Hacker Monthly - Issue #4 - September 2010

by alexkay • 16 years ago

106 51 16 years ago

g0atbutt• 16 years ago

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

maxklein• 16 years ago

Make sense. The original articles can still be read at the original locations, so nothing wrong with charging for an organised version.

jacquesm3• 16 years ago

He's even friendly enough to link to the original articles from the teaser page. Every article has a link associated with it so you don't have to go hunting.

Tudisco• 16 years ago

Purchased! $3 is fair.

norswap• 16 years ago

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.

almost2• 16 years ago

I find this attitude quite bizarre.

amih2• 16 years ago

I was relieved to see that they started charging for this! I wanted to pay but didn't want the snail mail version. I printed every issue on a A4 duplex color laser printer and it comes out very nice. I paid for the next 12 issues.

BvS• 16 years ago

Nothing wrong with the price but I'm really curious how it turns out and if the extra revenue makes up for less interested advertisers if the number of downloads goes down significantly).

alexkay• 16 years ago

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

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

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

Thank you so much for supporting us.

djcapelis• 16 years ago

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!

nopassrecover2• 16 years ago

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.

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

Rumor has it that it's coming soon.

nopassrecover2• 16 years ago

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.

stricken2• 16 years ago

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.

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

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.

stricken2• 16 years ago

Oh, thanks. :)

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

paulbaumgart• 16 years ago

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

stjarnljuset• 16 years ago

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.

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

Thank you for pointing that out. Corrected the link.

zaidf3• 16 years ago

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.

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

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.

zaidf3• 16 years ago

Done. Thank you.

edanm• 16 years ago

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 :)

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

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

zaidf3• 16 years ago

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.

lispm• 16 years ago

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

abijlani• 16 years ago

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.

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

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

mkuhn• 16 years ago

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?

parbo• 16 years ago

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

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

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

lewi• 16 years ago

I think he means Pdf

almost2• 16 years ago

Just purchased the print edition, looking forwards to it!

cletus3• 16 years ago

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.

bl4k5• 16 years ago

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)

cletus3• 16 years ago

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...

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-...

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?

petercooper• 16 years ago

FWIW, when he asked my permission, he told me about the charge and I was supportive of it (though worried about the reduced reader numbers more than anything ;-))

jacquesm3• 16 years ago

As long as the 'venture' is not in the black (and I can't believe that's already the case, given the amount of time and money sunk in the previous issues) I can't see a problem.

But if it were to ever make serious money I would assume that the people that put the magazine together would go for a revenue share model with their authors.

I knew that it was going to be a 'for pay' issue because there was a HN thread on it here but I can see how that would take you aback if you didn't realize it.

Still, it's not as if this issue is all of a sudden making the project huge money, more likely is that it will go a little bit towards reducing the start-up costs.

bearwithclaws10• 16 years ago

It was my mistake for not mentioning the upcoming digital issue will be paid. We've exchanged a few email from 13th August till 26th August while I've made the announcement (for subscription and charging for upcoming digital issue) on 18th August, so I assumed you already know by then.

The main focus of Hacker Monthly is always the print edition. It is the reason I've created Hacker Monthly in first place. Because the print edition remains the same (it's actually cheaper), that's another reason I didn't mention in the email.

Still, I regret these assumptions and for that, I sincerely apologize to you. I'm sorry.

bl4k5• 16 years ago

Since this is the first non-free issue, it will give you a good idea of what your revenue/profit is (including advertising), so you have an option on the next issue to provide the authors with the option of accepting a nominal sum for their work.

That would remove any ambiguity and provide an additional incentive for writers.

snippyhollow• 16 years ago

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

Hacker Monthly - Issue #4 - September 2010

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