Hacker Monthly will publish its final issue 12 months from now | Hacker News Reader

Hacker Monthly will publish its final issue 12 months from now

blog.hackermonthly.com

168 pointsZweihander74 comments

I have articles in a couple issues, so I got these free, then a year free and then I subscribed once my free year finished. Probably been a subscriber (free or otherwise) for 3 or 4 years, not sure by now.

I have the deep feeling that the quality of the content shared here on HackerNews has dwindled (may also be that it has drowned by the increase in traffic, though), and this may have (negatively) impacted HM readership.

As a sample point, I was pretty close to cancelling my subscription, since during the past 12-13 issues didn't have that interesting content, compared to the previous ~24-30. Of course, totally subjective, but a year and a half ago I was happy to see the "HM issue available for download email," and now it was more of a "meh." The quality of the magazine was always superb, though: perfectly crafted with aesthetically pleasant articles and layout. So, not to blame the team there.

I hope you luck in your next venture!

Hey Ruben! How are you? :)

Well, HM readership has been increasing from month to month in the past few years. But I agree with you on the content shared on HackerNews. There are still a lot of top notch articles shared here, but the focus (votes by the community, in general) seemed to shift news-centric article, from more educational articles, which is the bread and butter of HM.

Hi there, doing fine :) It's exactly what I felt had changed, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one (and you have definite hands-on experience with HM!)

I hope your next business also thrives (it's not like HM was a bad thing I guess, and it was definitely top-notch quality.)

This discussion about HN link quality is old and comes up frequently. I'm mostly a lurker. Thing is, I haven't read a complaint about the "low quality on HN" in quite a while.

About a year ago or two, these objections would be posted multiple times every day.

Maybe HN declined from 5 years ago, but I think it improved over the last year or so, because a lot of marketing BS isn't here anymore.

There is a lot more aggression in the comments.

People are reluctant to flag or downvote posts that clearly violate the guidelines.

Long time reader, recently created an account...

I don't see downvote or "flag" buttons. The only button available to me is a "^", which I assume is upvote, but without a downvote or flag button it's very out of context... (edit: Yeah, the on-hover is 'upvote' but there's no downvote or flag).

Yes, you only get these options after reaching a certain karma threshold (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Click the timestamp on a post. Do you see a flag option now?

Downvoting is available at a karma threshold. I think flags for comments and submissions are always available?

Not always, or people would create accounts just to do it. The flag threshold is low, though (30).

I believe the threshold is higher than that, as I am currently situated at 45 and do not have the option.

Then you do have the option. Maybe email us (hn@ycombinator.com) if you're still not seeing it?

Clarification: I have the flag option, but not the down arrow. What is the threshold for the down arrow appear?

Sorry for the miscommunication, I had assumed that both functions were enabled at the same threshold.

If you're a long-time reader you should've known that the downvote button requires a minimum amount of karma. Or at least you'd know that it's inappropriate to derail an HN topic when there are abundant Google results on your question.

It has seen some improvement, but I guess the higher amount of submissions has diluted the occasional awesomeness that appeared from time to time. It's just a feeling (but I admit that when the complaints were at its highest it's not like HN was that bad anyway.)

Also, I'm not saying submissions are low quality, but lower quality. They are still excellent, and the articles in HM were great. They were just not as great as in the past.

>> This discussion about HN link quality is old and comes up frequently.

While this is true, I've been reading HN for about 5 years. The first two lurking, the last three actually posting and commenting.

From what I remember, HN used to be very technical and startup oriented, which is what got me hooked. Over the past two years or so, I'm seeing a lot of articles on things which are not directly to tech or startups. I've accepted the fact I have to do a lot more filtering and searching to find articles I'm actually interested in. Not a big deal, but something I didn't have to do 2 or 3 years ago.

There's a lot of bias in how each of us remembers these things, but one thing we can say for sure is that HN has always been about a lot more than tech and startups, because that's why it was launched in the first place:

https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

Try www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat

It negates the excess in bias by adjusting the ranking algorithm

Content marketing is still everywhere - AeroFS are doing it right now, and the Bitbucket story's submitter looks like he works at Atlassian and registered just to market here over and over again.

There will be many more submissions by companies today.

I don't see any problem with that. We shall downvote uninteresting submissions and upvote good ones. It is irreleveant why they were submitted.

It is important because the submission process is an important filter - someone from HN saw something and thought the rest would like it. When that is circumvented the front page becomes democratically assembled from content that is provided to us, not selected by us.

A good (content) marketer would produce content that he thinks his target audience would like.

