to anyone who asks for it (minus shipping costs) — and some scientists will only provide printed hard-copies of the PDF file they have stored on their hard drive in response to e-mailed requests.