"The Rake" magazine - Page 31

Thank you. I like to think of myself as a cuddly lee_44106... ...there goes the Incotex!

I shall contain the righteous indignation provoked by the mere suggestion, but suffice it to say, any attempt to make such a move would be extremely ill-advised.

the rest of us would just like some decent distribution

Piracy is almost always a result of insufficient or inconvenient access. The vast majority of overseas residents would be willing to pay for your content if it were reasonably priced and easily available. Sorry, but you cannot justify charging the price of a hardcover book for a magazine.

Why don't you put a version of the magazine online, to which people can subscribe for a fee approaching the lowest priced print version, e.g. $30-35 per year? That way you gain cusomters and save on publishing/distribution.

I'm sorry, but that is a very flawed line of reasoning - it's not as if this is air, water or food. They're not exactly slum lords - it's a magazine on men's clothing for chrissakes. A luxury, hardly a necessity. And your rhetorical question is inherently biased - they have no reason/need to 'justify' whatever their cost is. And as others have proved here in this thread, the upcharge for shipping is fair. You might as well blame yourself for living in Europe, and not Asia/Oceania where this is accessible cheaply. I mean, a decent cup of coffee in Paris runs about 8-10USD at best and it costs max 3-4 USD here for me in Australia - so... WTF is that? How can they justify charging that price in Paris??! See what I mean?

I'm quite happy paying what appears to be the Sterling equivalent price (£10) for a publication with high production values such as this. The stock makes the magazine feel more like a book than a disposable magazine, and I'm fine with that. I'm kind of against online content/distribution and have not subscribed to Monocle for this very reason. Maybe I'm an exception, but I am never in one place for very long if I'm online, and certainly never in a position to be able to read a complete article. Of course, as the iPad (and other such devices) prevail, this may change. I'd rather pay a premium for a physical publication and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Lodger at Clifford Street seems to be the only place in the whole of UK to get them.

I noticed that the advertisements tend to be rather localized (obviously), perhaps with a broader distribution base and the likely increased readership that comes with it, you might be able to garner enough advertising revenues from international houses.

Localizing the printing might be a way to go around the high shipping costs, as some newspaper/ magazines have done.

I think the earlier (several) suggestions by apropos were excellent. Many have been looking for a Japanese "format" of men's clothing magazine but in English and there certainly is a void in this sense.

What a weird ramble.

I didn't say they were the mafia withholding precious necessities, I said their prices were unreasonable. They may reflect the actual cost of int'l shipping, but that doesn't make them any less absurd. A bad business model is not a legitimate explanation. Someone suggested local printing; that's one way to address the problem. The other is to create an online version, accessible from anywhere, available for around the price of the cheapest print version. Not only does that guarantee them more customers, but it could save them money. Where's the downside?

The way I see it, they can either expand their clientele with little to no hassle, or cut off their nose to spite their face because they don't "need to justify whatever their cost is." No brainer.

BTW a decent cup of coffee in Paris runs about €1,50 to €2,00.

I daresay, I used to subscribe to Citizen K--a French magazine--which had some of the highest quality stock and printing I've ever seen and it was only $15 a year.

^Only if you speak french and don't leave tips.

Many a times, the cost of the magazine is really dependant on the amount of advertisers or sponsors who can subsidize the cost in order to gain readership.

Yes, that was a weird ramble, but - Yes, so they put up a massive amount of capital and should expand into international printing & distribution, so that holymadness and the maybe 20 readers in Paris, or the maybe 1000 in all of Europe, or the maybe 3000 in the USA, can get a copy of a niche within a niche English language magazine cheap. Makes perfect sense, right..? And re: the online model, think about it: if it's such a great business model - why haven't all of the folks at Conde Nast (y'know, the guys who have the most to gain from this) published all their top selling magazines online? Oh yes, because unless they slap some seriously heavy-handed DRM on them (which will cost money to design/implement/maintain), 'people' like MetroStyles will gleefully pirate their copyright. You know, the people on Mr Moo budgets but who want to live like voxsartoria - do you really think they will pay for something they can get for free? So can we cut out all this bellyaching by people who are happy to move to Paris (which is a real cheap place to live) but yet unwilling to put up $30 every 2 months for a magazine and get back to coming up with suggestions to improve the magazine so that perhaps said people might deign it worth their hard-earned $30? kthxbai. PS: And I would honestly appreciate a PM re: these places in Paris where I can get a cup of good coffee for Euro 2 because I think I got price-raped. I'll work on my French in the mean time - ooooon ceh-fey oh-lay?

Every time someone I know goes to Hong Kong, I ask them to pick me up a copy. Funny when I was there last year, I just saw it in a 7/11 in Wanchai but people have scoured across the island for me with no luck. I kind of feel sorry to ask now - it must be pretty damned obscure.

Yesssss.

That is, me and the 1 million people who bought iPads last month, which goes on sale here in 10 days, incidentally.
Conde Nast is behind the business curve the same way that the major music companies are. iTunes has proved that millions of people are willing to invest billions of dollars to buy media online if it's fast, easy, and affordable. Now BMG and Sony are kicking themselves for every dollar they lose to Apple because they didn't react fast enough. Piracy actually represents a very, very tiny proportion of consumption, even when it comes to things like video games.

lol @ the Mr Moo dig.

I like to put things in perspective. If Paris is so expensive, it's because it has so much to offer in terms of food, culture, shows, and so forth that the demand to live here is overwhelming. I consider the tradeoff relatively fair.

On the other hand, my desire to read The Rake is not sufficiently great to drop $30 sight unseen, especially considering the dross that usually passes for men's fashion/lifestyle magazines (GQ, Esquire, Monsieur, Monocle). However, I would be willing to test the waters for $10. After that, I could judge whether it's worth continuing to buy it.

But of course they're not obligated to do anything. I just happen to think the rewards would outweigh the risks and I am willing to put my money where my mouth is to demonstrate they could gain clients by distributing around the world at a lower price.
Cafés au lait are extra.