9 ms·

Hacker Monthly will publish its final issue 12 months from now

168 points by Zweihander 12y ago

ancymon 12y ago
Why?
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  I'm not sure there's a specific reason. 5 years is a long time (for internet years). I guess I just wanted to shut it down before it wither and die. I also wanted to explore other options (e.g work on new, different things).
  - dualogy 12y ago
    Haha, I went for the wither-and-die approach myself.. end result is the same, and inexplicably it's still sending "sufficient" funds my way. Major props, next time I shouldn't miss my Penang flight.. Phil ;)
SpaceInvader 12y ago
I didn't knew such magazine existed. It's not popular enough, that might be the reason (just guessing).
- crivabene 12y ago
  Same here. And from what I see, I am tempted to subscribe now.
- xtrumanx 12y ago
  I remember when it launched here. First few issues got a ton of upvotes and visibility upon release here but then the PDF editions weren't free to download anymore and it didn't get as much attention on new issues. I really wish the PDF editions were always free to download but if it was competing with the print-edition subscription business I guess I understand why it was locked down.
  - Thiz 12y ago
    This is a very important point. I got the first pdfs for free and loved the format but didn't want to subscribe (poor as hell) so I believe if they allowed the digital edition for free to browse on their website and to download as pdf, they would have a much much wider and recurring audience and would have made more money inserting ads, well, just like every other magazine out there.
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  May be I didn't do a good job promoting it :)
- robteix 12y ago
  Me neither. Now I'm sad because it seems like a great magazine :/
tinco 12y ago
Is it profitable? If you're not making enough perhaps you could sell it to someone in a lower income country or to someone with a lower income expectance? Still working on it for 12 months seems like a really long time.
- Loic 12y ago
  Sometimes, you are profitable but you know this is not the way to continue. You also know that it is better to stop than to let someone continue without the same level of commitment to the product/service. I closed a service once, it was profitable, but it was better to close. It took me 18 months to close it, ensuring the existing customers could migrate smoothly somewhere else. Lim is respecting his customers, giving them time. He is getting all my respect for that.
  - bearwithclaws 12y ago
    Thanks. Exactly how I felt about closing it and not selling to someone else.
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  It is profitable. FYI, I'm living in a lower income country (Malaysia), and I would say my living expenses are pretty low. Money wasn't the issue. It's hard to explain but I just felt the time is right to start scaling it down and eventually shut it down.
  - turingbook 12y ago
    Can you share more details about your experience? I think HM is a very good case study of technology publishing industry.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Thank you for your efforts. Publishing any work takes significant work, and HackerNewsMonthly always looked professional and seemed to have a good and representative selection of posts. You have contributed to the community and made the world a little better, and no matter what your goals were or are, you should count this as a success. "From the people who brought you HNMonthly" will be a valuable sentence for most things you choose to do (most, as say, any teenage children would not be impressed). Thank you and good luck in the future.
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  Thank you.
thom 12y ago
If you are in the market for a hacker-centric magazine and this news saddens you, you might check out Hack Circus: http://www.hackcircus.com/ http://www.hackcircus.com/
soft_dev_person 12y ago
This looks really nice. Subscribed! So, how many new subscriptions have you got so far after HN caught this? Edit: That wasn't an accusation of cynicism, just curious.
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  Thanks. Certainly more than I expected. And I definitely wouldn't expect people to subscribe to a service that's shutting down soon. (also didn't expect this to get on front page)
RBerenguel 12y ago
I have articles in a couple issues, so I got these free, then a year free and then I subscribed once my free year finished. Probably been a subscriber (free or otherwise) for 3 or 4 years, not sure by now. I have the deep feeling that the quality of the content shared here on HackerNews has dwindled (may also be that it has drowned by the increase in traffic, though), and this may have (negatively) impacted HM readership. As a sample point, I was pretty close to cancelling my subscription, since during the past 12-13 issues didn't have that interesting content, compared to the previous ~24-30. Of course, totally subjective, but a year and a half ago I was happy to see the "HM issue available for download email," and now it was more of a "meh." The quality of the magazine was always superb, though: perfectly crafted with aesthetically pleasant articles and layout. So, not to blame the team there. I hope you luck in your next venture!
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  Hey Ruben! How are you? :) Well, HM readership has been increasing from month to month in the past few years. But I agree with you on the content shared on HackerNews. There are still a lot of top notch articles shared here, but the focus (votes by the community, in general) seemed to shift news-centric article, from more educational articles, which is the bread and butter of HM.
  - RBerenguel 12y ago
    Hi there, doing fine :) It's exactly what I felt had changed, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one (and you have definite hands-on experience with HM!) I hope your next business also thrives (it's not like HM was a bad thing I guess, and it was definitely top-notch quality.)
- WA 12y ago
  This discussion about HN link quality is old and comes up frequently. I'm mostly a lurker. Thing is, I haven't read a complaint about the "low quality on HN" in quite a while. About a year ago or two, these objections would be posted multiple times every day. Maybe HN declined from 5 years ago, but I think it improved over the last year or so, because a lot of marketing BS isn't here anymore.
baby 12y ago
I really wanted to subscribe at one point, but then I wondered why I would do that since I was already reading HN daily. Why wait for the news? I guess other people who would be interested in such a magazine would face the same problem, content is already here on time and free.
