Fullcircle in print?

[catfacts]

lets wait to see if we could get say x number of people who would sign up ahead of time and send in the money for say 1 year worth.

[ronniet]

lets wait to see if we could get say x number of people who would sign up ahead of time and send in the money for say 1 year worth.

It's not about READERS paying money, that defeats the purpose of it being a FREE *buntu magazine, it'd be up to us to get a large enough group of advertisers who would pay enough, in total, to cover the cost of printing and shipping. If readers wanted to donate and/or click on advertising on the site (adsense etc) then fair enough.

But again, remember: lets say, for talking sake, that we only made $10,000 per month, that'd mean only 10,000 copies printed. If we end up with a list of 20,000 people wanting a printed copy, how do we decide who gets left out? We could end up with a lot of disgruntled people.

One other thing to consider might be making it more of a newspaper format since i'm quite sure that would be much cheaper...

[saxonjf]

Excellent points, Ronniet... and the newspaper type idea might be an excellent one. I print in greyscale, anyway, and I don't feel like I am missing out.

For a periodical that uses just that newpaper type format, check out this publication

Sword of the Lord Magazine free download

[onlineapps]

Greyscale could be interesting.

Though, if it was $1 per issue, I think a lot of users wouldn't mind paying $1...

Also, if we had advertisers it could be first come first serve.

Lastly, we could always try to get Canonical to cover the costs.

[bstempi]

I would think that there would be a really good market for this magazine, and thus a lot of willing advertisers. Dell comes to mind, since they sell Ubuntu desktops and laptops. I imagine many other hardware vendors (System76) and hosting companies would be interested in this.

I'm no business guru, but I would think that if you played your cards right, you could not only produce a print version, but also make a profitable full-time job out of it.

Making the magazine free by supporting it with advertisements is something that Network World has done for quite some time. I think it's a viable option.

[catfacts]

They aren't really paying for the magazine but the medium and shipping. If someone really wants it FREE they can download it and print it but that still costs them electric, ink, internet and time. So really they are paying for it in a different form.

[mattr01]

A. Tree killing
B. Other than A good idea, I print it anyways and I know most people do, If I could save ink and pay shipping that would pry equal out.

I must be the only person that actually doesn't print Full Circle out at home...

[mattr01]

And remember folks; we're volunteers, we can't donate our entire working week to the magazine. Unless someone wants to employ us to work on full circle full time...?

You know, i'd like a job too working for full circle, but
1) I live in Australia, i'd have to work at home.
2) Can't do full time. Am a student and podcaster.

Maybe you could ask Canonical, they'll [cough] help [cough]

[ncappel1]

I must be the only person that actually doesn't print Full Circle out at home...

I don't print it out either, in fact, it would be interesting to see how many people do print it out. is there any way to find out?

[cosmostrator]

Just a thought but you could offer it on a service like cafepress.com or lulu.com Both offer printing books on demand and take pdf format. That way there is no up front cost to the full circle team. Of course the mags would be a little pricey, but it may be worth it to some people.
-Cosmostrator