Unfortunately I am writing today as a rather dissappointed customer.
I think the Taunton publiations are excellent and the online service is second to none, certainly in the furniture making world.
However I find it rather cheap that they feel it necessary to try and charge for a service that they should be offering as part of your subscriptions, at least to subscirbers. Lets face it they are not providing any more/new content, they are simply providing a quicker way to access the content we have already paid for. To suggest that loyal purchasers of your magazine should pay $20 so that they can find more easily articles in the magazines that they have sold them I think is frankly insulting. They continually incentivise new customers to take up annual subscriptions but fail to recognise those who renew their subscriptons year after year. This index is exaxtly the sort of added value they could be giving to those loyal customers.
Replies
Free as a bird:
http://www.taunton.com/cgi-bin/artresult-fw.cgi
Lee
Thanks!
Wait.... what just happened there?It's free, it's not? huh?
It appears that it's free if you go online but they want to charge you $20 for a CD rom which probably cost $2 - and we complain about paying for music CD's !
Oh, Now I get it.
I guess they figure they get you for the online subscription fee OR the CD fee, but either way, you gotta pay.
....for what you have already paid for!
As you may be able to tell, this somewhat irritates me.
I totally don't get you guys! Do you reallllllly think they make so much profit off the magazine that they can afford to publish all this stuff online for FREE?! A serious dose of reality is needed here. It takes a separate staff with a payroll and a great deal of software to support this little corner of cyberspace for your pleasure and entertainment.
All of the magazine articles have to be converted to PDF, author permissions obtained, all those web pages have to be designed. A search engine needs to be selected and perfected (as we've seen, no easy task). As someone who's fairly intelligent and has tried and failed to design one catchy, attractive and functional web site, I can testify that it takes a tremendous amount of staff time to do all this, and they don't work for chicken feed.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Edited 9/16/2008 11:22 am by forestgirl
I suggest you try reading properly the issue before you go off on a rant :-)
but thank you for your invaluable contribution
The original issue was the index, yes, but then stuff started flying around about the CD, which -- as far as I can remember anyway -- contains full-fledged articles from the magazine, in digital form. Perhaps there's a CD I don't know about? Yep, that's possible.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
>and they don't work for chicken feed.<They do in India and China, don't they?Sorry, FG, couldn't resist. My only other thought is the usual,... you know,... probably would've been a lot easier on a Mac.Grinning, ducking and running, knowing that you'll be mad at me for at least a year. I blame it on a combination of the pain meds and "the devil made me do it," Take care, EdFor the original poster, the spiral-bound print copy index to the first 100 issues is quite useful to me personally. Your mileage may vary,...
When did you pay for the digital index?
Don't you get a paper index with your subscription?
Why does this irritate you? Don't buy it?
You did not need it before it was offered for a price so why do you need it now?
I wish Knots was by subscription only when nonsense like this raise its snarly head, and boy there has been a lot lately! Nothing compares to the sound of subscriber entitlement.I think I will go east for 2 weeks and ponder the silent majesty of the sugar maples on Cape Breton Island.Don
Edited 9/17/2008 1:13 am by Don01
Sounds like a good idea Don
I guess they figure they get you for the online subscription fee OR the CD fee, but either way, you gotta pay.
I saved that link quite some time ago - someone else posted it here on knots.
I do not have a paid membership/online subscription here and I can acess the index for FREE. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
Am I missing something here?????? What's the point of the argument? The index is free.
Lee
No argument here.
"It appears that it's free if you go online but they want to charge you $20 for a CD rom which probably cost $2...." How much do you think the labor costs were to scan all the old (non-digitized) articles and get them ready for CD publications???????forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
A lot if, that was what they were offering you... but it isn't. This is simply an index to tell you which publication you need to dig out or buy to find the article
CD copy cost run less than .20 per disk!The undisciplined life is not worth examining.
"CD copy cost run less than .20 per disk!"Actually, CDs cost less than that to have printed in quantities greater than 5,000. However, preparing the content to go on the CD is considerably pricier.I'm also a bit mystified at this offering from FWW. As far as I can tell from the advertising e-mail I was sent, this CD contains an index, and only an index, of past issues of FWW.There's no doubt Taunton as well as many other magazine publishers are suffering declining print copy sales as many of the younger generation confine their reading to the internet. Many of these same publishers are trying many new things in an attempt to replace that revenue. FWW has gone to the subscription model for access to content. Pop Woodworking has gone to a free access supported by advertising model. I don't think anyone in the publishing industry knows which will work out best (and if you do, you've a great deal of money to make!).
