Please add a way for me to subscribe rather than buy these one by one. I don't want to "buy" monthly, I want to receive monthly. ;)
Editing to add: Even if Magcloud doesn't have a way to do this, it might be worth your while (especially for cash flow!) to use something else like Paypal, buy them in bulk from Magcloud at a discount and send them out yourself. You could require a 1-year subscription to make it more worth your effort (and the bulk purchasing might mean you make more money on the sale of the magazine itself)
2nd edit: Thinking about this some more, the magazine is 40 pages long (yay!) but at $.20/page you're making only $1/sale in gross margins (boo!). If you were able to accept yearly subscriptions and fulfill from the US (I know you're in Malaysia) you could boost gross margins to $3/sale, in addition to the cash flow benefits. You would be adding fulfillment costs, but it might be worthwhile...
AND you could ship internationally if you wanted! :)
The print subscription is definitely on its way. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do it right rather than just dive in. Stay tuned (most probably in the middle of the month).
Instead of dealing with annual subscriptions, I think you'd be better off making it easy for people to sign up for a recurring monthly charge to paypal or whatever.
Annual subscriptions have too many negatives for the time required to handle them.
One way to do this relatively quickly. Create a Formstack sign up form which creates recurring FreshBooks invoices. Use FreshBooks and Authorize.net to manage the recurring payments. If you don't want the hassle of using Authorize.net, just use PayPal, but the invoice has to be manually paid every month.
Advertising. Almost all magazines roughly bring in enough to cover printing and distribution from the cost to readers. Since they keep the price that low, they get more readers, and thus more ad revenue.
This issue had 2 full-page ads and a half-page ad, by my count. According to the rate card (PDF: http://hackermonthly.com/ratecard) that's $1300 worth of ads (though there's an "introductory advertising offer" that they probably all got). That's pretty good given how early-stage the thing is.
Pretty fantastic. The paper is thick and the ink doesn't come off on your hands. It feels a little bit like a collectors item, at least for geeks like me.
His simple design aesthetic is so good that my other magazines feel jarring and cluttered. It feels like how a magazine should be.
I bought issue #1, and I was moderately impressed -- it did feel like a magazine, but not quite at the professional level. Almost, though. I was quite happy with it and I am buying this one too.
The iApp would be nice because you wouldn't have to download them and sync manually. But in the mean time, you can get the PDFs and sync them to iBooks, or go right to the PDF in your iOS browser and open them in iBooks. It looks fantastic on the iPad.
The Curator's Note has an apostrophe that horsekicks sensible typographers in the face. The note itself also uses improper quotes (primes). The magazine seems to have some inconsistent use of quotes in general, which seems odd when it's been made in InDesign which should enforce a consistent rule.
Another typographical pet peeve are the widows and orphans going. I'm sure they can be avoided.
Other than that, the magazine looks even more interesting than the last one, and I can't wait to read it. It's a shame that MagCloud don't ship to Europe. I'm also hoping you'll check out the perfect bound binding for the magazine which MagCloud is testing out in beta at the moment.
# The fastest person to solve this will win our entire catalog
bThvW3JKYz16bXpUWDIufkl2OllseC4maV1gMjtVYXNtb2RyZ3czbkQzQDtn
ZnRdMVZuZkIqVTJpIGlxa2xubkAoaTRueGdQaGN0YyRjTGN1WGlUbzF5VU5q
cz50KmRwZXlncGN0dA==
I added whitespace as in the picture, you probably want to remove it. (I transcribed this by hand, let me know if I messed anything up)
base64: bThvW3JKYz16bXpUWDIufkl2OllseC4maV1gMjtVYXNtb2RyZ3czbkQzQDtnZnRdMVZuZkIqVTJpIGlxa2xubkAoaTRueGdQaGN0YyRjTGN1WGlUbzF5VU5qcz50KmRwZXlncGN0dA==
text: m8o[rJc=zmzTX2.~Iv:Ylx.&i]`2;Uasmodrgw3nD3@;gft]1VnfB*U2i iqklnn@(i4nxgPhctc$cLcuXiTo1yUNjs>t*dpeygpctt
letters: $&(48:=>BDIJLNPVY[`aehjkquvw~*.13;@TX]dflprsxyz2Umogintc
counted: 111111111111111111111111111111222222222222222222333345556
progressively hiding infrequent letters:
m o r c zmzTX2. lx. i] 2;U smodrg 3n 3@;gft]1 nf *U2i i lnn@ i nxg ctc c c XiTo1yU s t*dp ygpctt
m o c m 2 i 2 U mo g n g t n U2i i nn i n g ctc c c i o U t g ctt
c i g n g t n i i nn i n g ctc c c i t g ctt
c i n t n i i nn i n ctc c c i t ctt
c c c c c c
Well, ROTing that doesn't yield anything either, and it's too small to analyse character frequency if it's a cipher. I tried using 'thinkcode' as a substitution key, and the end looks a bit like 'thinkcode' itself!
