online subscription

[curahn]

Are there currently any plans to provide a purely electronic version of dragon sent out by email, or as a password protected acrobat file, for example. And if so, would it be cheaper than the current full 12 month subscription. As an overseas reader, I am very interested in this.

[Jonathan Drain]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

I might like to see a system whereby anyone subscribing to the magazine itself would be able to subscribe to the electronic edition at a significantly reduced rate. It would be convenient to be able to copy-paste text for when I run games online, but I like the solid feeling of a paper copy and don't want to pay twice for one magazine. (That said, I don't know if I would pay even half-price for this ability, when I can just type the text up instead.)

[Vic Wertz]

Our contract with Wizards specifically doesn't allow electronic publication of the magazines, except as backissues after the print edition has sold out. So it's not even on the table, I'm afraid.

To be honest, though, even if we had the rights, the magazine business is tough, and if we had a significant number of people move from a print-based subscription to an electronic subscription, our print costs would rise, our periodicals-class status could be endangered, and, well, that'd be really, really bad for the future of the publications.

-Vic.
.