Hope you don’t mind me jumping in but I have few things I would like to share with you. I should first introduce myself. My name is Missy Robinson and I am the Marketing Manager for Fine Woodworking. <!----><!----><!---->
Although we make a great effort to keep the online index up to date we found that the online index not only had missing information but it was also very limited in the information it provides. After receiving many customer phone calls, emails and letters requesting a new index we made the decision to bring in a number of people this past spring and summer to go thought each and every issue we ever published to update and expand the information we had in our index. We also worked with an outside company to develop a simple and easy to use interface to deliver the index in. The new index gives you more search options and expanded results which is what our customers have been asking for. <!----><!---->
Example - Our new search screen allows you to broaden or narrow your search by choosing specifically what you would like to search - Title & Subtitles, Abstract, Keyword, Author, Departments, and even years. This is not possible with the online index. You can only search by keyword.<!----><!---->
Example - Our new search results screen provides you with a Title, Subtitle, Department, Author, Issue Number, Issue Date, Issue Year, Start page Number, End Page Number, an Abstract and a Thumbnail View of the cover the article appeared in. Our online index only provides Subject, Article Title, Issue and Page Number. <!----><!---->
You can take a peek at a few screen shots on the product page if you like - http://store.taunton.com/onlinestore/storeitem.html?iid=17098&cid=668&pcid=490&vid=20060723001<!----><!---->
If you have any questions or additional feedback I would really appreciate anything you could share with me. I can be reached at (203) 304-3549 or [email protected]. Thank you!<!----><!---->
Missy <!----><!---->
Full disclosure: I’m one of the editors here at Fine Woodworking. I didn’t participate in producing the CD index, but I did want to jump in with some potentially helpful background.<!----><!----><!---->
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First, just to reiterate what one of the previous posters pointed out - the online index is free to anyone who visits the site, subscriber or no. Some on this forum will remember when an index of any kind was available only to folks who purchased the magazine.<!----><!---->
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Second, the CD index is similar in important ways to a product that was a hit with readers several years ago - a spiral-bound, printed index of the first 100 issues.<!----><!---->
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Until 2007, with the advent of the free online index, FWW printed an annual index in each January issue. The spiral-bound index (a second edition went to 125 issues) was just an index, and largely redundant with the annual indexes from those years. Still, readers bought it. This was before my time here, but they did so - I think - because they found it more convenient than leafing through 15 or more separate indexes to find what they were after. We still get occasional requests for it. <!----><!---->
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The technology is obviously different now, but it might be helpful to think of the new CD index in a similar way. We also have received many, many requests for a CD index. That’s why we created it. For their own reasons, some readers might find CDs more convenient or reliable than online searching. Or they might be drawn to the enhanced search and display features that Missy mentioned in her post. <!----><!---->
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I hope these comments offer folks another way of thinking about this question. Thanks for reading.
Steve Scott
Associate Editor
Missy - I think you might've meant to direct your reply to "all". I've no problem with Taunton selling whatever they wish to. My comment that I was a bit mystified was more related to what I and probably a fair number of others see as a marketing faux pas. With any product, perception of value is often considerably more important than actual value, and a fair number of individuals would expect this sort of content as an included item in a subscription. Whether they're actually correct about that or not doesn't matter - the fact that they think that is what is important.A couple of examples beyond the publishing world comes to mind. There is indeed a supply problem with refined gasoline in the US right now, and anyone that's taken basic economics will realize that when the supply is restricted and the demand remains roughly the same, the equilibrium price goes higher. However, the inarguable science of this fact does not prevent consumers from feeling that they're being taken advantage of. And from the standpoint of the public relations and marketing aspects, their perception IS reality.An opposite example is those "blue screen" advertisements with pushy salesmen (and saleswomen) on late night TV hawking products for "only 19.95!". An rigorous engineering examination of many of those products would show them to be hopelessly flawed and/or highly overpriced. The material in the "Shamwow" advertisements is available at a fraction of the advertised price at specialty fabric suppliers, and the only addition the company makes to the cut material is a "shamwow" printed logo (and a pushy salesman with a New Jersey accent).However, these advertisements are successful because at least a fair number of consumers perceive that they're getting value that they're not (and if you call now, we'll throw in XXXX absolutely free!!!). Again, even though a rational view would say otherwise, their perception IS reality.
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