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Hacker Monthly - Issue #4 - September 2010
- g0atbutt 16y agoQuick heads up for those that typically download it. The digital download is now $3.
- maxklein 16y agoMake sense. The original articles can still be read at the original locations, so nothing wrong with charging for an organised version.
- jacquesm 16y agoHe's even friendly enough to link to the original articles from the teaser page. Every article has a link associated with it so you don't have to go hunting.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Tudisco 16y agoPurchased! $3 is fair.
- norswap 16y agoMaybe it's fair, but I feel they shouldn't have distributed it freely to begin with without making clear that it was becoming a paid product at some point. Now I feel pissed, irrationally perhaps, but pissed nonetheless.
- almost 16y agoI find this attitude quite bizarre.
- angstrom 16y ago"When people don’t know what a fundamentally new product should cost, they are strongly influenced by the first price they encounter." http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/priceless/201004/how-much-should-ebook-cost http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/priceless/201004/how-muc...
- xiongchiamiov 16y agoHave you ever read The Prince? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Generosity_vs._parsimony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Generosity_vs._parsi...
- amih 16y agoI was relieved to see that they started charging for this! I wanted to pay but didn't want the snail mail version. I printed every issue on a A4 duplex color laser printer and it comes out very nice. I paid for the next 12 issues.
- BvS 16y agoNothing wrong with the price but I'm really curious how it turns out and if the extra revenue makes up for less interested advertisers if the number of downloads goes down significantly).
- alexkay 16y agoJust a suggestion, please make it possible to link to the current issue with a unique URL. There's no good reason why [1] works and [2] doesn't work (yet). I had to append a random parameter to the home page URL to make it HN-submit-form-friendly. On a different note, thanks for offering the ebook version at the same time as the dead tree version. Well worth the 3 bucks. [1] http://hackermonthly.com/issue-3.html http://hackermonthly.com/issue-3.html [2] http://hackermonthly.com/issue-4.html http://hackermonthly.com/issue-4.html
- bearwithclaws 16y agoRight, Alex. The link is up (and will be, for upcoming issues as well). Thank you so much for supporting us.
- djcapelis 16y agoOn that note can you make it do the right thing with /4 instead of /?4 with a re-write rule or something? Cool URIs and all that. Preemptive thanks!
- nopassrecover 16y agoCant wait until we get bulk international shipping. However: "Worldwide Shipping - Orders that contain a single issue or total 300 pages or fewer can be shipped worldwide. Orders more than that can only be shipped to the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada." means i can now order all 4.
- bearwithclaws 16y agoRumor has it that it's coming soon.
- nopassrecover 16y agoThe 300 pages is good enough for me (and the shipping is quite cheap) considering I can't find anything else I like on MagCloud yet. Having said that it would be nice to have bulk shipping for those who want to publish.
- stricken 16y agoDoes anybody know, if I buy the digital subscription today, do I get this months issue first? Edit: Never mind, completely misread the notes section of the subscription page. Answer - you don't.
- bearwithclaws 16y agoDigital subscription (and print subscription) is only for upcoming issue. Drop me a note (cheng.soon at hackermonthly) if you wish to receive this month issue first.
- paulbaumgart 16y agoJust bought the paper edition. Thanks for all the work you put into this! The collection of articles looks very interesting this time around.
- stjarnljuset 16y agoI don't remember if you did this before, but I like that you included links to the HN submission of the articles in the issue, since the digital edition is no longer free. Also, your link to "A Coder's Guide to Coffee" links to the wrong submission.
- bearwithclaws 16y agoThank you for pointing that out. Corrected the link.
- zaidf 16y agoDo you get the digital version "free" if you order the print? I ordered the print version so I can read it while taking a dump :) But I'd still like the digital version for all the other times. Hope I don't have to pay for it separately.
- bearwithclaws 16y agoYou could forward me your receipt from MagCloud and I will send you the digital version. MagCloud doesn't share any data of the people who bought the magazine on their site so we couldn't do this automatically.
- zaidf 16y agoDone. Thank you.
