I have been a loyal subscriber to Dragon magazine for three years now, at least. In the past three years it has been a pain in the but to have to send out a renewal, which is why I finally got a 3 year subsription this year in January. In those past three years I have missed out on 3 issues due to the worry of renewal. Now because of the '6 pack' program, renewing a subscription is now a yearly hassle.
The trouble is missed issues. I recently had to resubscribe to Dungeon Magazine. Thing is I went on vacation early in September and couldn't take of the renewal then. When I finally did get in my renewal it was too late, thereby making me miss an issue.
I thought I could have nipped this in the bud by using my dads Credit Card asap, but that didn't help. I can't afford to buy back issues, especially at the current rate of $8 a pop.
Consider this my petition to bring back the 24 month and 36 month subscription options.
I, too, would like to see them brought back, even without the previous price-break for longer subs. The option to subscribe for longer, and then forget about it for longer, is one I would take if it were available. (Of course, I'm lucky enough to have taken out 3-year subs to both mags just before the recent changes, so it won't affect me for quite a while anyway :) )
I know there's the month-to-month subscription option. However, because of the way my finances work, it's actually easier for me to set aside a larger block of money once in a while than to shell out a small amount each month.
Chief Technical Officer
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I, too, would like to see them brought back, even without the previous price-break for longer subs.
If you don't care about the price break, you can just purchase your renewals early. That is, if you have a sub, and buy another, it gets added on to your current sub. Repeat as needed. (But you need to do them as separate purchases—if you try to buy three 12-issue subs at once, for example, we assume that means you want three copies of the issues. But if you purchase them one after the other, they add on length.)
But the discounted long-term subs will not be back anytime soon. It works just fine when the price of paper, printing, and shipping is stable, but it's been so volatile the last few years that we can really sell ourselves short far too easily. And, to be honest, we're probably underpriced on the 12-issue subs already, but we really, really don't want to raise the sub price until we absolutely have to.
-Vic.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I love both magazines but they cost so much more than any other magazine on the market(especially subs). It makes me love my recently renewed subs to "Thrasher" and "Slap" for one year each at the high price of $10.00 :)
I don't know much about Thrasher, but looking around online it appears that they have a circulation of around 175,000 copies (more than triple that of Dragon, and Dragon is bigger than Dungeon), more than 80 active advertisers (I don't know if that's this month, this quarter, or what, but we have about 30–40 advertisers per year), and they can apparently get away with charging those advertisers over $10,000 for a full-page ad (five times or so more than Dragon can).
If we could get advertising revenue like that, we could charge a lot less for a subscription, too. But the bottom line is that the gaming hobby is a smaller niche than the skateboarding hobby; potential advertisers outside our industry have a hard time seeing the appeal, and the companies within our industry just plain won't spend a lot on advertising.
On the other hand, if you compare our magazines to, say, anything else within our industry, well... if you're subscribing to Dungeon, you're paying $3.25 an issue. For that, you get three high-quality, full-color official D&D adventures. How much does it cost you to get even one decent black-and-white adventure from most companies? Plus, we bring it to your house. Seriously—try and beat that.
If you don't care about the price break, you can just purchase your renewals early. That is, if you have a sub, and buy another, it gets added on to your current sub. Repeat as needed.
And how does someone without a credit card approach this. They essentially have to wait for the magazine's staff to send them a notice of their subscription running out. That goes back to what I was saying about having to worry about it on a yearly basis.
But the discounted long-term subs will not be back anytime soon. It works just fine when the price of paper, printing, and shipping is stable, but it's been so volatile the last few years that we can really sell ourselves short far too easily. And, to be honest, we're probably underpriced on the 12-issue subs already, but we really, really don't want to raise the sub price until we absolutely have to.
Underpriced?! Good cripe, exactly how bad has the situation gotten? If the magazine had to be priced to reflect the current situation, how much of an increase would we be talking about?
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Chief Technical Officer
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And how does someone without a credit card approach this. They essentially have to wait for the magazine's staff to send them a notice of their subscription running out.
Nope - you can renew by mail at any time, too. Just send a check for the appropriate amount and a note with all your current info.
Good cripe, exactly how bad has the situation gotten? If the magazine had to be priced to reflect the current situation, how much of an increase would we be talking about?
It's hard to say. Remember that when you subscribe now, you're locking in your price for the next 12 issues, but the cost for us varies with paper pricing and shipping (which is affected most by fuel costs). Both of those things have been crazy in the past year. So guessing how much it will cost us to fulfill the later issues of your subscription close to a year from now is really just that: guessing.
We're comfortable with having raised the newsstand price a buck an issue; my personal comfort level on subs would probably be met with a $3-5 increase for 12 issues. But we're not going to do that, and we think that dropping the long-term discounted subs will keep us from having to do that for a while.
We're comfortable with having raised the newsstand price a buck an issue; my personal comfort level on subs would probably be met with a $3-5 increase for 12 issues. But we're not going to do that, and we think that dropping the long-term discounted subs will keep us from having to do that for a while.
I'd just like to say that I, for one, am grateful to Paizo for going to lengths to keep the prices down. That said, I would much rather pay more for the magazines than see a drop in quality, or even see the magazines themselves disappear.
Just so you know, and stuff.
(Oh, and BTW, thanks for a quick reply in this thread earlier.)
The argument that this makes it harder to subscribe doesn't hold much water for me. The ONLY change I see here is the cost of 3 year subscription has gone up (really, I should say is less discounted as opposed to gone up). Not having a credit card would make it just as much of a pain to subscribe for a 3-year subcription as it is for a 1-year, 3 times.
This magazine is still the best deal in this industry you will find for quality content. I can't imagine getting a better one and am happy to pay more if that keeps the quality up.
Sean Mahoney
Missing issues because of a lapsed subscription is annoying, for sure. But I remember even getting a letter from paizo well before one of my subs ran out (after all, paizo _has_ your adress, don´t they ? :-)), several weeks to a month before. And every time I look at the website, it states clearly how many issues are left, so its rather easy keeping track. But, it´s like christmas: It comes so suddenly and unexpected every year :-)
From the financial PoW: Being able to afford a 3-year-sub but not one single back issue seems strange to me...
Anyway, I pay about 6 Euro an issue for a sub, and that´s really not that much. In my FLGS, they were about 7-8 Euro each, so that´s still a LOT cheaper this way.
I can´t quite follow the arguments for a longer sub, sorry.
Stefan