What luck switching print subscriptions to digital?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by geertm

Take a look at the magazine details. Magazines are not sold by B&N, they are sold by the publisher.
Just as with the agency 5 books the publisher sets the price of the magazines (and I assume also decides which devices to support).

If that's the case, then it looks like I won't be reading any magazines on my NC. I'm going to have to boycott the publishers for charging different rates.

For example, why does National Geographic charge Zinio customers $15 and B&N customers $24? Why is Popular Science $20 on Zinio and $36 on B&N?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If that's the case, then it looks like I won't be reading any magazines on my NC. I'm going to have to boycott the publishers for charging different rates.

For example, why does National Geographic charge Zinio customers $15 and B&N customers $24? Why is Popular Science $20 on Zinio and $36 on B&N?

At the moment, I know B&N doesn't actually set up a "1 yr subscription," but an agreement to buy a year's worth of a magazine... one at a time. I'm hoping the publishers will eventually set up actual yearly subscriptions, which should cost less per issue, and fix this discrepancy.

In the meantime, some magazines let you buy PDFs directly from them (at a lower-than-print price), which you can sideload onto the NC. I'm planning to do that with at least one of my present mags, possibly two, and see how things go.

Well, I guess from the responses that no one here has actually tried to directly convert a print subscription to digital... except me...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I just thought I'd provide my own update on the print-to-digital subscription transition process (hereinafter referred to as P2DSTP).

I had 3 subscriptions I wanted to transfer. The second process was the easiest, because I didn't have to go through B&N: Home Power Magazine offers PDFs of their mags through their website, released at the same time as the print versions, and available to subscribers of the print magazine as well as digital-only subscribers. I emailed first, and received no response; but calling was easy. The woman I spoke to canceled my subscription, saw how much of the money I'd paid for the subscription was left , and used that to pay for the equivalent in digital subscriptions (in this case, 4 years).

The first, Popular Science, was a bit more involved: I logged onto the PS site through the Renew My Subscription, and left a message to Customer Support to cancel my subscription. Once I received an email confirmation, I went to B&N and subscribed to the mag through their site.

I also get Scientific American, but at the moment their digital magazine is "in transition," and not available. I'll have to wait and see if they get onto B&N, or offer the digital version directly from their site.

It seems no publisher I've seen will manage the B&N subscriptions through their site, and B&N will not handle the transition; you'll have to cancel at the publisher's end, then sign up at B&N's end. The additional problem with this seems to be that if the publisher's site has exclusive content for subscribers, you may lose access to it when you cancel and go to B&N. If, however, the publisher offers up their own magazines in PDF or ePub, you might be better off getting it from them as opposed to B&N.