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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erik Mona" data-source="post: 1903731" data-attributes="member: 2174">Snapdragyn,I am truly sorry to hear about your subscription delays. You have no idea how much it pains me to hear about stuff like that. As you might imagine, as an editor of two magazines I am an absolute control freak, and when things go wrong with an aspect of the business over which I have no control it just drives me through the roof. However, as I mentioned in the post above, Paizo has recently taken steps to wrestle this delivery problem to the ground (all previous attempts having failed), and there are signs that the last issues of Dungeon and Dragon have arrived somewhat more swiftly than normal. I know of several posters who have received Dungeon #118, for instance, and I am pretty sure it is not yet available in the stores. Ditto #327, which wasn't on the local newsstands here in Seattle as late as yesterday.The way the whole thing works is that the magazines are shipped directly from our printer to subscribers immediately after the magazines have been printed. A couple of days later, it goes to the game distributors. A couple of days later, it goes to Curtis Circulation, which handles magazine distribution for thousands of magazines (including, probably, most of the ones you read regularly). These are the people who fulfill newsstand orders. So all of this stuff is in the mail pretty much over the course of the same couple of weeks. Ideally first to subscribers and then to stores shortly thereafter. But it's more complicated than that. The magazines are printed in the midwest, so subscribers from Wisconsin, Illinois, and thereabouts are most likely first to receive their magazines. Very possibly within 2-5 days of that magazine being created. Often, a poster here on EN World shares the table of contents from his new Dragon a week or so before the office "test" subscription copies arrive in Seattle. It takes the magazine a great deal less time to reach someone in the next county than it does to reach someone on the other side of the US. Or (as our beleagured foreign subscribers know) someone in another country altogether. Because some of us (myself included) are so addicted not only to D&D but to posting on Internet message boards, a few gamers love to be the first to post the table of contents or whatever for their new Dragon. These are often among the first people outside the printers to have ever seen the finished magazines, and the minute someone sees that post, their "why don't I have my issue yet" clock starts ticking. We get dozens of letters every month from people complaining that they don't have their issues yet before we get ours in the office. A couple days later, most of these people write us back and let us know that their magazines arrived "after all." Sometimes we in the office still haven't received our own copies yet.None of that is meant to excuse poor or late delivery of the magazines. I just wanted to give you an idea of how the distribution of the magazines works (or, in some cases, doesn't work). Obviously, if people are writing in and complaining that the magazine is available in stores before they get their subscriber copy that's a problem. It's the kind of problem we always try hard to fix and avoid, and I'm thinking we're well on the way to getting it licked.--Erik MonaEditor-in-ChiefDragon & Dungeon</blockquote>

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