Hacker Monthly Shuts Down | Hacker News Reader

Hacker Monthly Shuts Down

blog.hackermonthly.com

241 pointsquanganhdo79 comments

Thank you Lim Cheng Soon for all the hard work. I ran the same website for well over a decade and I know how it feels when creativity drops away. Consider passing the mantle to someone else to keep the publication going (if there is any interest), I did this and I don't regret it. After an apprentice period that person could then run it by themselves. That way your baby would get another shot at life even if you yourself don't feel like it any more.

Thanks Jacques!

I'm thinking of "open sourcing" Hacker Monthly. The process of making it, the InDesign template I use (and optimized throughout the years), the resources etc. That way, anyone can start their own "Best of HN" magazine or really, any "Best of" magazine.

Thats nice. Will be helpful for others to start from where you left.

That would be really cool, let us know if you do please.

I think that's the best possible outcome here. I'd be a little worried about having too many options, causing readership of any one to be low, but at the same time, a quality best of HN will most likely float to the top, and if it doesn't, at least there will be choices.

Man, that would be super awesome!

Wow... I'm just sad I found out about this while it's shutting down. Those layouts are beautiful, and a condensed version of HN is probably just what the doctor ordered. I'm sure you'll find something inspiring to do next with talents like this! Good luck. :)

I've been a print subscriber since May 2011 and I just wanted to say that my monthly issue of Hacker Monthly has consistently been a wonderful experience. The articles, the art, everything was very enjoyable. Thanks so much for having offered this service!

Thank you so much. That meant a lot to me.

Have you considered an "Ask HN" where you solicit someone who is passionate about it to take over running it?

Good idea

I'm sorry to hear that it's closing down, hearing this for the first time. I get why you're moving on.

Overall, I think there is still an opportunity for a "best of HN" publication, and I would probably subscribe if it wasn't too expensive. I just think it would have to be an entirely online-based format, maybe with an optional PDF, but certainly not something that needs a dead tree version.

I've been running Hacker Newsletter (http://hackernewsletter.com), a weekly best of HN, for the last 5+ years if that helps any.

That said, Lim Cheng Soon really put in some effort to make the print magazine really nice. I'm not a magazine type person, but loved getting them as they were really well made and a nice way to step away from a screen. I've had a chance to work with him over the years and I know whatever he does next will have just as much heart poured into it... I wish him the best!

I was just posting the link to your newsletter.

I'm a subscriber, and even though most of the time I am up-to-date with the site (read: I'm a hardcore procrastinator), I still often miss an interesting article and only discover it later thanks to your e-mails. Thank you for all your good work, and please keep doing it! :).

Thanks Kale, and your kind support over the years.

And Yes everyone, Hacker Newsletter is excellent and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Thanks, it was a wonderful reading experience, and I always looked forward receiving my subscription at the beginning of each month. I was lucky to have 2 posts featured in the magazine (nums 11 and 14), and the layout, composition and all else related to it was great.

Good luck with your next project(s)!

I wod love to hear from the OP if he had explores transitioning, aka selling, this to someone. I think there is a market for the attention of people with money to spend, even in print magazines (especially in niche print magazines).

But maybe he explored it and didn't find any takers, or maybe he doesn't want to deal with the hassle of such a transition.

Would be nice to know.

The blog mentioned that he had received several solicitations to buy the business, but he wasn't comfortable sharing the subscription list.

As other comments have pointed out, not having the subscribers list is my non-negotiable terms if someone wants to take over. In fact, after I refunded everyone, I'll reset my server and remove all my DB backups so I won't even have a copy of it.

I know it doesn't make business sense for someone to buy a business without any customers. That's why I never explore the option of selling it.

That's an interesting choice. I'm sorry, I scanned the blog and didn't see this mentioned. It certainly creates a higher hurdle for a sale.

I'm sure you've considered all the options, but may I ask why you didn't choose to offer current subscribers an 'opt-in' option for being contacted by a new publisher? That way those who were interested in continuing with a new owner would be able to, and those who were only interested in your product wouldn't be bothered. (Again, I wasn't able to find the blog post where you mentioned being approached by possible owners, so if you answered this question there, I apologize.)

But if you open source everything (as mentioned in another one of your comments), that'd be great too.

That's really sad. I loved the mag and it was my favourite read once a month. Good luck, I'm sure we'll see something interesting from you in the future, you can discard the project you've lost the passion to, but you can't discard the passion itself :-)

Best of luck on the next adventure!

Thanks, Patrick. Now I finally have the time to get my hands on Stockfighter!