- picks_at_nits 12y ago
  See the comments elsewhere in the thread about HN a a whole gradually changing focus from a more education/opinion site to a news site. A rule-of-thumb to distinguish the two is that a news article is the kind of thing you read right away, an educational article is something you deliberately bookmark to read later when you have some time to reflect on its content. The early issues of HN are full of articles that are as valid today as they were then. You may not have minded waiting for them.
  - baby 12y ago
    well, for _most_ articles I do mind reading them on time because the discussions they create around me will fathom quickly after the trend/buzz has passed. So you do want to be there when discussions happen. Talking about discussion, it happens a lot that I don't even look at the article and just look at the HN comments. I think I'm not the only one who would say HN is mostly HN because it has great comments.
ashleyp 12y ago
Damn no idea this existed :(
- br3w5 12y ago
  Me neither - I'll be buying a bunch of these then
  - ashleyp 12y ago
    Yeah I feel this would have made my life much easier. I love having paper copies of stuff too =(
computador 12y ago
Too bad, I was considering subscribing to the printed version in a few months ahead.
orph4nus 12y ago
I subscribed since 5 weeks now, as it was only then I discovered it. I must say, this news saddens me a lot. I've been downloading a lot of the past issues and read articles that I either missed (a lot of them), and articles that have been posted way before I ever heard of hackernews. Now I'm totally a fan of this magazine, and I deeply how some brave soul(s) is/are there to take over the beautiful work you have done. Thank you for the time and energy you've put into this!
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  Thanks. I won't be selling the site. I'll probably leave the site up (for as long as I can). There just won't be any new issue. People can still go to the site and buy digital/print copies.
anonfunction 12y ago
This is the first I head of it and I must say it looks great. I would like to buy previous issues, is that possible?
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  Yup. You can still subscribe now and get all the previous issues for free.
  - anonfunction 12y ago
    How about the print versions?
csomar 12y ago
Could you share the numbers after you finally close it? The number of subscribers, sales, expensed, profit, traffic, conversion... I'm interested by such stats.
- bemmu 12y ago
  Maybe put those in the final issue :)
gadders 12y ago
Good luck in your future ventures. I hoped you learnt a lot that you can take to your next business.
davidslv 12y ago
how about someone take the place and don't let this die ?
partiallogic 12y ago
I discovered Hacker Monthly a little over a month ago and subscribed straight away. I rarely visit HN as my schedule doesn't permit it so having a curated well formatted chunk of stuff to read when I can was amazing and pretty much led me to buying a new iPad. I'm gutted that HM is coming to an end but greatly appreciate that it isn't an abrupt end and I still have a whole other year of issues to look forward to. I'm so grateful for your hard work over all these years and having access to all the previous issues gives me a huge amount of content to make my way through. Good luck with all your future endeavours!
bane 12y ago
5 years is a long time to do anything, but what an awesome run! Congrats on doing it and to all involved. It was obviously a labor of love.
kfk 12y ago
Great magazine, it’s a pity this is the first time I hear about it! Could you share a bit what type of customers did you gather? What did they like the most about HackerMonthly? Would have this worked online-only or was the print version part of the great value of this magazine?
janlukacs 12y ago
Sorry to hear this Lim, i liked the concept (advertised with you in the past :) Best of luck with your new ventures.
duck 12y ago
Lim is a great guy who has put in so much work to make an awesome publication - it really is a great example of a project done well. I started my newsletter about the same time and it has been great to work with him over the years. Really sad to see it go!!
jscheel 12y ago
I read the headline thinking it was talking about 2600 Hacker Quarterly. Haven't really looked into Hacker Monthly, but I hate to see someone have to shut down their company.
avinassh 12y ago
Had no idea that it existed. All the best for your next venture! OT: Does HN employ any licensing on the content? I checked FAQ/Guidelines. Couldn't find anything about HN content. So anyone can create something like OP or would it require special permission from YC? Also can this idea extended for Reddit subs?
- patio11 12y ago
  Articles submitted to HN remain the copyright of the people who wrote them, not of YC. (HN Monthly has been scrupulous in observing copyrights.) Comments on HN, ditto, although YC has an implicit license to (at a minimum) display them.
- mixedmath 12y ago
  I also just returned from a search for licensing information. It's a bit peculiar, since it's not quite like HN produced the content. HN aggregated the content. Perhaps to do this completely honestly, one would need to check the licensing of each individual article. Since undoubtedly it is not clear for every article, I wonder what the "default" set of assumptions for an article posted on the internet is.
aestetix 12y ago
It's worth noting that 2600 is still going strong after 30 years.
3stripe 12y ago
When I started blogging a couple of years ago, Hacker Monthly MADE MY YEAR when they put my 'Why I Cycled 100 Miles to Meet My First Customer' story on the front cover (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4796755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4796755) So I just wanted to send you a hug over the internet. I've loved getting a copy of the magazine by email every month since then. All the best from London, James
midnitewarrior 12y ago
It is unfortunate they couldn't have had a more original name than stealing 2600's magazine "Hacker Quarterly" name and changing "Quarterly" to "Monthly".
tymski 12y ago
This is a bummer and not because I am a subscriber, but because I would have been one had I known about Hacker Monthly. Sorry if I missed it somewhere, but will the issues be archived somewhere for newcomers to read?
tdsamardzhiev 12y ago
1. Just learned about Hacker Monthly 2. Downloaded first issue and read immediately. 3. Subscribed for 1yr and started reading from 2nd issue on. I want you to know that after 5 years, there are still people finding out about your work and regarding it as awesome :)

