Electronic Apple II Journal?

[bazyar@hypermall.com (Jawaid Bazyar)]

With the end of GS+ Magazine in sight, some people have expressed
concerns as to where they will get information about new Apple II
products (as well as old ones!).

The costs associated with physical mediums such as print or floppy
disk prohibit the distribution of a magazine on them with fewer
than a few thousand subscribers.  There is simply no way to
get an economy of scale large enough to make something like GS+
profitable with a few hundred subscribers (at a reasonable price).

However, with a small one-time fee of from $40 to $100, Apple II
users can become connected to a great source of information about
their computer: Electronic networks.

Comp.Sys.Apple2 doesn't cut it for many people, however, due to its
lack of quality control; so what I am proposing is the possibility
of an online magazine, perhaps in WWW form. There are no
distribution costs per-se (really, they are merely very cheap); so what 
used to cost $1/issue to print and mail now costs nothing.  This
adds that much more margin for profit. 

GS+ had a disk subscription as well, which couldn't have been cheap to
deal with either (extra postage, extra costs to purchase and copy disks,
etc). These costs are also negated with a purely electronic medium.

The question at this point is _still_ whether such an endeavor
could be profitable, but due to the number of subscribers.
I am not sure how many of GS+'s subscribers are on the
Internet, GEnie, and Delphi, and AOL (all of which can use WWW);
I am not sure how many of those who aren't would be willing to
join one of the above information networks in order to get
a quality Apple II ePublication. 

I wouldn't personally engage in such a task unless there were at least 
1000 subscribers at the current magazine+disk rate; and that would
only pay _me_, not other people. I suspect an outfit like GS+
would still need 2K - 3K subscribers; but at least it could be done.

Comments?

--
 Jawaid Bazyar              |   Like UNIX? Like your Apple IIGS? Then ask
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