An Industry Gone Insane: When One Issue Costs More Than a Year?s Subscrioption

An Industry Gone Insane: When One Issue Costs More Than a Year?s Subscrioption - Every now and then, something on the newsstands really makes me shiver. I was doing my morning rounds on the newsstands and picked up a copy of the new issue of Interview magazine. The cover price: $9.00. Not a big surprise. Lately,I have been paying $9.00, $10.00 and $11.00 for single copy issues. However, the minute I opened the magazine the subscription card (the dandruff of our industry, as many like to call the sub. cards) fell to the ground. When I picked it up, it screamed at me, “You stupid Samir, you are going to spend $9.00 for one issue, when you could have received an entire year, 10 issues, for $8.00.”

A year for a price less than a single issue? Is this insanity or what? Next time when you read that the single copy sales are down, please do not blame the distributors or retailers.

Take a look our magazine industry practices and then judge for yourself. By the way, I wish I can say that this is the first time I write about Interview magazine and this practice, but it is not. I have written about it before and will continue to do so until we stop this insane practice of raising the cover price and reducing the subscription price so readers can save more that 90% of the cover price. It is insanity that needs to stop. We have to value the experiences we create, if our readers, users, listeners, viewers, all those so-called customers are to value those experiences. The time has come for our industry to change its old practices. This is NOT the 20th Century, and Interview magazine is NOT alone using this method of pricing for single copy and subscriptions!




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