Pathfinder 1E Paizo: What the Heck? (Amazing and Undefeated???)

[nevin]

Sammael, as I mentioned, I don't understand the economics. What I do understand is that I was at a panel, and a whole bunch of magazine editors and publishers said the same thing. Off-the-rack is better for them than subscriptions are. Especially if you didn't think you were going to have that many subscriptions and put the initial one-year subscription rate low enough that you'd be taking a loss on it. (I don't know if they did that, but I do know that magazines aren't expected to be profitable in their first year of publication, and there's a lot of "do this at a loss in order to build readership" at first.) If they got a lot more signups than they wanted, that little loss would get big.

But fundamentally, as I said, I don't know the particulars, and I don't know the economics. I just know what a bunch of magazine publishers said themselves, and was guessing that their "rack, not mailbox" mantra might have something to do with Amazing's situation, given that Amazing was having trouble getting onto bookshelves.

subscriptions get cancelled and postal fees for magazines are higher than for letters. Really big publishers can negotiate bulk rates but that's for things like TIME and Vanity Fair. The other thing is a huge portion of revenue is from advertisers. Get a big enough readership money flows in. till then magazine sometimes only sell 10 to 20%, or less of what the send till they manage to get a big enough readership. It's just like the newspaper business. Customer's make them money through the advertising that companies pay to put in the magazine. The price of the magazine or newspaper is just a fraction of the revenue for a successful magazine.

 

[TwoSix]

subscriptions get cancelled and postal fees for magazines are higher than for letters. Really big publishers can negotiate bulk rates but that's for things like TIME and Vanity Fair. The other thing is a huge portion of revenue is from advertisers. Get a big enough readership money flows in. till then magazine sometimes only sell 10 to 20%, or less of what the send till they manage to get a big enough readership. It's just like the newspaper business. Customer's make them money through the advertising that companies pay to put in the magazine. The price of the magazine or newspaper is just a fraction of the revenue for a successful magazine.

It’s also possible economic conditions have changed slightly in the 19 years since that post was written.

 

[nevin]

It’s also possible economic conditions have changed slightly in the 19 years since that post was written.

lol oops

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I like that this thread is old enough to vote.