There is no difference as to why a submitter does submit: the variable we ar talking here is the ability to estimate what is liked by the HN community.

This ability is not necessarily afflicted by the motivation behind producing and submitting content.

The original PG essays are a content marketing program for Y-combinator, for instance, but nobody in the marketed to crowd resents them. Au contraire, PG is hailed as a her (tm) and there is zero wrong with any of that, IMHO.

PG's articles are just content, they're popular here but they don't get here artificially. I'm talking about companies who are on HN just to ensure their content reaches us.

Trying to please the audience doesn't make the content suitable, they're still applying a broken and biased decision process to judge that.

You can't downvote submissions. Lurk more.

The best discussion and articles have shifted to lobste.rs which is wisely invite only. I think it's better to have a discussion site owned by the community as opposed to a VC firm/incubator that has funded many of our employers.

Also lobste.rs has tags, and a much more mobile friendly layout. It gets less chatter/upvotes but the submissions and comments are much higher quality. Not to mention that the comments are not dominated by a few voices that use the site to self promote...

Are there any articles on lobste.rs that are not also on HN? Could you point to a conversation that's on lobste.rs that's better than HN?

I visit once a week or so, but it always seems close to dead. I understand they're going for quality over quantity, but still.

Thank you for your efforts. Publishing any work takes significant work, and HackerNewsMonthly always looked professional and seemed to have a good and representative selection of posts.

You have contributed to the community and made the world a little better, and no matter what your goals were or are, you should count this as a success. "From the people who brought you HNMonthly" will be a valuable sentence for most things you choose to do (most, as say, any teenage children would not be impressed).

Thank you and good luck in the future.

Thank you.

If you are in the market for a hacker-centric magazine and this news saddens you, you might check out Hack Circus:

http://www.hackcircus.com/

Is it profitable? If you're not making enough perhaps you could sell it to someone in a lower income country or to someone with a lower income expectance? Still working on it for 12 months seems like a really long time.

Sometimes, you are profitable but you know this is not the way to continue. You also know that it is better to stop than to let someone continue without the same level of commitment to the product/service. I closed a service once, it was profitable, but it was better to close. It took me 18 months to close it, ensuring the existing customers could migrate smoothly somewhere else.

Lim is respecting his customers, giving them time. He is getting all my respect for that.

Thanks. Exactly how I felt about closing it and not selling to someone else.

It is profitable. FYI, I'm living in a lower income country (Malaysia), and I would say my living expenses are pretty low.

Money wasn't the issue. It's hard to explain but I just felt the time is right to start scaling it down and eventually shut it down.

Can you share more details about your experience? I think HM is a very good case study of technology publishing industry.

I didn't knew such magazine existed. It's not popular enough, that might be the reason (just guessing).

Same here. And from what I see, I am tempted to subscribe now.

I remember when it launched here. First few issues got a ton of upvotes and visibility upon release here but then the PDF editions weren't free to download anymore and it didn't get as much attention on new issues.

I really wish the PDF editions were always free to download but if it was competing with the print-edition subscription business I guess I understand why it was locked down.

This is a very important point. I got the first pdfs for free and loved the format but didn't want to subscribe (poor as hell) so I believe if they allowed the digital edition for free to browse on their website and to download as pdf, they would have a much much wider and recurring audience and would have made more money inserting ads, well, just like every other magazine out there.

May be I didn't do a good job promoting it :)

Me neither. Now I'm sad because it seems like a great magazine :/

Had no idea that it existed. All the best for your next venture!

OT: Does HN employ any licensing on the content? I checked FAQ/Guidelines. Couldn't find anything about HN content. So anyone can create something like OP or would it require special permission from YC?

Also can this idea extended for Reddit subs?

Articles submitted to HN remain the copyright of the people who wrote them, not of YC. (HN Monthly has been scrupulous in observing copyrights.)

Comments on HN, ditto, although YC has an implicit license to (at a minimum) display them.

I also just returned from a search for licensing information. It's a bit peculiar, since it's not quite like HN produced the content. HN aggregated the content.

Perhaps to do this completely honestly, one would need to check the licensing of each individual article. Since undoubtedly it is not clear for every article, I wonder what the "default" set of assumptions for an article posted on the internet is.

I discovered Hacker Monthly a little over a month ago and subscribed straight away. I rarely visit HN as my schedule doesn't permit it so having a curated well formatted chunk of stuff to read when I can was amazing and pretty much led me to buying a new iPad. I'm gutted that HM is coming to an end but greatly appreciate that it isn't an abrupt end and I still have a whole other year of issues to look forward to. I'm so grateful for your hard work over all these years and having access to all the previous issues gives me a huge amount of content to make my way through. Good luck with all your future endeavours!

