Dragon magazine

[Saracenus]

All customer service reasons aside for publishing a compiled eDragon & eDungeon each month, I think there are several forces at work as to why it is not happening now:

1) Reduced Staff. They do not have a dedicated editor for both magazines (either one super editor for both or individual editors for each) and this means that the eMags do not get the dedicated attention they would need to plan out a complete printing (with page numbers, a table of contents, etc.)

2) They no longer produce the eMags like a monthly publication, where all the content is completed 2 months before its going to print, gets laid out, and sent to a physical printer, and then shipped to the customer. Articles don't get on the calendar page unless they are a weekly column until they are published on the web site. This means that compiling the articles cannot be planned in advance. If an article doesn't get completed on time or needs major revision and suddenly doesn't show up on time this forces the compilation to happen at the end of the publishing cycle in a mad rush.

3) It discourages folks to sub for a month, download the content and unsub for a while. The steady trickle favors those with a long term DDI sub because they can always download the individual articles "later." Its a pain but generally I go and download the table of contents in its entirety each month so I have the articles off line on my laptop. Subbing for one month and downloading a years worth of articles would suck.

Anyway, unless WotC up staffs the ePublications with dedicated staff, don't expect things to change.

My two coppers,

 

[the Jester]

[MENTION=56746]mudbunny[/MENTION], I hope you will mention this to WotC.

It would be understandable if they went to a searchable online database, but the way they did it was just replacing something that was working fine with something inferior. Cue kidney shots at DDi

Why this is, I don't know, but the "inferior replacement phenomenon" seems to come up again and again with DDI stuff. I mean, the MB and CB you can at least understand being a step to combat piracy, but this? It's just inconvenient enough to compile issues that it discourages subscribers, but not inconvenient enough to discourage pirates. What a weird, seemingly pointless choice. Especially since it doesn't take much of any work to combine them in Acrobat or whatever pseudoAcrobat you use.

All customer service reasons aside for publishing a compiled eDragon & eDungeon each month, I think there are several forces at work as to why it is not happening now:

1) Reduced Staff. They do not have a dedicated editor for both magazines (either one super editor for both or individual editors for each) and this means that the eMags do not get the dedicated attention they would need to plan out a complete printing (with page numbers, a table of contents, etc.)

I'm not sure if Acrobat will do it so easily, but there are software programs (that are free) that will let you shift-click to select your files, combine them into one with a click and number the pages with another. Seriously, it would take maybe five minutes to double check that everything was in the desired order. Five minutes for one person. At the most. This is NOT a staff issue. This is a conscious decision, made for no reason that I can come up with or have heard, that makes a part of DDI inferior to what it was and less convenient for the user base.

2) They no longer produce the eMags like a monthly publication, where all the content is completed 2 months before its going to print, gets laid out, and sent to a physical printer, and then shipped to the customer. Articles don't get on the calendar page unless they are a weekly column until they are published on the web site. This means that compiling the articles cannot be planned in advance. If an article doesn't get completed on time or needs major revision and suddenly doesn't show up on time this forces the compilation to happen at the end of the publishing cycle in a mad rush.

WotC has put a lot of effort into making sure the month's content is done by the end of the month. Five minutes of additional work would compile it.

3) It discourages folks to sub for a month, download the content and unsub for a while. The steady trickle favors those with a long term DDI sub because they can always download the individual articles "later." Its a pain but generally I go and download the table of contents in its entirety each month so I have the articles off line on my laptop. Subbing for one month and downloading a years worth of articles would suck.

To be honest, I am far more prone to do that now than I was before, when I was a longterm subscriber for several years.

Every thing that DDI did better before than it does now is a huge black mark on it for me. Worse than the inconvenience is the sense I get that WotC feels it is okay to inconvenience me. It's almost like they would rather lose some customers and inconvenience the rest than spend five minutes per month compiling the mags.

 

[Truename]

I'm not sure if Acrobat will do it so easily, but there are software programs (that are free) that will let you shift-click to select your files, combine them into one with a click and number the pages with another. Seriously, it would take maybe five minutes to double check that everything was in the desired order. Five minutes for one person. At the most. This is NOT a staff issue.

