

Hacker Monthly - Issue #4 - September 2010 - alexkay
http://hackermonthly.com/?4

======
g0atbutt
Quick heads up for those that typically download it. The digital download is
now $3.

~~~
norswap
Maybe it's fair, but I feel they shouldn't have distributed it freely to begin
with without making clear that it was becoming a paid product at some point.
Now I feel pissed, irrationally perhaps, but pissed nonetheless.

~~~
almost
I find this attitude quite bizarre.

~~~
angstrom
_"When people don’t know what a fundamentally new product should cost, they
are strongly influenced by the first price they encounter."_
[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/priceless/201004/how-
muc...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/priceless/201004/how-much-should-
ebook-cost)

------
zaidf
The print version is worth just for its prank potential. I look forward to
having it out on my desk during lectures. Already I get interesting looks when
I am browsing Hacker News during my b-school classes. Now with a magazine with
that name...I hope my classmates don't call the cops.

------
edanm
HackerMonthly is down for me. This is not the first time it's happened, it
happened when the last issue came out, and flipped between being available and
being unavailable every few hours.

downforeveryoneorjustme.com says it's a problem only for me, but since it
keeps going back and forth without me doing anything, and every other site
works perfectly, I'm not sure what I can do.

Just thought I'd let you know. If anyone else has the same problem, please say
so so I won't feel so alone :)

~~~
bearwithclaws
A few people actually told me that. We are planning to move to Linode this
month and hopefully that helps.

------
cletus
As the author of one of the articles in this issue ("Plain English Explanation
of Big O") I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Cheng did seek my permission for this and I was happy to give it but I was
also operating under the assumption that the digital edition was free. I
didn't (and wouldn't) expect to necessarily get paid for something that was
given away but when it's paid for digital?

I really don't know.

~~~
bl4k
Did you give a verbal ok, or did you sign something? (a document that would
have handed over your rights to the publisher and where you would have
relinquished all commercial claims). Were the publishers upfront with you
about selling your content, rather than aggregating it and publishing it for
free, with attribution?

In other similar publications, where the content is mainly an aggregate of
other articles (such as the Joel on Software books), the authors are all paid
based on per-print or a pre-negotiated flat sum for the rights.

Most magazine publishers _insist_ that contributors are paid, because by
accepting a payment the original author is binding to a de facto contract to
assign rights of their work to the publishers. This avoids any confusion, such
as that you are feeling now.

In your specific case, I think it is fair that the original authors are paid -
as the value in this publication is not the colors or fonts or organization,
but rather the content.

(you may also want to check the StackOverflow terms and conditions, because it
could be that they own commercial rights to any content on the site)

~~~
cletus
I agreed in email. There was no mention that the next (and I assume
subsequent) editions would be paid for digital. To be honest, I hadn't heard
of Hackers Monthly before being approached. The previous three issues were
free so I simply assumed that would continue to be the case.

Stackoverflow content is Creative Commons licensed (non-exclusively):

[http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/StackOverflow.c...](http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/StackOverflow.com)

so the content could be reproduced with attribution anyway.

Interestingly though, it's not the SO version that was published. I made some
corrections to an expanded version on my blog:

[http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/07/plain-english-
explanation-...](http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/07/plain-english-explanation-
of-big-o.html)

which obviously isn't CC-licensed.

Print version costing money makes sense. It costs money to print things and
send them to people.

I think of it this way: ads on Stackoverflow pay for the site being there but
any user can access the content. There is no registration or pay wall (like
the evil hyphen site) so I'm happy to volunteer my time to answer people's
questions. If SO were ever to construct a registration or pay wall I'd be gone
in 0.13 seconds.

This feels a little similar to me. While I appreciate the work that goes into
doing a magazine layout this is now a commercial enterprise in all senses, at
which point you need to pay your content creators, so it feels a little bait-
and-switch to me.

Or am I wrong?

~~~
bearwithclaws
William, I assure you it's not a bait and switch. As somebody mentioned in
Twitter today, I tweeted this 2 months ago
(<http://twitter.com/hackermonthly/status/17978114821>): "The PDF version is
free and always will be."

That was the ideal plan. Make around $1 for each print copy sold. Sell some
advertising. And hopefully I can get it thru month after month.

No, that didn't work out well (I could show you some proof of the total
revenues we made from the first 3 months).

That's when I've decided to charge, for digital issue. Because it's either
that, or the magazine dies somewhere down the road. I love the magazine. I
love making it. I love it when readers tell me they enjoy reading it. And I
wanted to keep on doing it for as long as possible.

So I've got to make that tough decision, sooner rather than later.

On the other hand, I DO plan on compensating the author, but I have to see
how's the numbers performing for the first issue before making any promise.

~~~
cletus
"Bait and switch" is stronger than I really mean.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not pissed. Nor do I really feel cheated. I am just
leery and perhaps oversensitive to freely contributing to paid content, which
is what my example about SO and the evil hyphen site was about.