> Why? You might ask. The main reason is I’m not motivated anymore. To be more precise, I ran out of creative juices.

Perhaps now is the time to start "hacking the brain" :) Lots of good nootropic supplements to be tried that could boost creativity :)

Of course, I'm only joking.

I wish you were not. Sadly, most of the nootropics are little more than glorified aspirin. There's nothing even remotely resembling NZT :(.

There are a number of illegal drugs that do boost creativity. Steve Jobs apparently like LSD.

Thank you so much! I was an ebook subscriber, and I was really sad to hear that it was no longer going to be around. I see your comment about open sourcing the template you have.

Will there be an archive of back issues available in press-ready PDF form?

You still buy individual issues from the website. I'm thinking of offering a bundle of every back issues for sale.

Update: Now you can get all the back issues here https://gum.co/hm-back-issues

Thanks! Bought. :-)

never knew it existed until today

It had way too weak marketing. It was a top quality publication, always interesting and with great design, and it deserved way more readers.

I myself only heard of it when one of my articles got featured in it. They were nice enough to give me a free year of the digital subscription and it was one of the highlights every month.

My friend and I just started hacker daily (https://medium.com/hacker-daily) If you open source it we could potentially help out whoever picks up the mantle with content.

Hacker Daily? Keep up, grandpa! I'll be launching Hacker Hourly in about 20 minutes. Enjoy your retirement!

Hacker Hourly? How quaint. Behold... Hacker Instant! => https://news.ycombinator.com

Hacker Instant Newest! https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

or for those who only want the comments

Hacker Instant New Comments! https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

How about Hacker Future? I want to know where Twitter stock will be in March.

I cannot find that url on the home page.

Damn it looks interesting. Wish that I have known it earlier.

A real shame. Hacker Monthly was a great product for the HN community and I'm going to miss it arriving in the post every month.

With that said, I think there's still a healthy ecosystem of similar products. There was a post on the front page about a new newsletter that sent out one "classic" HN post a week, I think the article mentioned it was doing pretty well. Can't remember its name though haha.

You're thinking of HackerCanon: https://medium.com/swlh/best-of-2015-pfffffffft-79d9b014f4de

Thank you for HM. It was the first magazine I was published in. Always admired your creativity and drive to make it happen.

Is there a way to order a bundle with printed copies of multiple back-issues? Or do I have to buy them one-by-one on Magcloud for 9$ each?

I have the first 16 issues, which I bought all at once a few years ago, to lower shipping costs (I live in Europe).

I really liked Hacker Monthly and I'd love to have the other issues in a printed form :)

Out of curiosity, did Hacker Monthly print articles from the web? With permission of the source websites?

Hacker Monthly put together a physical magazine (it looked gorgeous) full of articles from Hacker News.

(Source: he asked my permission for a post of mine that got some attention back in 2013.)

Must be quite the thing to have something so well done with your name on an article in it. Those magazines look amazing.

As trevmckendrick says, HM printed the articles from the web, always with the permission (at least, I was asked and I'm pretty sure all others were asked). Thanks to it now I can find me on Amazon.com :D

Thanks Lim for such an amazing work over the years. It was always a great experience to receive HM on the mail every month, and read (or re-read) the carefully selected articles.

Any plans to let old subscribers download the PDF for past issues? I should have done it before it expired.

Yes! I'll make sure subscribers with subscription until the final issue stay active at least for few more months. Drop me an email cheng.soon at hackermonthly dot com and I'll reactivate your account to download the back issues.

What a shame, I didn't know Hacker Monthly was even a thing until today. Now I want a subscription so badly.

A magazine of HN delivered to my door would be amazing! Wish I knew about it before, and I hope someone continues with it.

I echo these sentiments. Wish I had heard of it sooner.

This is a bummer as I really love the idea and have bought quite a few issues. Super well done. But I completely understand the lack of creative juices after a while. Best of luck in your next venture.

Thank you!

"I’m not motivated anymore. To be more precise, I ran out of creative juices. Somewhere down the road, I don’t feel that way anymore. That’s when I know I have to stop."

You should sell it instead of shutting it down. There would be someone that is interested in buying it. Sell it and its subscriber base on flippa.com or something.

According to a July blog post and regarding what was planned back then once the magazine had run its course :

Are you selling the site?

I probably received more than 50 emails about selling Hacker Monthly. My answer is ‘No’. I’m ending it and I wanted to do it right. And, I wouldn’t be comfortable passing the subscribers data to someone else.

Are there any similar quality publications around?

