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From: timg@cbmtor.uucp (Tim Grantham)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Amiga World / Amazing Computing Tech magazines
Message-ID: <475@cbmtor.uucp>
Date: 8 Apr 91 04:48:52 GMT
Reply-To: timg@cbmtor.uucp (Tim Grantham (GUEST))
Organization: Commodore Business Machines CANADA
Lines: 33

In article <68044@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> v125lqbx@ubvmsa.cc.buffalo.edu writes:
>
>It seems the consensus is that AW won't be selling its Tech magazine without
>the disk.  That's too bad, because I would like to buy it, but at $16/issue,
>how much would a year's subscription be?  Forget it.  :-)
>
>At least I still have my back issues of Transactor to learn from.  :-)

Transactor for the Amiga went tits up partly because the owners were, to put
it diplomatically, extremely incompetent, BUT also because there wasn't
enough advertising to pay for production, much less the poor authors who were
contributing such stuff you now treasure in the back issues. My efforts to 
convince the publisher to INCREASE the cover price, based on the belief that
our readers would pay more to get the best, fell on deaf ears. ``We would lose
20% of our readers immediately,'' they said, based on past experience with
their other consumer magazines. Reading the message excerpted above, however,
has me grudgingly admitting that they were probably right.

I notice that there is very little advertising in Amigaworld's Tech Journal --
surprising, given IDG Communication's considerable sales resources. I'm afraid
it's not a good sign.

The answer: you get what you pay for. If you want a good technical journal, PAY
what it costs to produce it. I think $16/copy, including the disk, is a bargain.
And not just because I've got a review in the first issue, either. ;-)

Tim.

P.S. Please don't bug me about what happened to the subscriptions/products you
ordered, paid for and didn't receive, or the author payments you didn't 
receive. I resigned when I realized there was nothing I could do to make the
Transactor's publishers honour their obligations. I have no idea what's happened to them,
and don't want to know. It was not a pleasant experience.