Nice. I like the new comments section. I that printing the comments adds to their impact, even without the other comments or original article. It also enhances the sarcastic value -- although I didn't read Dave Winer's entry about how online advertising is dead, I immediately knew what he had to say when I read tptacek's "summary".
http://jsmag.com is a monthly PDF magazine on JavaScript which has been out for a bit over a year. "Ready to print" but we don't handle printing right now. Original content, DRM-free, JavaScript (and some front-end) articles. http://jsmag.com/sampler to grab the 24 page sampler.
Do you think there'd be a market for a "general entrepreneurship" one? More like Inc or Fast Company, but using the "unpaid content with permission and accreditation" model that Hacker Monthly is doing? I've been thinking of doing that.
I downloaded the PDF, also the First Edition and I thought it is time to donate. It was my first PayPal donation and I spent it for something I am passionate about (startups).
Keep up the good work, and check out Monocle - maybe you can get some inspiration how you can build and extend this.
I just found my receipt. Replied to the email saying I didn't get mine and the auto-reply email opened up a case number and it said they'd look into it.
MagCloud said it was in fact shipped, but they are sending me a new one anyway--expedited shipping, at their expense. So assuming I do receive the mag soon, it was a well-handled issue.
I love the idea because I don't always have time to check HN daily and am sure to miss out on some great stories. This is the opportunity to do some catch up.
Is there no comparable service which does ship everywhere? I know people have offered to repost it but just wondering why a company like magcloud would only want to ship to such a limited set of countries if the user is paying shipping?
Outstanding issue. I've really enjoyed this zine of yours, it's really well put together. I agree that maybe you should charge more and add a subscription model, we want you to get something out of it as well :)
I really enjoyed the first edition, even the stuff that I'd already read on HN. I think you may have found your niche, bearwithclaws. I've just bought the second - hopefully many more will do the same.
Version like Wired magazine on the iPad? Yes, it's a bit of form over function but it was enjoyable, and more importantly, that's what I would gladly pay for. A one year subscription would be ideal.
I'll be happy remail copies (of both issues if you want) to anyone who wants to PayPal me the money for the mag plus shipping to their country (from the UK). Email is in profile.
I just wanted to express my gratitude for putting this together. Hopefully I can get my product out the door and buy some space in this sooner rather than later!
I read the cover and thought, wow, maybe some new methods of bootstraping I haven't heard of yet. Then I am as always let down because it is stalking about business.
Editing to add: Even if Magcloud doesn't have a way to do this, it might be worth your while (especially for cash flow!) to use something else like Paypal, buy them in bulk from Magcloud at a discount and send them out yourself. You could require a 1-year subscription to make it more worth your effort (and the bulk purchasing might mean you make more money on the sale of the magazine itself)
2nd edit: Thinking about this some more, the magazine is 40 pages long (yay!) but at $.20/page you're making only $1/sale in gross margins (boo!). If you were able to accept yearly subscriptions and fulfill from the US (I know you're in Malaysia) you could boost gross margins to $3/sale, in addition to the cash flow benefits. You would be adding fulfillment costs, but it might be worthwhile...
AND you could ship internationally if you wanted! :)