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?
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)
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):
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.
William, I assure you it's not a bait and switch. As somebody mentioned in Twitter today, I tweeted this 2 months ago (http://twitter.com/hackermonthly/status/17978114821): "The PDF version is free and always will be."
That was the ideal plan. Make around $1 for each print copy sold. Sell some advertising. And hopefully I can get it thru month after month.
No, that didn't work out well (I could show you some proof of the total revenues we made from the first 3 months).
That's when I've decided to charge, for digital issue. Because it's either that, or the magazine dies somewhere down the road. I love the magazine. I love making it. I love it when readers tell me they enjoy reading it. And I wanted to keep on doing it for as long as possible.
So I've got to make that tough decision, sooner rather than later.
On the other hand, I DO plan on compensating the author, but I have to see how's the numbers performing for the first issue before making any promise.
When you say that the first 3 months 'didn't work out well' does that mean that you made a loss, or that you didn't make enough to justify the time that you spend putting the magazine together?
I would assume that your costs are your time plus the incremental transaction costs charged by the middle-man. Perhaps I am missing something?
(I can't work out, in my own mind, how selling a magazine online, to this community, with a $10 cover price can not 'work out well' enough to be in the black - esp. considering the response to the first issues. Perhaps some insight is in order - as I think it might be a learning experience for all , ie. what was your conversion rate? What are your costs?
This would be an interesting HN community case study).
Don't get me wrong: I'm not pissed. Nor do I really feel cheated. I am just leery and perhaps oversensitive to freely contributing to paid content, which is what my example about SO and the evil hyphen site was about.
I also take responsibility for not asking (which I didn't) nor doing more research than the cursory glance that I did. So even if I were pissed (which I'm not) it would be at least partly my fault.
So let me just say for the record, in case anyone is under a misconception from what I've written so far: you've dealt with me courteously and professionally so I certainly wish you well on this.
This is simply more about how my own philosophy in what I want to contribute to. Think of these comments as me thinking out loud (about that).
It should have been made clear to you, and the other authors, in the email - regardless of if a tweet was sent out 2 weeks ago or not.
The publisher can't assume that you read and follow everything they write. The entire agreement and disclosure should have been contained in that email to you, so you have nothing to apologize for (the fact that you didn't know that there was no free issue until you saw it here on HN says that there was a flaw in the communications process).
As mentioned in the other comments, I hope the publisher can clarify and be much clearer in his emails to potential authors next time around (perhaps publishing an 'authors' page on the website with a clear FAQ - ie. if the authors can expect their own copy, etc.)
I actually held out on insta-clicking to buy a copy when I read your comment (I still am), so clarification here will help everybody.
I can't help but agree with you. In anything I write, I am either paid directly, have my own ads up against it, or I am contributing to a community with a broader goal of making information more readily and easily accessible - where there is a mutual benefit (everything from sites like SO to comments on HN, etc.)
For somebody else to profit, in my eyes, is no different to the splogs that I spend too much time playing wack-a-mole with. The splogs could also argue that they are making the information (my content) more easily accessible and more organized.
The hackermagazine is in a position where they could pay contributors, providing a quid-pro-quo through profit sharing. Most personal blogs make very little from advertising, so they could re-jig their model to provide a revenue source to good writers (who in-turn would have a further motivation to write good articles).
It is a bit like the old trade monthlies and quarterlies who would take the best research papers or other contributions from a particular field and wrap them up in a magazine - only they would pay their contributors.
If the publisher was not being sincere in their email, and this was a bait-n-switch, then that is a whole other matter that would require clarification from them.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;-))
Comments
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.
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)
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?
William, I assure you it's not a bait and switch. As somebody mentioned in Twitter today, I tweeted this 2 months ago (http://twitter.com/hackermonthly/status/17978114821): "The PDF version is free and always will be."
That was the ideal plan. Make around $1 for each print copy sold. Sell some advertising. And hopefully I can get it thru month after month.
No, that didn't work out well (I could show you some proof of the total revenues we made from the first 3 months).
That's when I've decided to charge, for digital issue. Because it's either that, or the magazine dies somewhere down the road. I love the magazine. I love making it. I love it when readers tell me they enjoy reading it. And I wanted to keep on doing it for as long as possible.
So I've got to make that tough decision, sooner rather than later.
On the other hand, I DO plan on compensating the author, but I have to see how's the numbers performing for the first issue before making any promise.
When you say that the first 3 months 'didn't work out well' does that mean that you made a loss, or that you didn't make enough to justify the time that you spend putting the magazine together?
I would assume that your costs are your time plus the incremental transaction costs charged by the middle-man. Perhaps I am missing something?
(I can't work out, in my own mind, how selling a magazine online, to this community, with a $10 cover price can not 'work out well' enough to be in the black - esp. considering the response to the first issues. Perhaps some insight is in order - as I think it might be a learning experience for all , ie. what was your conversion rate? What are your costs?
This would be an interesting HN community case study).
"Bait and switch" is stronger than I really mean.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not pissed. Nor do I really feel cheated. I am just leery and perhaps oversensitive to freely contributing to paid content, which is what my example about SO and the evil hyphen site was about.
I also take responsibility for not asking (which I didn't) nor doing more research than the cursory glance that I did. So even if I were pissed (which I'm not) it would be at least partly my fault.
So let me just say for the record, in case anyone is under a misconception from what I've written so far: you've dealt with me courteously and professionally so I certainly wish you well on this.
This is simply more about how my own philosophy in what I want to contribute to. Think of these comments as me thinking out loud (about that).
It should have been made clear to you, and the other authors, in the email - regardless of if a tweet was sent out 2 weeks ago or not.
The publisher can't assume that you read and follow everything they write. The entire agreement and disclosure should have been contained in that email to you, so you have nothing to apologize for (the fact that you didn't know that there was no free issue until you saw it here on HN says that there was a flaw in the communications process).
As mentioned in the other comments, I hope the publisher can clarify and be much clearer in his emails to potential authors next time around (perhaps publishing an 'authors' page on the website with a clear FAQ - ie. if the authors can expect their own copy, etc.)
I actually held out on insta-clicking to buy a copy when I read your comment (I still am), so clarification here will help everybody.
I can't help but agree with you. In anything I write, I am either paid directly, have my own ads up against it, or I am contributing to a community with a broader goal of making information more readily and easily accessible - where there is a mutual benefit (everything from sites like SO to comments on HN, etc.)
For somebody else to profit, in my eyes, is no different to the splogs that I spend too much time playing wack-a-mole with. The splogs could also argue that they are making the information (my content) more easily accessible and more organized.
The hackermagazine is in a position where they could pay contributors, providing a quid-pro-quo through profit sharing. Most personal blogs make very little from advertising, so they could re-jig their model to provide a revenue source to good writers (who in-turn would have a further motivation to write good articles).
It is a bit like the old trade monthlies and quarterlies who would take the best research papers or other contributions from a particular field and wrap them up in a magazine - only they would pay their contributors.
If the publisher was not being sincere in their email, and this was a bait-n-switch, then that is a whole other matter that would require clarification from them.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;-))