People can buy digital subscriptions if they don't want to use paper. But some people want hard-copy magazines, and it's not wrong for us to offer them. We will do our best to use sustainable paper sources and responsible printers.
As for the costs, those are normal in the publishing world. Many magazines have tried slashing the contribution per-page cost, and ended up with poor quality content as a result. We want the best contributors, and they're worth paying for.
100GBP per page may seem like a lot, but that's for 800 words of highly technical content, that has to be correct, well-written, informative and entertaining. A single page can take many hours of work when you're dealing with advanced subjects. You get what you pay for.
Thanks a lot! Rest assured, we're doing this differently. We've split off from a big company that could do stunts like that, and we're focused on our readers. The entire team will be doing one thing: making a great Linux mag.
Some people want hard-copy magazines. Many thousands of them, in fact! And as for "a crap-ton of money to make a bunch of PDFs", it's far more involved than that. See the FAQ on the Indiegogo page.
When you take into account editorial contributors (£100 per page, or £4,400 per issue), design and art help (£2,900 per issue), hardware, bills, app store charges etc., it all adds up.
So it's not just a "bunch of PDFs" -- it's a complicated collaboration between writers, artists and stores. We want to make it good value, but we're not just reproducing some HOWTOs. We're making new, original, creative content.
As for the costs, those are normal in the publishing world. Many magazines have tried slashing the contribution per-page cost, and ended up with poor quality content as a result. We want the best contributors, and they're worth paying for.
100GBP per page may seem like a lot, but that's for 800 words of highly technical content, that has to be correct, well-written, informative and entertaining. A single page can take many hours of work when you're dealing with advanced subjects. You get what you pay for.