Hacker Monthly can now be shipped anywhere in the world | Hacker News Reader

Hacker Monthly can now be shipped anywhere in the world

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21 pointsterpua12 comments

I told HP's Andrew Bolwell that what I really wanted were magazines priced like iPhone apps. Give me really good $2 magazines and I'll buy them all day long. A $10 magazine on the iPad? Probably not.

It's very hard for me to understand this. If you enjoy the magazine, if it's "really good" why wouldn't you pay more than $2? At what point does the cannibalization of content stop? If it's convenient to use an iPad or a Kindle to get your magazine, shouldn't that be enough at the normal price point? Why is further incentive necessary? I can understand a slight discount due to publishing savings, but from $10 to $2? Come on.

Pricing isn't based on cost but on perceived value. The perceived value of a physical version of a magazine is much greater, particularly as many wouldn't consider a virtual magazine a complete product.

Why wouldn't you consider a virtual magazine a complete product? Even when you buy a magazine in physical form you're paying for the content. Personally, I never go to a newsstand and base my purchase on the physical properties of the magazine, but rather, the content, articles, and design.

One way or another we'll have to deal with this issue soon as electronic distribution becomes the new standard. We can't expect magazines or newspapers for that matter, to maintain the quality of design and content we enjoy if we're not willing to pay for it.

Newspapers are failing because on average they always focused on low quality content and design quality (cheap to produce no alternatives at the time). Magazines have higher quality design and content which is why they've always been able to charge more. Its the same with books - an electronic book just isn't the same and so won't be valued the same until it's electronic distribution only. If I gave you Knuth's Art Of Programming as a collection of printed pages you wouldn't pay me the same premium the quality bound tomes demand.

I think using Knuth's Art Of Programming as an example is somewhat flawed. It's not your run of the mill set. The only reason why I wouldn't pay you as much for the paper collection versus the hardcover set I have on my shelf is that I consider the hardcover set to be more of a collector sort of item. However, if I didn't care about it acting as a mantle piece I would still pay for the content, just not as much as I would for the mantle piece version. Similarly, some pay for collectors version of games, books, etc.

However, the content should still be valued and priced accordingly. Clearly less than mantle piece versions. As I said in my previous posts, the prices should come down with the publishing costs discounted, but any more than that would devalue the content IMO.

You don't pay $10 for (most) paper magazines, why would you pay $10 for an app that shows you the same magazine?

Doesn't it cost them less to produce online version?

Sure, if the magazine is less, it's price should be less. However with many magazines it isn't the publishing that's the most expensive part of the magazine, but rather, it's the reporters, editors, designers, etc. As I said previously, of course the savings from publishing should be passed to the consumer, but we tend to forget that there are still significant staff and salaries behind magazines, and that doesn't change just because the distribution has.

Am I missing something? The magazine can now be downloaded onto An iPad anywhere in the world but this was always the case.

If you check MagCloud (http://magcloud.com/help/ShippingAndOrdering) it is indeed the case that single orders can now be shipped overseas (with multiple to come) but I cannot see mention of that in the article.

It is there but quite far down, below the pictures.

"In addition to iPad availability, the print on demand part of MagCloud is growing more sophisticated as well. Publishers can now choose to put a spine on their magazines (which should be a big improvement), the page limit has been raised to 384 pages and, perhaps most importantly, HP will now ship printed magazines anywhere in the world."

It's basically 3 new features from MagCloud:

- iPad availability

- Shipping to anywhere

- New option to add perfect binding

I'm sorry, I don't get it: how? Do I download an app? Do I buy the pdf & manually transfer it to my iPad?

ok, after hunting around a bit on the site, it seems their iPad app is not available outside of the US: http://i.imgur.com/alErf.png

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