I also take responsibility for not asking (which I didn't) nor doing more
research than the cursory glance that I did. So even if I were pissed (which
I'm not) it would be at least partly my fault.

So let me just say for the record, in case anyone is under a misconception
from what I've written so far: you've dealt with me courteously and
professionally so I certainly wish you well on this.

This is simply more about how my own philosophy in what I want to contribute
to. Think of these comments as me thinking out loud (about that).

~~~
bl4k
It should have been made clear to you, and the other authors, in the email -
regardless of if a tweet was sent out 2 weeks ago or not.

The publisher can't assume that you read and follow everything they write. The
entire agreement and disclosure should have been contained in that email to
you, so you have nothing to apologize for (the fact that you didn't know that
there was no free issue until you saw it here on HN says that there was a flaw
in the communications process).

As mentioned in the other comments, I hope the publisher can clarify and be
much clearer in his emails to potential authors next time around (perhaps
publishing an 'authors' page on the website with a clear FAQ - ie. if the
authors can expect their own copy, etc.)

I actually held out on insta-clicking to buy a copy when I read your comment
(I still am), so clarification here will help everybody.

------
mkuhn
I love that MagCloud is advertising in this issue. That says quite something
about the quality of the work done on Hacker Monthly, about the target
audience of the magazine, and MagCloud.

Can you tell us if you made some kind of (special) deal with them and if so
what it boils down to?

------
stjarnljuset
I don't remember if you did this before, but I like that you included links to
the HN submission of the articles in the issue, since the digital edition is
no longer free.

Also, your link to "A Coder's Guide to Coffee" links to the wrong submission.

~~~
bearwithclaws
Thank you for pointing that out. Corrected the link.

------
parbo
Please make a book of all 2010 issues, I'd be all over that!

~~~
bearwithclaws
The book will look like an encyclopedia (500-600 pages with the size of a
magazine). You sure?

~~~
lewi
I think he means Pdf

~~~
jacquesm
What makes you think that? He said 'book', to me that means 'stack of paper
with a binding'. E-book would have been a pdf.

------
lispm
I just bought and downloaded the digital edition. Great issue. Thanks for the
hard work to make that possible! Extra bonus: Lisp code included!

------
nopassrecover
Cant wait until we get bulk international shipping. However: "Worldwide
Shipping - Orders that contain a single issue or total 300 pages or fewer can
be shipped worldwide. Orders more than that can only be shipped to the United
States, United Kingdom, and Canada." means i can now order all 4.

~~~
bearwithclaws
Rumor has it that it's coming soon.

~~~
nopassrecover
The 300 pages is good enough for me (and the shipping is quite cheap)
considering I can't find anything else I like on MagCloud yet. Having said
that it would be nice to have bulk shipping for those who want to publish.

------
zaidf
Do you get the digital version "free" if you order the print?

I ordered the print version so I can read it while taking a dump :) But I'd
still like the digital version for all the other times. Hope I don't have to
pay for it separately.

~~~
bearwithclaws
You could forward me your receipt from MagCloud and I will send you the
digital version.

MagCloud doesn't share any data of the people who bought the magazine on their
site so we couldn't do this automatically.

~~~
zaidf
Done. Thank you.

------
stricken
Does anybody know, if I buy the digital subscription today, do I get this
months issue first?

Edit: Never mind, completely misread the notes section of the subscription
page. Answer - you don't.

~~~
bearwithclaws
Digital subscription (and print subscription) is only for upcoming issue. Drop
me a note (cheng.soon at hackermonthly) if you wish to receive this month
issue first.

~~~
stricken
Oh, thanks. :)

But that's ok, what's a few dollars between friends?

~~~
amih
I got confused too, I rushed to the subscription and wondered where is my
issue #4... I just now ordered that issue as a single item, and I'm
downloading it right now.

------
paulbaumgart
Just bought the paper edition. Thanks for all the work you put into this! The
collection of articles looks very interesting this time around.

------
abijlani
Could you share with us what tools you use to produce Hacker Monthly? I would
like to create an ebook but have no idea what tools to use.

~~~
bearwithclaws
Adobe InDesign CS4 (still haven't move to CS5 but I heard it's great).

------
snippyhollow
$13+ for shipping fees in France, a little too much. :)

------
almost
Just purchased the print edition, looking forwards to it!

------
alexkay
Just a suggestion, please make it possible to link to the current issue with a
unique URL. There's no good reason why [1] works and [2] doesn't work (yet). I
had to append a random parameter to the home page URL to make it HN-submit-
form-friendly.

On a different note, thanks for offering the ebook version at the same time as
the dead tree version. Well worth the 3 bucks.

[1] <http://hackermonthly.com/issue-3.html>

[2] <http://hackermonthly.com/issue-4.html>

~~~
bearwithclaws
Right, Alex. The link is up (and will be, for upcoming issues as well).

Thank you so much for supporting us.

~~~
djcapelis
On that note can you make it do the right thing with /4 instead of /?4 with a
re-write rule or something?

Cool URIs and all that. Preemptive thanks!

