Dungeon Mag #101 - slight ranty.

[KenM]

I just picked it up at my bookstore. They have 2 subscriber only things, an adventure and a map of mystery. If I'm paying full price for something, should I not get everything I paid for? I want to support my local store and not subscribe. Why does all the subscriber only stuff have to be in Dungeon?? Why not put some subscriber only stuff in Poly? IMO they added Poly to Dungeon, Pazio was told to let one of them die, have it be Poly. If they keep putting in subscriber only content, they will lose people.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Here we go again.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

If they keep putting in subscriber only content, they will lose people.

why?

It's $45 for a subscription and around $84 if you buy off the shelf. If you buy 7 issues off the shelf out of the year, you're better off subscribing anyway.

 

[Christian Walker]

I'm still trying to recover from Dragon 309. Yikes!

 

[HellHound]

Pazio was told to let one of them die,

Paizo was NOT told to let one die.

Paizo bought the magazines after the merger.

Prior to the merger, DUNGEON was the one losing money and about to be canned by Hasbro until the management of the periodicals department suggested combining it with Poly. The combined product makes enough to stay alive.

Poly saved Dungeon.

---

The reason there is subscriber-only content is that a magazine selling off the rack brings home under a THIRD of the money of a magazine sold directly to the subscriber. With 1/3 of the take-home per sale for a newstand copy (and assuming that 1/6 of the list price is the production price), a subscription copy brings in about 5 times as much profit as the newstand copies. Thus the publisher, understandably, encourages subscription sales over newstand sales.

---

On the other hand, I do feel that this is a blow against the FLGS, but a new publishing company with three full-colour periodicals to maintain NEEDS a good source of income. We release a single black-and-white periodical (The ENWorld Player's Journal) so I understand the desire to make every additional subscription sale possible.

 

[pogre]

Hi KenM,

As you may be able to tell from Ankh-Morpork Guard's response, this has been beaten to death on the boards. For "discussion" of this subject check out the following:
Dungeon #99 - Is the end near?
Dungeon Issue 100 poll
What's with Paizo Publishing?????
Thank you Pazio for your responses
Dungeon 100 Incursion
Dungeon 99
etcetera

 

[KenM]

I know all about the other threads, when do you think they will listen to the consumer?

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

...how do you know they aren't? Even if the large majority of posters here are annoyed with Dungeon/Poly(of which I'm not, but I CAN understand it), ENWorld is still a minority in the end. There are more than you may think that are just fine with Paizo and such as it is...its called a vocal minority. If it WASN'T a minority, then they would definatly do something about it.

 

[Mark Chance]

Why subscriber only stuff? That's was answered quite nicely right here:

The reason there is subscriber-only content is that a magazine selling off the rack brings home under a THIRD of the money of a magazine sold directly to the subscriber.

IOW, money talks, and the bigger pile of money has a louder voice. Sounds like good business sense to me.

 

[rangerjohn]

Yes money talks, and mine is staying in my wallet. Of course this has as much to do with 3.5 as Dungeon/Poly, but I'm not pleased with this decision either.