Much like with books, the 10-15 best sellers a publisher has fund the thousands of duds. Newspapers are as cheap as they are because the filler content gets subsidized by the good stuff. And it is rare that a publisher will know what is good before it is released.
Re:End of the Road: An AnandTech Farewell
by savingsPossible on Friday August 30, 2024 @10:02PM
(#41406112)
Ok, then. How about 2.5 dollars for the x articles of this day/week?
Re:End of the Road: An AnandTech Farewell
by Propelloni on Saturday August 31, 2024 @03:54AM
(#41407224)
It's the micro-payment conundrum again. I happen to have a friend who is deep into payment tech, and he told me that publishers would love to sell single digital issues for a small, small fee, but customers are not buying.
This seems to cover most stuff where the transaction value in question is low, e.g. newspapers, single songs, and so on. The UX seems to be inadequate. I'm not privy how my buddy's company is trying to address this, but I guess it is hard to beat a news stand where I drop a few coins and get a newspaper and chewing gum.
Newspapers are as cheap as they are because they are still filled with ads. Not that i mind it, ads on paper are 1000x more tolerable than the blinking, spying popovers one get online.
Re:End of the Road: An AnandTech Farewell
by throwaway2037 on Saturday August 31, 2024 @12:57AM
(#41406644)
> And it is rare that a publisher will know what is good before it is released.
Hell, bump it up to $2.50/yr for those 15 articles/yr, same price as a single physical edition. GP would probably still be ok with that, and that doesn't seem unreasonable.
I'm not sure what magazines you were buying in the 90s for $6-$8 each, but they were certainly on the high end and not representative of your average newspaper, which were on the order of 35-50¢ at the time. Full-color glossy mags cost a lot more to produce than a newspaper, so I'm sure that's part of it.