168 points by Zweihander 12y ago

ancymon 12y ago

Why?

bearwithclaws 12y ago
I'm not sure there's a specific reason. 5 years is a long time (for internet years). I guess I just wanted to shut it down before it wither and die. I also wanted to explore other options (e.g work on new, different things).
- dualogy 12y ago
  Haha, I went for the wither-and-die approach myself.. end result is the same, and inexplicably it's still sending "sufficient" funds my way. Major props, next time I shouldn't miss my Penang flight.. Phil ;)

SpaceInvader 12y ago

I didn't knew such magazine existed. It's not popular enough, that might be the reason (just guessing).

crivabene 12y ago
Same here. And from what I see, I am tempted to subscribe now.
xtrumanx 12y ago
I remember when it launched here. First few issues got a ton of upvotes and visibility upon release here but then the PDF editions weren't free to download anymore and it didn't get as much attention on new issues. I really wish the PDF editions were always free to download but if it was competing with the print-edition subscription business I guess I understand why it was locked down.
- Thiz 12y ago
  This is a very important point. I got the first pdfs for free and loved the format but didn't want to subscribe (poor as hell) so I believe if they allowed the digital edition for free to browse on their website and to download as pdf, they would have a much much wider and recurring audience and would have made more money inserting ads, well, just like every other magazine out there.
bearwithclaws 12y ago
May be I didn't do a good job promoting it :)
robteix 12y ago
Me neither. Now I'm sad because it seems like a great magazine :/

tinco 12y ago

Is it profitable? If you're not making enough perhaps you could sell it to someone in a lower income country or to someone with a lower income expectance? Still working on it for 12 months seems like a really long time.

