A lot of people wonder about this, and at first glance, it sounds reasonable. If a portion of my dues goes towards printing the magazine, why can’t I get that back if I choose not to receive the mag?
The answer is the economy of size. Or maybe it’s macro economics, or trickle down something, I don’t know, I nearly failed high school econ. Anyway, the biggest cost of printing the magazine is the setup. The savings in printing 20,000 copies versus 30,000 copies is so small it’s laughable.
The next question is, why can’t I get an online version for less money? Well, not only do we pay just about the same to print the magazine for everyone else, but it actually costs a good amount of money to make an e-version that’s in any way usable, cool or helpful. We could pretty easily put together a pdf or flash page-flippy-dippy thing, but to be honest, those tend toward lameness. We think the quality of photos and layouts merits a decent looking magazine, and we haven’t found a reasonably priced way to do that electronically. Yet.
What we really need at headquarters is YOUR OPINION. Not just yours, either – your friend’s and their friend’s and even those silly 4-way guys over in the corner you mock (but secretly want to be like – admit it). If 25,000 of you would prefer an electronic version to printed, well then, obviously we’d do our best to make that happen for you! Or, do you know of a fantastically brilliant way to make all this happen? Let us know – by e-mail, phone call or comment here.
April 8, 2009 at 1:15 pm |
Most of the time, you send a pdf to print. Why not just have the same pdf available for download as you send to print? Layouts will be the same, as will photo quality, it wont’ cost extra, and is easily made available online.
You export for a web pdf by clicking a few buttons and you can put everyone at bay for a while until you find an adequate solution that is less lame. Seems like an easy solution that won’t cost much time or $. Posting a link on the uspa website will take moments not hours as will the export of a pdf.
Just a thought.
April 9, 2009 at 11:40 am |
Many of our pages are spreads, which wouldn’t work viewing as a single-page PDF. It’s also frustrating and time-consuming for the user to download single pages to view. We have looked into software and companies that combine the PDFs to allow the user to flip through the pages like an actual magazine. Of course, there’s a cost associated with it. The good news is costs are coming down since more programs are being offered. We’re keeping a close eye on it and hope to offer a comprehensive e-magazine one day soon.