Finally! Mix-and-match magazine subscriptions
I’ve been waiting for this. While I hate to pay the newstand price for magazines, I often do. Why do I pay $4.95 for a single issue when I could subscribe for about $15 per year?
To illustrate, I should take a picture of the stacks of magazines I have around the house. But you can probably look around your own house and understand perfectly why I don’t want a subscription to, say, Sound and Vision magazine when all I want to do is research HDTVs before buying one, or study a few issues to see if my personal essay about the experience of buying one would be a good fit for the magazine. (Somehow I doubt it. :))
And for years I’ve complained about the lack of a subscription service that would allow me to choose the individual copies I’d like to receive that month.
Finally, someone got tired of hearing me complain. (Okay, that probably wasn’t the real reason they started the service, but I like to think I have some influence in the publishing world. Humor me.)
In September, Time Inc. will launch its Maghound service. The site looks FANTASTIC! (Join me as I squeal with delight!) They have 280 titles on board currently with a goal of reaching 400 by the end of the year.
You can read the story about it at Folio.com. Here’s the link. (Note how I didn’t quote an excerpt. How totally paranoid of me!)
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/maghound-com-set-debut-september
June 27th, 2008 at 11:50 am
You mean the big ol’ AP has scared you? (I think you’re safe w/Folio LOL).
I love this idea…Subx that are consumer driven. Now all they need is a digital newsstand.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:57 am
LOL, not really Erika. The only reason I didn’t excerpt was because I had enough to say on the matter myself.
… And by the way, it was your post that alerted me to the whole issue. When I originally read the bit from Poynteronline, I knew I had heard about it somewhere, but couldn’t remember where! I was perusing your Editor’s blog the other day and saw the related post.
So thanks for the heads up. I am revising my post to include a link to yours.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Carolyn, you are an enabler. Wonder if they’ll ship to Canada?