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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

People have been saying "print is dead" for almost a century now, and somehow it hasn't happened.

I read an article a couple of months ago which stated that magazine subscriptions are up, and so is printed catalog distribution and sales from those catalogs.

Anecdotally, subscribing to Apple News only whetted my wife's appetite for the printed versions of the magazines she sees on her iPhone. She's since subscribed to the print versions of three of them.

We were at the rodeo one day and one of the magazines had a booth. I mentioned to the people from the magazine that my wife subscribed to their publication because of Apple News, and they said they hear that a lot.

Of course, I've also read that some publishers are not happy with the revenue cut they get from Apple News, so perhaps its not right for every publisher.

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> I read an article a couple of months ago which stated that magazine subscriptions are up

Would love more context on this. Up from when? Up for whom? Which countries? The details matter in something like this.

"Print is dead" is hyperbole but I thought it was pretty established that print is struggling compared to the mid/late-'90s or mid-'00s. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184055/estimated-revenue...

Agreed. Also anecdotally, but I feel the same way with photographs. While digital photos are amazing and I never want to go back, I also really, really enjoy printed albums. Especially for photos of a trip or special event. I find it way easier to capture, remember, and re-tell the story by flipping through a book.

Have you tried the book on Ladakh by Satie Sharma on the iPad? I loved it for exactly these reasons.

https://bubblin.io/book/ladakh-by-satie-sharma/1

That's something I often tell people a bit unmotivated with their photography: Go and get some of your images printed! It's surprising how much of a difference it can make.

But isn't that sending them towards pulping and effectively killing the very nature that inspires their photography in the first place?

Paper is not effectively killing nature. Especially in the US, which is home to one of the largest paper-producing regions in the world.

Nearly (if not actually) all of the pulp required for paper comes from managed forests grown and harvested specifically to produce wood products over time. These tree farms are stable, not shrinking.

well, that’s not true.

“managed forests” produce high amounts of waste and take away arable land and natural habitat quite aggressively [1]. what you have said here is a common propaganda perpetrated by industry advocates on the web and is often passed on as gyan without any scientific basis or authentic study or source to back it up.

hell, even critical thinking is missing when people write comments like this!

kind of like lobsters were cheap prison food in 1800s story:

https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/emcx69/the_history...

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_pape...

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