- edanm 16y agoHackerMonthly is down for me. This is not the first time it's happened, it happened when the last issue came out, and flipped between being available and being unavailable every few hours. downforeveryoneorjustme.com says it's a problem only for me, but since it keeps going back and forth without me doing anything, and every other site works perfectly, I'm not sure what I can do. Just thought I'd let you know. If anyone else has the same problem, please say so so I won't feel so alone :)
- bearwithclaws 16y agoA few people actually told me that. We are planning to move to Linode this month and hopefully that helps.
- zaidf 16y agoThe print version is worth just for its prank potential. I look forward to having it out on my desk during lectures. Already I get interesting looks when I am browsing Hacker News during my b-school classes. Now with a magazine with that name...I hope my classmates don't call the cops.
- lispm 16y agoI just bought and downloaded the digital edition. Great issue. Thanks for the hard work to make that possible! Extra bonus: Lisp code included!
- abijlani 16y agoCould you share with us what tools you use to produce Hacker Monthly? I would like to create an ebook but have no idea what tools to use.
- bearwithclaws 16y agoAdobe InDesign CS4 (still haven't move to CS5 but I heard it's great).
- mkuhn 16y agoI love that MagCloud is advertising in this issue. That says quite something about the quality of the work done on Hacker Monthly, about the target audience of the magazine, and MagCloud. Can you tell us if you made some kind of (special) deal with them and if so what it boils down to?
- parbo 16y agoPlease make a book of all 2010 issues, I'd be all over that!
- bearwithclaws 16y agoThe book will look like an encyclopedia (500-600 pages with the size of a magazine). You sure?
- almost 16y agoJust purchased the print edition, looking forwards to it!
- cletus 16y agoAs the author of one of the articles in this issue ("Plain English Explanation of Big O") I'm not sure how I feel about this. Cheng did seek my permission for this and I was happy to give it but I was also operating under the assumption that the digital edition was free. I didn't (and wouldn't) expect to necessarily get paid for something that was given away but when it's paid for digital? I really don't know.
- bl4k 16y agoDid you give a verbal ok, or did you sign something? (a document that would have handed over your rights to the publisher and where you would have relinquished all commercial claims). Were the publishers upfront with you about selling your content, rather than aggregating it and publishing it for free, with attribution? In other similar publications, where the content is mainly an aggregate of other articles (such as the Joel on Software books), the authors are all paid based on per-print or a pre-negotiated flat sum for the rights. Most magazine publishers insist that contributors are paid, because by accepting a payment the original author is binding to a de facto contract to assign rights of their work to the publishers. This avoids any confusion, such as that you are feeling now. In your specific case, I think it is fair that the original authors are paid - as the value in this publication is not the colors or fonts or organization, but rather the content. (you may also want to check the StackOverflow terms and conditions, because it could be that they own commercial rights to any content on the site)
- cletus 16y agoI agreed in email. There was no mention that the next (and I assume subsequent) editions would be paid for digital. To be honest, I hadn't heard of Hackers Monthly before being approached. The previous three issues were free so I simply assumed that would continue to be the case. Stackoverflow content is Creative Commons licensed (non-exclusively): http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/StackOverflow.com http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/StackOverflow.c... so the content could be reproduced with attribution anyway. Interestingly though, it's not the SO version that was published. I made some corrections to an expanded version on my blog: http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/07/plain-english-explanation-of-big-o.html http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/07/plain-english-explanation-... which obviously isn't CC-licensed. Print version costing money makes sense. It costs money to print things and send them to people. I think of it this way: ads on Stackoverflow pay for the site being there but any user can access the content. There is no registration or pay wall (like the evil hyphen site) so I'm happy to volunteer my time to answer people's questions. If SO were ever to construct a registration or pay wall I'd be gone in 0.13 seconds. This feels a little similar to me. While I appreciate the work that goes into doing a magazine layout this is now a commercial enterprise in all senses, at which point you need to pay your content creators, so it feels a little bait-and-switch to me. Or am I wrong?
- snippyhollow 16y ago$13+ for shipping fees in France, a little too much. :)