Thanks for making this -- any ideas what you are doing next?

Loved the magazine, good luck with your next endeavours!

Pay for things and they won't get shut down.. they said

"I’m in the process of refunding all the subscribers who paid for the subscription period after 2015. It will take some time as I’m doing this by hand. If you need a refund urgently (for any reasons), drop me an email and I’ll have it processed immediately."

Which is about as nice as it gets. On top of that, you got what you paid for no?

This is not some kind of crucial service that holds your data or that you need for your day-to-day life.

When a free service us shut down the mantra is normally "you should have paid for it"

Yes, but you see, this is not an online service, it is a publication.

You have a bit of an entitlement issue.

To be fair, I do see where s/he is coming from, it does get thrown around a lot here. Not sure it deserves all the downvotes it's getting.

It gets thrown around a lot but then the context is an entirely different one. A publication is not to be compared with an online service that stores your data or that you come to depend on in any way. Especially not this one.

So it makes zero sense to make that reference. You could say the same after you've eaten in a restaurant for 3 years, paid for your meals and then the restaurant goes out of business for whatever reason. You still got what you paid for and you're not entitled to a perpetual continuation of that opportunity to eat at that particular restaurant.

As opposed to say using a paid email account, getting it embedded in your workflow, spreading the address to all your contacts and then one day the company decides mail is no longer important to them and shuts it down. In such cases you could reasonably say that you expected the service to continue because you paid for it and make some connection (you'd still be wrong, but that's another point).

I'm not sure eecks is really being entitled, I read it more as (s)he's referring to the often heard remark (here) about any kind of thing that shuts down that is free: "You should have paid for it, use service xyz that is paid and they won't shut down". It is more prevalent in the online business of course, but happens in offline as well.

Whether you pay for something or not does not guarantee that it will not shut down, it will simply change the odds that it will. Imagine if LCS would have made hacker news monthly a free publication, he'd have had to shut it down long ago. So in that sense paying for the service made it possible to last this long in the first place but that does not entitle you to expect the service to last for ever.

The tone is off but I think there is something to the point eecks makes.

Remember that famous 'idlewords article[0]? I recall it making some circles around HN and the widely held conclusion was that free successful services are likely to disappear at a moment's notice, while paid successful services are unlikely to do so. Of course it is not true - the reason why is obvious when you've lived in the same apartment for more than few years and noticed how often shops - small and big - open up, and then close down. No service is forever. Rare are those who last more than few years.

But even if it's wrong, this argument about paid stuff having significantly longer lifespan was widely repeated, and was believed by many.

[0] - https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/

Who says that it being paid did not cause it to have a significantly longer lifespan? I can't even imagine a magazine like this being put out for free.

You have the issue. I didn't pay for it, just bringing up a discussion point. Talk about my point, not me.

Money is a necessary but not sufficient condition for keeping a business running.

If you are shutting this to avoid the admin tasks like maintaining DNS or server updates, please let me know if I can help you. I have experience in these matters and I can do it voluntarily in this case.

He lists a creativity issue in the article.

Yeah, I just read it:

> The main reason is I’m not motivated anymore. To be more precise, I ran out of creative juices.

tbh, change is the way of life. Like someone else said in this thread, if he is not motivated, he can hand over the torch to someone else rather than just pulling the plug.

To down voters: the parent comment is not meant to criticise the decision to shut down Hacker Monthly but to criticise the often thrown around "pay for things and they won't get shut down" mantra which evidently doesn't always hold true.

Why? You might ask. The main reason is I’m not motivated anymore. To be more precise, I ran out of creative juices.

Such a terrible excuse! Society today has this idea that they should only work on things that are their calling or truly make them happy! Outsource some of the boring work, grind out a few hours a week and collect your easy paycheque. Millions of people would do anything to make such easy money instead of slaving away at a real "boring" job for minimum wage.

What a shame on so many different levels.

Eh, this person doesn't want to do it anymore. They refunded people's money for the undelivered product. That's a pretty good way to handle it. Better than slagging along putting out a shitty product just because you can't quit.

Time and energy is a resource just as much as money is. If your hobby project is sapping you of more than you get out of it, there's no shame in doing something else.

That's not really the point.

Give it up and give the project to someone else or sell it.

Now it's in limbo... What if someone else wants to do it? Will Lee sue? Is he really interested in litigation now?

Who knows? It's a shame to end it like this.

Sue based on what? Just don't literally copy the name and design, and there's nothing to sue for.

He's doing one better and open sourcing all the templates, see elsewhere in the thread.

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