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A note on subscription prices from LWN

lwn.net

131–140 of 165 posts

Re: A note on subscription prices from LWN

#131
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not saying parent feels this way but the target class of this website often does not separate the two. we're still sloughing off the goofballery of objectivism, i guess.

we're still sloughing off the goofballery of objectivism Are we though? I certainly don't sense the volume of FYIGM entitlement decreasing.

based on other replies to the parent, at least some folks feel differently :) but generally i'm not very optimistic about it.

Re: A note on subscription prices from LWN

#133
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just noticed that too. Do they offer a facility for automatically mailing the epub file to a specified e-mail address (I'm thinking the Amazon Kindle conversion e-mail) --- that might push me over into a subscription.

We can't email a PDF now, but it wouldn't be that hard of a feature to add; I've put it onto the list.

Not a PDF, the ePub --- each Amazon Kindle has associated with it an e-mail address, which when a file is e-mailed to it, will be automatically converted and loaded (once the sender is white-listed) --- that way, each new issue would just automagically appear.

Re: A note on subscription prices from LWN

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but lwn is one of the main sites that gets submitted to HN all year round (not daily, but maybe nearish to daily). So the audience here on HN has been exposed to it over the years. I'm not sure what more they could do to get new subscribers, I certainly hope they figure that out or how to get new ways to earn revenue without having to go the ad route. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lwn.net

That's the thing though. You can get all the value from LWN through here. Even if it wasn't for them tolerating subscriber links being posted on HN, the week-long delay isn't nearly enough an incentive to actually subscribe, rationally speaking.

Rational thinking includes thinking about the long term.

Re: A note on subscription prices from LWN

#136
post #54

> There are few things we like less than raising prices, which is why we have done it so rarely. It would be far better to keep LWN as inexpensive as possible and make it up in volume. Subscriber growth has stalled, though, in recent years, making that strategy unworkable for now. We are working on schemes to bring in more subscribers again, but that is a long-term process; getting there requires some short-term help…

Inflation means that hosting costs increase. On the site they also mention being under heavy scraper load which also isn’t free. Then the writers probably also need compensation increase, at the very least to be a responsible employer so that the employees can deal with inflation. Inflation happens regularly, normally, or when world leaders emit another chaos bomb, and they do not raise prices immediately causing a l…

Hosting is probably ~0% of the cost lol.

The costs of the writers is what makes journalism expensive.

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