6 ms·

My daughter wanted a subscription to the New Yorker for her birthday. There were some promotions on their website (not some shady magazine broker). After going

by TomVDB 8y ago

My daughter wanted a subscription to the New Yorker for her birthday. There were some promotions on their website (not some shady magazine broker). After going through all the motions, they happily tell you that you can expect the first issue in your mailbox about 3 months later... 3 months. How is that possible?

bpicolo 8y ago
I recently signed up for the New Yorker and issues started coming in the next week. Was this a long time ago?
- TomVDB 8y ago
  This was last year in December. It was some kind of promotion though.
pessimizer 8y ago
Probably lead time on printing. 1) It's a physical product, not a service, 2) it has a short shelf life, after which it dramatically drops in value, so 3) and every overprinted copy becomes hamster cage liner. My guess is that they grant instant access to the paywalled articles on the site, though. If they don't, they're being stupid, trying to keep people from getting three months of minuscule bandwidth per subscription for free and also being unwilling to price it in at however much they value it.
- kgwgk 8y ago
  I don’t think weekly magazines are printed months in advance.
  - sulam 8y ago
    I think you're onto something here.
  - rabidrat 8y ago
    They have to build a new mag fab to handle the increase in demand, and those take time to build.
    - tinus_hn 8y ago
      Why would the New Yorker print their own magazines? It is much easier to share a resource like that.
megaman8 8y ago
there's a reason print media is going out of business. to this day, I still can't pay for wall street journal article with a micropayment. and no, i'm not going to pay them 100$s of dollars for a 6 month subscription to read a single article.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
  I've kept thinking that if I could just tip a paper a dollar or so when I read something good, they'd make a lot of money out of me. But I can't.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    They can already make plenty of money out of you from ads. Far more scalable and efficient, and 0 active work for you to do.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > they'd make a lot of money out of me No they wouldn't. Subscriptions for journalism make sense for the same reason endowed chairs in academia make sense. Advertising is almost always a better model than micropayments for the simple reason that it's (a) more reliable and (b) has fewer support costs.
  - dman 8y ago
    But then they would have to write something good.
  - usr1106 8y ago
    > could just tip a paper a dollar or so when I read something good, they'd make a lot of money out of me. But I can't. The Guardian has it. But they are an exception. On the other hand I tried to make a paper subscription of the Guardian [1]. Despite searching for an hour, I could find no way how to order the paper. Maybe another case of rejecting the customer willing to pay, because nobody could possibly want that service... Should have called them, but they weren't open at the moment. [1] for my daugther who wants to prepare for her English exam. Freshness of the news is less an issue than having it it in a comfortable format for studying. She hates that many of her school books are only online today. Online could have some advantages, but most implementations by school book publishers are rather poor.

by TomVDB 8y ago

bpicolo 8y ago

I recently signed up for the New Yorker and issues started coming in the next week. Was this a long time ago?

TomVDB 8y ago
This was last year in December. It was some kind of promotion though.

pessimizer 8y ago

Probably lead time on printing. 1) It's a physical product, not a service, 2) it has a short shelf life, after which it dramatically drops in value, so 3) and every overprinted copy becomes hamster cage liner. My guess is that they grant instant access to the paywalled articles on the site, though. If they don't, they're being stupid, trying to keep people from getting three months of minuscule bandwidth per subscription for free and also being unwilling to price it in at however much they value it.

kgwgk 8y ago
I don’t think weekly magazines are printed months in advance.
- sulam 8y ago
  I think you're onto something here.
- rabidrat 8y ago
  They have to build a new mag fab to handle the increase in demand, and those take time to build.
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    Why would the New Yorker print their own magazines? It is much easier to share a resource like that.

megaman8 8y ago

there's a reason print media is going out of business. to this day, I still can't pay for wall street journal article with a micropayment. and no, i'm not going to pay them 100$s of dollars for a 6 month subscription to read a single article.

TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
I've kept thinking that if I could just tip a paper a dollar or so when I read something good, they'd make a lot of money out of me. But I can't.
- manigandham 8y ago
  They can already make plenty of money out of you from ads. Far more scalable and efficient, and 0 active work for you to do.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > they'd make a lot of money out of me No they wouldn't. Subscriptions for journalism make sense for the same reason endowed chairs in academia make sense. Advertising is almost always a better model than micropayments for the simple reason that it's (a) more reliable and (b) has fewer support costs.
- dman 8y ago
  But then they would have to write something good.
- usr1106 8y ago
  > could just tip a paper a dollar or so when I read something good, they'd make a lot of money out of me. But I can't. The Guardian has it. But they are an exception. On the other hand I tried to make a paper subscription of the Guardian [1]. Despite searching for an hour, I could find no way how to order the paper. Maybe another case of rejecting the customer willing to pay, because nobody could possibly want that service... Should have called them, but they weren't open at the moment. [1] for my daugther who wants to prepare for her English exam. Freshness of the news is less an issue than having it it in a comfortable format for studying. She hates that many of her school books are only online today. Online could have some advantages, but most implementations by school book publishers are rather poor.