In the USA, your magazine is US$ 110 a year! Why is it so much?
Josh, by email
| LM |
You may think we don't like it when people ask us that, but in fact, that is one of our favorite questions because there is so much to say about it.
Most magazines are supported by some combination of funds raised either directly from readers or from advertisers. Magazines in some markets also raise money by selling the names of their readers for direct mail.
The magazines that base their revenue mostly on advertising can charge a lower subscription price, but they often have a much higher number of advertisements in the magazine, and they often scale down the size of the magazine to keep the ad percentage high. The ad model also depends on high circulation, since the price of an ad varies with the number of eyes that will read it, and this creates a constant pressure to dilute the content so that it will be palatable to the widest possible range of readers.
A magazine that draws significant money from direct mail can also reduce the price, however, if you subscribe to that magazine, your name will be recorded in some corporate database, where it will be used to generate revenue by making you the target of mail solicitations. (Only about 1% of direct mail actually results in a sale - the rest is just fodder for landfills.) Linux Magazine, on the other hand, does not sell subscriptions lists to direct mailers.
At Linux Magazine, our emphasis is on the reader. The total number of ads is small, and we do not reduce the size of the magazine to increase the ad percentage. Each month you receive around 80 pages of editorial content, which is much higher (in some cases, almost twice as high) as what some of our competitors provide. And because we are not trying to sell everything to everybody, this content is highly focused around our core audience of advanced Linux users and system administrators. Consider the sheer quantity of high-end technical Linux articles you'll find each month in Linux Magazine, and add to this the fact that we bring you a new Linux DVD every single month. If you look at it that way, we believe we offer a bargain to our readers.
I read your magazine from cover to cover every month, and find many of the articles to be excellent reference material. I just wondered if there is a detailed index of all of your magazines and their contents that could be imported into MySQL to make the materials searchable. If so, where could I find such a listing. Thanks in advance for you help.
Tommy R. Fleeman, by email
| LM |
We do not have an index you can use directly with MySQL, however, you can still search for information on back issues at our website. Look for the search tool at http://www.linux-magazine.com. This search uses an index of the whole site, including all the PDFs from the Linux Magazine Archive.
The Linux Magazine Archive,(http://www.linux-magazine.com/Magazine/Archive) includes PDFs of all Linux Magazine issues from issue #1, except for the last 5-7 issues, for which only a few sample articles are available.
Apart from that, there's the Linux Magazine Archive DVD:
http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/52.This DVD contains all the articles from issues #1 to #49 (years 2000 - 2004). There's also a search with an extensive index included on the disc. You can order the archive DVD here:
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Backissues.