I think making a few of the older editions available free of charge could be a good way. There are quite a few articles that won't loose their value over time.
Yes, but the articles are all HN reprints. The added value is in the pdfs and I see no problem with them charging for that, it's a ton of work to make them.
I think the whole concept is very nice but the real value for me of HN is mostly in the comments on the articles, that's where I learn the most. So even after reading an article in 'Hacker Monthly' I'd like to re-visit the relevant entry on HN.
"We've already established what you are, madam, now we're haggling over the price."
USD$112 per year feels way too steep. That's on par with a subscription to the Economist, which is a) weekly, b) original, and c) one of the best periodicals in the English language.
If he can get that price, more power to him. But as a potential subscriber of --and an unpaid author for-- this magazine, I think the price is far too high for the value he adds.
I tend to agree, however nice the layout, these are just reruns of stuff we've seen. The next step will likely be using the initial subscription money to start funding some new original columns.
It's tough work, no doubt. plug: http://jsmag.com and http://groovymag.com possibly don't look as nice, but we do get out around 30 pages (each) of original content each month.
I've looked in to shipping for groovymag and jsmag, and the costs would add around $4 per issue - $48/year, which almost doubles the current cost. Not easy doing print in small runs. I was looking at b/w - hackermonthly is color, IIRC, which is even more $. My bet is if magcloud offered b/w, they might get the price down a little bit, but not much.
We actually don't make any money on the print subscription. MagCloud charges $0.20 per page + $1 for perfect bound, and charges at least $2.15 per issue shipping in US/UK.
So yes, if you do the calculation, we actually 'lose money' on each print subscription.
The print subscription plan was made available thanks to the advertising deal we managed to strike with MagCloud, which now only 'break even' with our cost.
You are mistaken about the economies of scale involved, you can't compare to the economist or any other large volume print magazine, the financial picture there is completely different.
Why didn't you go free on the digital and a monthly subscription on the print subscription?
Free digital copies will be great (free) lead gen for your paid product, and you can pitch the print subscription inside.
Seems like monthly subscriptions might be a lower hurdle (and price point) to get people started too.
Awesome work though!