Folks,
We've just finished some initial technology tests pertaining to access control and payment, and have 1 more to go before we make a final decision.
I've heard from many folks that they have tight budgets and that restructing, layoffs, corporate bankruptcies have really put a crimp in their koi lives. I realize that money is tight for a lot of people, and don't want to deny them the opportunity to learn from Koi-Bito due to circumstances that are sometimes beyond their control.
In addition to that, we know that there may be times that you would like to read an article online when reading a print magazine might not be practical (like when you're in the office
) or acceptable. There may also be times when you're online or chatting with a friend in which you'd like to reference one of our articles.
For the above reasons, we're considering producing an online version of Koi-Bito, that will be slightly different than the print version. First of all, the online version will be published on an article-by-article basis, and not as a full magazine. You will see which print issue the article originated from, but articles will be published individually on a regular basis, and not as a series of articles which you would find in the print version. What this means is that we may publish single articles from the magazine online on a time scale, rather than the whole contents of a print issue all at once. This breaks the pace up a bit, and doesn't hold us to the original publishing order that was in the print version of the magazine. We will publish online articles from the print magazine on a loose schedule, and in the order that we see fit.
One caveat is that we will
not publish the newest articles from the print version of the magazine within 6 months of their original publish date. We will always be comitted to the print version of the magazine, and want both reward and maintain our reader base for the print version.
There may be some extras offered in our online version such as video clips and an extensive photo library that aren't offered currently on the Koi-Bito Website. We still have a lot of tech work to sort out, so these things may not be in the immediate future.
We're targeting a sign-up price of $30 US which gives you access to the system for 1 calendar year. Current subscribers will receive a very substantial discount if they wish to also participate in the online version, but we've not decided a price for that yet. We may also offer affiliate discounts, but have not made any firm decisions on that yet either.
We'd like to hear your thoughts on an online version to compliment what we currently offer in print format. Let me state hear and now that this is
not a replacement for the print version of the magazine, but rather an additional choice available to serve our growing subscriber community.