Why are YBW article-downloads so damned expensive??

[Me_has_a_Boat]

IPC in a catch 22, the photocopying service (AKA digital download ) does generate cash which can clearly (and easily) be identified as Internet only income - if they did anything else (like sensible - for the long term benefit or survival of the mags) then they would lose that income stream in exchange for value that they cannot easily prove......so the naysayers have an easy "win" against anyone who tries.

Would take a manager at IPCwith some balls, some nouse and some hands on the levers needed to change that approach - and within a large(ish) organisations those be rare on the ground. I am sure that IPC has plenty of folk with dents on there foreheads over this approach.........

Hand on heart, for those who have downloaded an article - have you not been able to find as much (if not more / better) information via the internet for free - including from this forum. I Know I have (last got my copies 7 years ago - back then not so much about Seadogs on the Internet - I have now help fix that!). To be fair the copies are interesting enough (for me mostly about the historical context!) - but nonetheless nowadays especially simply not worth the money. I won't ever be buying again.

 

[lustyd]

aren't all the back issues available on Zinio? These cost the same as regular mag too so you could have the whole magazine for under £7 if you want.

EDIT - sorry only back to 2007 but £4.16 seems OK

 

[Richard Shead]

To go to the trouble of digitising content and subsequently pricing it prohibitively expensively is madness - the marketing department strikes again...

Steady on thats publishings department...

 

[prv]

So in theory that would allow retasking the odd member of staff to looking after archives and making them available.

They already are available, no work required, just tweak a value in a configuration file or database. All the scanning of old paper is already done, the new stuff will (or damn well ought to) go into the system automatically.

Pete

 

[NealB]

Not the marketing department, or even sales, they are different functions, but both do understand the concept of pricing but the accountants rule and because the paper copy was sold for that price they add VAT and charge the same for the download, improves the margin.

Mind you I did meat one accountant who understood marginal pricing and one who understood the concept of market pricing.

But...ALL would-be accountants spend quite a bit of time studying marketing, including the price v demand relationship. Quite a few make very successful careers in marketing.

I think you're showing seriously outdated prejudices!

Anyway....back on topic.... this accountant certainly agrees with dancrane that IPC copies are mind boggling expensive.

 

[elton]

Does everyone assume all the old back issues are already scanned and stored digitally by IPC? I wouldn't have thought so. Why would they. Scanning complete magazines is a tedious and expensive manual job. Then there's the task of physically reading the contents pages, entering them into a database and indexing them to the scanned images. I would imagine IPC haven't wasted their time and money doing this for all the back issues, so you pay a reasonable price for the privilege.

 

[oldsalt]

Same here, I would love to download several old articles...but at the present price...NO WAY!

 

[Marakei]

I paid £8.50 to download two articles on the oddity that is the Buckler Ketch.

It was worth it in the sense that there is little information on these boats elsewhere on the Web and I learnt new and truly startling things about them.

But I very much doubt that IPC are selling a lot of copies of their 1976 review of the Buckler.

Perhaps if it was £1.00 more curious people would take a look.

 

[prv]

Does everyone assume all the old back issues are already scanned and stored digitally by IPC?

Maybe not all of them, but I assume the articles offered for download have already been scanned. When you buy one, you get a PDF straight away.

Pete

 

[Greenheart]

My buddy makes an okay-income on weekdays, but spends his evenings whining down the phone to me about money...

...then, at the weekend, he pulls old stuff from his shed, and sells it on Ebay for more money than he earned in the week.

What IPC owns, as well as ongoing publications, is a vast, indexed historical record of sailing news and experiences, and reviews of yachts (almost all of which are still afloat, being bought and sold)...quite an asset, with a willing customer-base, if the price is right.

But the present price is SO wrong.

If I was an IPC shareholder, I'd be seriously unimpressed with a management who hold something the people want and are ready & willing to pay for, but which is being priced out of marketability. Seriously unimpressed.

 

[Seajet]

I paid £8.50 to download two articles on the oddity that is the Buckler Ketch.

It was worth it in the sense that there is little information on these boats elsewhere on the Web and I learnt new and truly startling things about them.

But I very much doubt that IPC are selling a lot of copies of their 1976 review of the Buckler.

