Online Publishing

With the birth of the Internet, and its inherent leveling of the distribution market, came the rise of the 'free' philosophy. Anybody could write articles and essays, and put them on the web for free. This was followed by the growth of the pirated music industry, and as broadband use spread this even extended into the movie market. As a consequence, the 'free philosophy' of the Internet, and the tools used to do so, have become negative topics. However, the intelligent publisher will find much of use if they are prepared to think outside the box.

In the past, magazine publishing has generally been via one of two circulation models (or a hybrid of both): paid and unpaid. Paid circulation is when a magazine is just that - paid for by subscribers and news-stand sales, which provide a significant portion (or all) of the total revenue of the magazine. On the other hand, unpaid circulation works on the principle that the publisher builds a large readership by giving the magazine away to a certain target audience, and raising revenue from advertisers wishing to reach that particular audience. The essence of unpaid circulation is that the higher number of readers, the more you can charge per page of advertising (because each ad is reaching more people), while as the number of copies increases, your print costs (per copy) decrease because of the economies of scale.  read more »