Have your say & ask the experts

A forum user posted this elsewhere. Opinions, please?

[quote user="Will Harris"]

Have you guys considered putting the full published version of What Hi-Fi along with back copies up on the web for subscription customers to enjoy? You could even set it up as a green initiative. Two choices, the print edition with a complementary web membership and a web only edition, saving on all the carbon in the process. Would be fab and it'd be really really useful.

[/quote]

It's something we're currently looking at very seriously. There are a number of mechanisms for delivering this, the best seeming to be a monthly download of which you're notified by email, which has the advantage (for us) of keeping the downloaded magazine secure and copy-proof.

What do other readers think? Would you be interested in subscribing to the magazine in this way?

 

Great to see the issue up for debate. As a trainee chartered surveyor my firm subscribes to Estates Gazette, published by Reed Business Information. Sorry it's not Haymarket. They run a web-edition alongside the published copy and although it's no substitute for the print edition, it does at least make the items easily searchable going back in time.

For a publication like What Hi-Fi I wonder if I'm representative of many readers who start buying the magazine when they start thinking about an upgrade and having read 3 or 4 months worth, suddenly realise that the vital review they need to read is in the month's edition from before they got back on the What Hi-Fi wagon! It'd be nice to say I read it religiously, but that simply wouldn't be true. I'd certainly be happy to pay half an annual subscription to have the previous 12 months of back issues made available on-line to compliment a subscription going forward. This would make for a superb way to make high margin money from the back catelogue.

Consider my case: I live in the Middle East and normal subscription is not feasible for us here, because the delivery charge doubles the cost of subscription. I buy the magazine regularly, when it arrives and at selected places.

I would certainly welcome the Web subscription possibility at reduced price.

In my opinion, nothing beats the real 'paper' deal for a magazine, having downloaded other mags in an electronic format. However for back issues this would be fantastic, especially as your Buyers Guide always specifies the issue that you reviewed a particular product in.

Indeed for back issues it would be nice. Although you can find alot of reviews on manufacturers websites, nothing beats a full-edition mag. For the new ones: I'll just get those in the shop, since reading from a computer screen is still a pain. Therefore, nothing beats paper!

Thanks for the feedback, very useful. We'll pass it on to the 'powers that be'.

Still I think that back issues by pdf would be brilliant. Especially for people who are coming in to research an upgrade and may wish to purchase 4 or 5 back issues at once. For that purpose in particular, a downloadable mag would be awesome. Should reduce the piracy risk if you make them available 2 months after publishing in print form. 

It just sprang to mind: do you want this service to be paid for or not? The problem is that, once you put the back issues on the web they will be dowloadable for the masses in no-time at all (dowload it, save it to disk, share it with your friends worldwide...). Now this isn't exactly a problem for internet users like me, but I fear it would generate very little money for you (how considering of me!). If you keep it free of charge (or very cheap, say 1 dollar), people will keep coming to your website to download it for the sheer ease of use.

That is a great idea. It is no pain at all to read the magazine on my beautiful 19in Sony TFT screen. I don't think there is a piracy issue either as you can always use a secure method like the Microsoft reader or somethign similar, that doesn't even allow copy and paste if you want to.