Perhaps if it was £1.00 more curious people would take a look.

I'd pay good money to do a review of the Buckler !

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

I am curious about this.

I have a machine that can scan a double page spread every 10 seconds and it's not a very quick one.
So that's about 10 minutes an issue.
That's 2 hours work to scan a years Yachting Monthly.
Say 3 years in one day including coffee breaks, file formatting, lunch and potty breaks.
So two students on minimum wage could do 30 years of scanning in a week.

A bright young thing could index every significant article and set up an automatic web shop in about another week.

You could subcontract the whole thing and have it making money in a matter of weeks.

This is clearly not about economics. It's probably more likely to be about royalties to freelance journos, photographers etc. Thats what I was told by one of the other sailing rags when I queried them on the same topic.

The bottom line is that if you want an article right now it is easier and quicker to ask on this forum if anyone has it. Yo can then just borrow it without breaking any rules.

Missed commercial opportunity, but IPC are renowned for that.

 

[elton]

I am curious about this.

I have a machine that can scan a double page spread every 10 seconds and it's not a very quick one.

And how long does it take you to open at the right page, align it with the scanner, enter a file name in a format that will allow you to quickly locate an article based on content, remove it from the scanner, and so on?

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

And how long does it take you to open at the right page, align it with the scanner, enter a file name in a format that will allow you to quickly locate an article based on content, remove it from the scanner, and so on?

You need to move out of the dark ages. Decent commercial scanners do all of that automatically now. No need to do just the article. Scan the whole pge, and index separately as I said.

Happy to put my money where my mouth is. I will scan the last 30 years of YM and index it as well free of charge if I can have the distribution rights.

 

[prv]

And how long does it take you to open at the right page, align it with the scanner, enter a file name in a format that will allow you to quickly locate an article based on content, remove it from the scanner, and so on?

I doubt they used a domestic scanner from PC World and did it all by hand. Bulk scanning of everything from magazine back-issues to engineering drawings is an established industry, with the kit to automate it as far as possible. I don't know exactly what an automatic magazine scanner looks like, but a quick google suggest they can operate at "thousands of pages per hour".

EDIT: Here is a book scanner scanning books:



Not that I'm suggesting IPC had to buy their own machine, presumably there are companies that offer scanning of back-catalogues as a service.

Pete

 

[CELTON]

As a subscriber I would have thought free back articles would be an incentive to boost sales as part of their subscription. To be charged £7.00 for a PDF file is a joke.

 

[Seven Spades]

Everyone is always going to say that prices are two high, but in this case I concur. Since all the scanning has been done they have fronted all the costs, so now they need to work out the optimal price*downloads graph. Clearly £7.00 is too high but would they sell seven times as many at £1.00, possibly but on the other hand would they sell twice as many at £1 as they would at £2? It is a black art and they definitely got this wrong.

The process is simple enough, I need a new VHF so I will dig out the last YM with a review before deciding on the purchase that takes time because it is not obvious which issue the review I want might be in. If on the other hand the review is cheap enough I might be too lazy to go through the old mags.

Personally I think the price should be within the £1-£2.50 price range, the only time I would pay more is for a major purchase such as a new yacht(and I did in the days of paper copies). I would not pay £7 for a VHF review so the £7 model fails me.

 

[onesea]

Have to say I agree make them cheaper... I spent 2 years looking for our present boat, at 1 or 2 pounds a shot I would of happily bought the reviews for all the boats I thought about.

For £7.00 I did not buy one.

Linking it to a subscription I could also live with although in my case it would mean I would have to subscribe to one of the magazines . Presently I have a very good supply of pre read magazines..

 

[dk]

Maybe nobody's noticed, but the copies are sold by an outside source - The Copyshop. This is their business, but obviously they are licensed by IPC, who, I should imagine, then take their cut. Two dips in the pie means it has to be priced 'realistically'.

 

[quimby]

Maybe nobody's noticed, but the copies are sold by an outside source - The Copyshop. This is their business, but obviously they are licensed by IPC, who, I should imagine, then take their cut. Two dips in the pie means it has to be priced 'realistically'.

ANYONE AT IPC READING THIS THEAD?

I knowI was shouting!

We want an answer.