Really? Does that five minutes repaginate all the articles? Does it create and layout a table of contents? Does it commission expensive full-page cover art and follow up with the artist?

What works for you as a home user isn't necessarily what works for professionals. The idea of compiled PDFs as a cost- and staff-saving step is completely plausible to me--in fact, I think that's the reason WoTC gave when they made the switch.

Edit: Actually, it looks like they're still doing full covers, so I'm not so sure any more. Maybe it is fears of piracy or some other reason.

 

[Ryujin]

Really? Does that five minutes repaginate all the articles? Does it create and layout a table of contents? Does it commission expensive full-page cover art and follow up with the artist?

What works for you as a home user isn't necessarily what works for professionals. The idea of compiled PDFs as a cost- and staff-saving step is completely plausible to me--in fact, I think that's the reason WoTC gave when they made the switch.

Edit: Actually, it looks like they're still doing full covers, so I'm not so sure any more. Maybe it is fears of piracy or some other reason.

I suspect that the covers are still being done because the "expensive full-page cover art" gets chopped up, then used within the article, itself. If you look back to when the mags were still compiled, that was the case then also.

The creation of compiled, paginated magazines, with a table of contents, can largely be handled via a template. The table of contents can be created automatically, and then edited to suit. The artwork exists and merely has to be chopped up, to suit. Once the template is created, the work of creating the actual compiled versions can be handled by some unpaid intern schlub, in the back, or by regular clerical staff. After that it just takes a few minutes for someone to verify, before it gets posted.

That's how templated websites are frequently handled, so there's no reason why it wouldn't work in this situation.

 

[mudbunny]

[MENTION=82555]thejester[/MENTION]

I will be passing this up to WotC. It has been a couple of months and there has been some changes in the D&D hierarchy, so things may change.

Edit to add - Last time this came up on the WotC forums (I want to say 6-10 months ago) it was mentioned by WotC (don't remember who) that based on the metrics that WotC analyzed, only a very small percentage of people actually downloaded the compiled magazines as compared to those that downloaded all of the individual articles.

In addition, it was mentioned that the errata'ing process of the individual articles and then the re-compilation into the final compilation added a significant cost (time/manpower) as compared to just errata'ing the individual pdf files.

Note - The above is not the exact words/phrases used. I am going off of my memory on the general reasons.

 

[Ryujin]

If they were posting the individual articles BEFORE they did errata, and then doing the fix just prior to compilation, then they were doing it wrong. Fix it prior to publication.

 

[Zaran]

It's all about money. I bet they eliminated a job by not laying out the articles and compiling them 2 months in advance and since only a few of us downloaded the whole thing it was deemed better to lay that guy off and tell Hasbro they made more money without doing a thing different.

 

[the Jester]

[MENTION=82555]thejester[/MENTION]

I will be passing this up to WotC. It has been a couple of months and there has been some changes in the D&D hierarchy, so things may change.

>snip<

In addition, it was mentioned that the errata'ing process of the individual articles and then the re-compilation into the final compilation added a significant cost (time/manpower) as compared to just errata'ing the individual pdf files.

Thank you, and that actually makes some degree of sense. However, assuming they are still attempting to issue errata rarely and in batches, it doesn't seem insurmountable.

I am glad there is a good reason behind it, at least.

 

[mudbunny]

Thank you, and that actually makes some degree of sense. However, assuming they are still attempting to issue errata rarely and in batches, it doesn't seem insurmountable.

I am glad there is a good reason behind it, at least.

The errata that they do to the magazines is much more frequent than the errata that they do to the rest of the rules. The magazine errata is done every month, last I was informed. By not having it tied to a compiled magazine, they can do it automatically to the pdf and not have to worry about booking time for re-formatting of the compiled issue, art, etc.

 

[The Little Raven]

If they were posting the individual articles BEFORE they did errata, and then doing the fix just prior to compilation, then they were doing it wrong. Fix it prior to publication.

Technically, this is impossible, since errata is dependent upon something being released and then corrected after the fact. Plus, their errata comes from feedback from us, so they couldn't get it without releasing it to us.