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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 6481796" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Do you understand the disincentives for print? I doubt it; few really do unless they've worked in book/magazine sales (especially as management), or in getting magazines printed and sold. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">buyback expectation. Avoided with direct sales only, reduced with aggregators like Amazon. Retailers have the expectation of being able to get a refund on unsold "stale" magazines, Magazine distributors also have the same expectation. So, really, you want to put the funds into escrow until the buyback window is closed</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Glossy full-color full-bleed - most on-the-shelf mags need to be full color full bleed to sell well, and that steps up the ink costs. Glossy paper also ups the costs. (I've been checking price quotes recently.) Neither relates to the content quality, but people still expect it. PDF dumps the issues of ink onto the end user.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Paper in general - paper costs have continued to climb. What used to be $1/ream is now $4, and that's for letter-size. Larger sizes have gone up proportionally more; 11x17 went up from about $3-$4 to $13-$18+. And its not getting better. The cost of paper has climbed faster than the relative value of the dollar. (The old prices I'm citing are about 1990. The 1990 US dollar's buying power was about 1.8x the current US dollar.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bookstores & gamestores - there are measurably fewer now than in 1990. Of both. The transition to eBooks has not been the revolution yet, but it's definitely an insurgency with casualties. Fewer places to sell to does mean reduced circulation.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Advertiser revenue - is down across the board for magazines. This has been cited in the last year by several magazines I've read, including Scientific American, Astronomy, and another one I don't recall specifically (It may have been Forbes). </li> </ul>Trust me, I understand the desire for dead tree  - but the only way we're likely to see it is as POD. The costs have gone up, the readership has gone down, and the advertisers are expecting the same prices. I think I could see following the lead of Amarillo Design Bureau, tho - roughly quarterly magazine-like external-advertisement-free products, subject to reprinting, with the rights contracts negotiated to prevent repeats of the Dragon CD debacle.And POD is only just getting to the point it's really viable.</blockquote>

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