When I started blogging a couple of years ago, Hacker Monthly MADE MY YEAR when they put my 'Why I Cycled 100 Miles to Meet My First Customer' story on the front cover

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4796755)

So I just wanted to send you a hug over the internet.

I've loved getting a copy of the magazine by email every month since then.

All the best from London,

James

This is the first I head of it and I must say it looks great. I would like to buy previous issues, is that possible?

Yup. You can still subscribe now and get all the previous issues for free.

How about the print versions?

Great magazine, it’s a pity this is the first time I hear about it! Could you share a bit what type of customers did you gather? What did they like the most about HackerMonthly? Would have this worked online-only or was the print version part of the great value of this magazine?

Lim is a great guy who has put in so much work to make an awesome publication - it really is a great example of a project done well. I started my newsletter about the same time and it has been great to work with him over the years. Really sad to see it go!!

I subscribed since 5 weeks now, as it was only then I discovered it. I must say, this news saddens me a lot. I've been downloading a lot of the past issues and read articles that I either missed (a lot of them), and articles that have been posted way before I ever heard of hackernews. Now I'm totally a fan of this magazine, and I deeply how some brave soul(s) is/are there to take over the beautiful work you have done. Thank you for the time and energy you've put into this!

Thanks.

I won't be selling the site. I'll probably leave the site up (for as long as I can). There just won't be any new issue. People can still go to the site and buy digital/print copies.

Could you share the numbers after you finally close it? The number of subscribers, sales, expensed, profit, traffic, conversion... I'm interested by such stats.

Maybe put those in the final issue :)

Why?

I'm not sure there's a specific reason. 5 years is a long time (for internet years). I guess I just wanted to shut it down before it wither and die. I also wanted to explore other options (e.g work on new, different things).

Haha, I went for the wither-and-die approach myself.. end result is the same, and inexplicably it's still sending "sufficient" funds my way. Major props, next time I shouldn't miss my Penang flight.. Phil ;)

This looks really nice. Subscribed!

So, how many new subscriptions have you got so far after HN caught this?

Edit: That wasn't an accusation of cynicism, just curious.

Thanks. Certainly more than I expected. And I definitely wouldn't expect people to subscribe to a service that's shutting down soon. (also didn't expect this to get on front page)

Damn no idea this existed :(

Me neither - I'll be buying a bunch of these then

Yeah I feel this would have made my life much easier. I love having paper copies of stuff too =(

Sorry to hear this Lim, i liked the concept (advertised with you in the past :) Best of luck with your new ventures.

I really wanted to subscribe at one point, but then I wondered why I would do that since I was already reading HN daily. Why wait for the news? I guess other people who would be interested in such a magazine would face the same problem, content is already here on time and free.

See the comments elsewhere in the thread about HN a a whole gradually changing focus from a more education/opinion site to a news site.

A rule-of-thumb to distinguish the two is that a news article is the kind of thing you read right away, an educational article is something you deliberately bookmark to read later when you have some time to reflect on its content.

The early issues of HN are full of articles that are as valid today as they were then. You may not have minded waiting for them.

well, for _most_ articles I do mind reading them on time because the discussions they create around me will fathom quickly after the trend/buzz has passed. So you do want to be there when discussions happen.

Talking about discussion, it happens a lot that I don't even look at the article and just look at the HN comments. I think I'm not the only one who would say HN is mostly HN because it has great comments.

1. Just learned about Hacker Monthly 2. Downloaded first issue and read immediately. 3. Subscribed for 1yr and started reading from 2nd issue on.

I want you to know that after 5 years, there are still people finding out about your work and regarding it as awesome :)

This is a bummer and not because I am a subscriber, but because I would have been one had I known about Hacker Monthly. Sorry if I missed it somewhere, but will the issues be archived somewhere for newcomers to read?

I read the headline thinking it was talking about 2600 Hacker Quarterly. Haven't really looked into Hacker Monthly, but I hate to see someone have to shut down their company.

5 years is a long time to do anything, but what an awesome run!

Congrats on doing it and to all involved. It was obviously a labor of love.

Good luck in your future ventures. I hoped you learnt a lot that you can take to your next business.

It's worth noting that 2600 is still going strong after 30 years.

how about someone take the place and don't let this die ?

It is unfortunate they couldn't have had a more original name than stealing 2600's magazine "Hacker Quarterly" name and changing "Quarterly" to "Monthly".

Too bad, I was considering subscribing to the printed version in a few months ahead.

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