Loic 12y ago
Sometimes, you are profitable but you know this is not the way to continue. You also know that it is better to stop than to let someone continue without the same level of commitment to the product/service. I closed a service once, it was profitable, but it was better to close. It took me 18 months to close it, ensuring the existing customers could migrate smoothly somewhere else. Lim is respecting his customers, giving them time. He is getting all my respect for that.
- bearwithclaws 12y ago
  Thanks. Exactly how I felt about closing it and not selling to someone else.
bearwithclaws 12y ago
It is profitable. FYI, I'm living in a lower income country (Malaysia), and I would say my living expenses are pretty low. Money wasn't the issue. It's hard to explain but I just felt the time is right to start scaling it down and eventually shut it down.
- turingbook 12y ago
  Can you share more details about your experience? I think HM is a very good case study of technology publishing industry.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

Thank you for your efforts. Publishing any work takes significant work, and HackerNewsMonthly always looked professional and seemed to have a good and representative selection of posts. You have contributed to the community and made the world a little better, and no matter what your goals were or are, you should count this as a success. "From the people who brought you HNMonthly" will be a valuable sentence for most things you choose to do (most, as say, any teenage children would not be impressed). Thank you and good luck in the future.

bearwithclaws 12y ago
Thank you.

thom 12y ago

If you are in the market for a hacker-centric magazine and this news saddens you, you might check out Hack Circus: http://www.hackcircus.com/ http://www.hackcircus.com/

soft_dev_person 12y ago

This looks really nice. Subscribed! So, how many new subscriptions have you got so far after HN caught this? Edit: That wasn't an accusation of cynicism, just curious.

bearwithclaws 12y ago
Thanks. Certainly more than I expected. And I definitely wouldn't expect people to subscribe to a service that's shutting down soon. (also didn't expect this to get on front page)

RBerenguel 12y ago

I have articles in a couple issues, so I got these free, then a year free and then I subscribed once my free year finished. Probably been a subscriber (free or otherwise) for 3 or 4 years, not sure by now. I have the deep feeling that the quality of the content shared here on HackerNews has dwindled (may also be that it has drowned by the increase in traffic, though), and this may have (negatively) impacted HM readership. As a sample point, I was pretty close to cancelling my subscription, since during the past 12-13 issues didn't have that interesting content, compared to the previous ~24-30. Of course, totally subjective, but a year and a half ago I was happy to see the "HM issue available for download email," and now it was more of a "meh." The quality of the magazine was always superb, though: perfectly crafted with aesthetically pleasant articles and layout. So, not to blame the team there. I hope you luck in your next venture!

bearwithclaws 12y ago
Hey Ruben! How are you? :) Well, HM readership has been increasing from month to month in the past few years. But I agree with you on the content shared on HackerNews. There are still a lot of top notch articles shared here, but the focus (votes by the community, in general) seemed to shift news-centric article, from more educational articles, which is the bread and butter of HM.
- RBerenguel 12y ago
  Hi there, doing fine :) It's exactly what I felt had changed, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one (and you have definite hands-on experience with HM!) I hope your next business also thrives (it's not like HM was a bad thing I guess, and it was definitely top-notch quality.)
WA 12y ago
This discussion about HN link quality is old and comes up frequently. I'm mostly a lurker. Thing is, I haven't read a complaint about the "low quality on HN" in quite a while. About a year ago or two, these objections would be posted multiple times every day. Maybe HN declined from 5 years ago, but I think it improved over the last year or so, because a lot of marketing BS isn't here anymore.

baby 12y ago

I really wanted to subscribe at one point, but then I wondered why I would do that since I was already reading HN daily. Why wait for the news? I guess other people who would be interested in such a magazine would face the same problem, content is already here on time and free.

picks_at_nits 12y ago
See the comments elsewhere in the thread about HN a a whole gradually changing focus from a more education/opinion site to a news site. A rule-of-thumb to distinguish the two is that a news article is the kind of thing you read right away, an educational article is something you deliberately bookmark to read later when you have some time to reflect on its content. The early issues of HN are full of articles that are as valid today as they were then. You may not have minded waiting for them.
- baby 12y ago
  well, for _most_ articles I do mind reading them on time because the discussions they create around me will fathom quickly after the trend/buzz has passed. So you do want to be there when discussions happen. Talking about discussion, it happens a lot that I don't even look at the article and just look at the HN comments. I think I'm not the only one who would say HN is mostly HN because it has great comments.

ashleyp 12y ago

Damn no idea this existed :(

br3w5 12y ago
Me neither - I'll be buying a bunch of these then
- ashleyp 12y ago
  Yeah I feel this would have made my life much easier. I love having paper copies of stuff too =(

computador 12y ago

Too bad, I was considering subscribing to the printed version in a few months ahead.

