Christian Computing Magazine -- The economics of online distribution

I've been an avid reader of Christian Computing Magazine since it came out about 20 years ago. The online publication is going through a transition from PDF to "Flash" distribution. This reminded me of our calculation about halting the publication of the U.S. edition of our mission's magazine about 15 years ago.

As a journalist who has edited several magazines distributed to the Christian missions public, including Mission Frontiers (published by the U.S. Center for World Missions) and the aware-winning East Asia Millions (published by OMF International), I'm well aware that the internet has turned the economics of magazine publishing on it's head.

In the ink-and-paper world, having "camera-ready" copy is just the start of your distribution costs. For a mission organization, most of the costs of finding information, getting it written, along with photos, is often done by people who are members of the organization, raising their own support, so the costs to the organization are not a significant factor. Likewise with the staff that edits the copy and does the layout for the publication.

Where the costs begin to mount up is when we start to turn that art and copy into a publication that can be mailed to potential readers.For a 16-page, full-color magazine printing 25,000 copies (EAM), were looking at about $6,000. at four issues per year, that's almost $25,000 in annual printing costs.

Internet distribution has turned that financial equation on its head. For them, having "camera-ready" copy is the final cost to the organization. From there, posting the copy on the web site is the last money the organization has to spend to distribute the magazine. The reading public pays the cost of buying and operating the computers. Of course, if the public is reading the magazine in the public library, they don't even have to pay for that cost, except as a small percentage of their local taxes.

Christian Computing magazine, and their sister publication, Christian Video, moving from ink-and-paper to online distribution had to be a "no-brainer". First, consider their audience, their readers were already using computers in their daily work. Then their readers were also used to getting their information online, so there wasn't a barrier they had to overcome.