What Would Get You to Subscribe to Dungeon?

[Korgoth]

IThe printing and distribution costs are too high for such a niche magazine, I expect.

Umm... you do realize that even the Trotskyists have a print magazine, right? So it's obviously not that expensive.

 

[Baron Opal]

Heh. It amazes me what magazines are on the rack in Borders, let alone other shops. Thinks I pick up, thumb through and put back thinking "well, all 5 of the people in Salem interested in this topic can buy their own copy."

 

[QuaziquestGM]

1) Printed magazine arriving by mail

2)Regularly produced. You know, a periodical?

3)Support for earlier editions, including occasional duel/tri/quad/even penta stating of monsters and npcs. They own the rights to all of the editions, they should give token support for all of them.

4) restating/complete redos of all of the creatures butchered by the 4e monster manual. Give me a real dynad instead of swampthing with a glamor, infectious werecritters, beholders with an antimagic central eye, and drow that don't like sunlight. Ya know, all the creatures they changed needlessly instead of using another creature exactly like the change (wolfwares), or just making a new creature with a different name.

5) Restats of classic modules in 4e, without changing the identities or numbers of the monsters. I'd like to see exactly how playable the grand hall encounter of Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is in 4e. (of course they would probably just make lame 1 hp hill giant minions....)

6) encounter groups that make some kind of sense, or explanations for the ones in the 4e monster manual that don't. Why are Harpies working with Sauhagan? Why are Sauhagan working with fleshripper vampiers?

 

[Hussar]

/edit

Y'know what? Nevermind.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Its sounding like a LOT of people are "former subscribers" merely/largely because of the lack of a hardcopy format.

This is purely anecdotal, of course, but I really have to wonder what WotC's market research showed.

We can only guess. But for anecdotal stuff: I'm picking up my DDI subscription because it's digitally. I never got the print versions, since getting them to Germany seems an unreliable hassle. (Though a member of my group did get Dragon & Dungeon)

 

[freebfrost]

1) publish it in print/hardcopy
2) by paizo
3) for 3.5/Pathfinder rules.

Otherwise, no thanks.

Again, what Twowolves said.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Printed on wafer-thin two-ply paper, rolled onto a paper tube.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

We can only guess. But for anecdotal stuff: I'm picking up my DDI subscription because it's digitally. I never got the print versions, since getting them to Germany seems an unreliable hassle. (Though a member of my group did get Dragon & Dungeon)

Some folks (not pointing a finger at Mustrum, specifically) seem to think that print and digital magazines are mutually exclusive. Why is that?

It seems to me that once they've put the material together to send to the printer for a print magazine, putting out a digital version is pretty simple. Paizo did that with Pathfinder -- as soon as the print copy shipped you'd get an email that you could download the digital version.

Why couldn't they offer a Dungeon subscription in print-only, digital-only, or print and digital formats (prices very depending on the type of subscription)? The print version could be an addendum to DDI -- you wouldn't get the entire prnit copy until the magazine was finished for that month, but if you subscribed to print/digital or digital-only you could get the individual articles as they released.

 

[Maggan]

Why couldn't they offer a Dungeon subscription in print-only, digital-only, or print and digital formats (prices very depending on the type of subscription)? The print version could be an addendum to DDI -- you wouldn't get the entire prnit copy until the magazine was finished for that month, but if you subscribed to print/digital or digital-only you could get the individual articles as they released.

I don't have any insight into the reasoning behind not doing that, but I imagine that there was/is a risk that offering the content online first would negatively impact the subscriptions of the printed version, thereby making the print magazines unviable.

Also, I think WotC wants to avoid confusion in the marketplace, and use the strong brands of Dragon and Dungeon to push the online service, instead of diluting the message (online and print at the same time).

At least, that's a few of the things I would be thinking hard about if I were at WotC.

/M

 

[malraux]

Why couldn't they offer a Dungeon subscription in print-only, digital-only, or print and digital formats (prices very depending on the type of subscription)? The print version could be an addendum to DDI -- you wouldn't get the entire prnit copy until the magazine was finished for that month, but if you subscribed to print/digital or digital-only you could get the individual articles as they released.

Two guesses. First, if they want to have the print magazine and the online stuff show up at the same time, then they'd have to have longer lead times. Typesetting the magazine plus ads, sending to the printer, then mailing off. That increase in time could cause some difficulties. With the online only, once a particular item is finished, it can go up.

Second, the print magazine would likely require ads. But for my online stuff, having ads would annoy me. I don't want to waste ink or paper on ads. So you'd have to typeset everything twice. Plus additional staff would be needed to solicit and compile ads.

I also wouldn't be surprised if future trend projections showed that the print would be in trouble within a few years anyway, with printing costs and mailing costs going up a rates well above inflation.