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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

I edited my post while you were replying—I do know some individuals who have a couple of subscriptions, but not more than that unless it's for professional reasons. Businesses are a different story, and they should be charged accordingly.

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I subscribe to the NYT, New Yorker, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, and the Atlantic.

I don’t know how people think they’ll survive with a tenth of the revenue. Maybe you think three times the number of people will subscribe so then a third of the revenue?

So then what? Publications look for alternative means of supplementing income. Which means ads and skewing content towards clickbaiting.

Maybe it’s fine not trying to be for everyone when not everyone values them.

I think you're a major outlier, and that newspapers would get well above three times the number of subscribers. Magazines are a little different since they're more focused, i.e. The New York Review of Books is not a substitute for PCMag.

But it's also possible I'm wrong—I certainly have no background on this industry. For example, someone on the TWiT podcast said the reason there's no effective "Netflix for Books" is because the industry is highly dependent on a very small number of "whales" who will buy five books per week.

Even for most people who are regular readers, however defined, a la carte book purchases over the course of a year don't add up to a huge number. Reading most books takes a bigger time committment than most other media. And many who are voracious readers, among others, use libraries. I read at least a middling bit and I'm fine to pay $150/year or whatever and own my books (or "own" in the case of Kindle).

Agreed, the only people I know of that subscribe to multiple publications do it for professional reasons. I only subscribe to WSJ and it's more pricey than others but worth it. I get all the major stories.

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