orph4nus 12y ago

I subscribed since 5 weeks now, as it was only then I discovered it. I must say, this news saddens me a lot. I've been downloading a lot of the past issues and read articles that I either missed (a lot of them), and articles that have been posted way before I ever heard of hackernews. Now I'm totally a fan of this magazine, and I deeply how some brave soul(s) is/are there to take over the beautiful work you have done. Thank you for the time and energy you've put into this!

bearwithclaws 12y ago
Thanks. I won't be selling the site. I'll probably leave the site up (for as long as I can). There just won't be any new issue. People can still go to the site and buy digital/print copies.

anonfunction 12y ago

This is the first I head of it and I must say it looks great. I would like to buy previous issues, is that possible?

bearwithclaws 12y ago
Yup. You can still subscribe now and get all the previous issues for free.
- anonfunction 12y ago
  How about the print versions?

csomar 12y ago

Could you share the numbers after you finally close it? The number of subscribers, sales, expensed, profit, traffic, conversion... I'm interested by such stats.

bemmu 12y ago
Maybe put those in the final issue :)

gadders 12y ago

Good luck in your future ventures. I hoped you learnt a lot that you can take to your next business.

davidslv 12y ago

how about someone take the place and don't let this die ?

partiallogic 12y ago

I discovered Hacker Monthly a little over a month ago and subscribed straight away. I rarely visit HN as my schedule doesn't permit it so having a curated well formatted chunk of stuff to read when I can was amazing and pretty much led me to buying a new iPad. I'm gutted that HM is coming to an end but greatly appreciate that it isn't an abrupt end and I still have a whole other year of issues to look forward to. I'm so grateful for your hard work over all these years and having access to all the previous issues gives me a huge amount of content to make my way through. Good luck with all your future endeavours!

bane 12y ago

5 years is a long time to do anything, but what an awesome run! Congrats on doing it and to all involved. It was obviously a labor of love.

kfk 12y ago

Great magazine, it’s a pity this is the first time I hear about it! Could you share a bit what type of customers did you gather? What did they like the most about HackerMonthly? Would have this worked online-only or was the print version part of the great value of this magazine?

janlukacs 12y ago

Sorry to hear this Lim, i liked the concept (advertised with you in the past :) Best of luck with your new ventures.

duck 12y ago

Lim is a great guy who has put in so much work to make an awesome publication - it really is a great example of a project done well. I started my newsletter about the same time and it has been great to work with him over the years. Really sad to see it go!!

jscheel 12y ago

I read the headline thinking it was talking about 2600 Hacker Quarterly. Haven't really looked into Hacker Monthly, but I hate to see someone have to shut down their company.

avinassh 12y ago

Had no idea that it existed. All the best for your next venture! OT: Does HN employ any licensing on the content? I checked FAQ/Guidelines. Couldn't find anything about HN content. So anyone can create something like OP or would it require special permission from YC? Also can this idea extended for Reddit subs?

patio11 12y ago
Articles submitted to HN remain the copyright of the people who wrote them, not of YC. (HN Monthly has been scrupulous in observing copyrights.) Comments on HN, ditto, although YC has an implicit license to (at a minimum) display them.
mixedmath 12y ago
I also just returned from a search for licensing information. It's a bit peculiar, since it's not quite like HN produced the content. HN aggregated the content. Perhaps to do this completely honestly, one would need to check the licensing of each individual article. Since undoubtedly it is not clear for every article, I wonder what the "default" set of assumptions for an article posted on the internet is.

aestetix 12y ago

It's worth noting that 2600 is still going strong after 30 years.

3stripe 12y ago

When I started blogging a couple of years ago, Hacker Monthly MADE MY YEAR when they put my 'Why I Cycled 100 Miles to Meet My First Customer' story on the front cover (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4796755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4796755) So I just wanted to send you a hug over the internet. I've loved getting a copy of the magazine by email every month since then. All the best from London, James

midnitewarrior 12y ago

It is unfortunate they couldn't have had a more original name than stealing 2600's magazine "Hacker Quarterly" name and changing "Quarterly" to "Monthly".

tymski 12y ago

This is a bummer and not because I am a subscriber, but because I would have been one had I known about Hacker Monthly. Sorry if I missed it somewhere, but will the issues be archived somewhere for newcomers to read?

tdsamardzhiev 12y ago

1. Just learned about Hacker Monthly 2. Downloaded first issue and read immediately. 3. Subscribed for 1yr and started reading from 2nd issue on. I want you to know that after 5 years, there are still people finding out about your work and regarding it as awesome :)