In this geeky world I’m in, there are few magazines as spot-on and influential as Wired Magazine. It’s one of the magazines I keep around for years after publication.
Wired was important not just because it was the first magazine to make the computer world seem hip; it also trained its eye on the implications of the onrushing new technology, not merely on appraising the newest machines and trendiest gadgets.
(from nettime.org)
I typically buy a copy of Wired when I’m in an airport, because they don’t carry it in most Belgian bookshops. So this year I thought: let’s just pretend we’re wealthy and buy a year’s subscription. I clicked the ‘Subscribe’ button on the site, and lo and behold, a year’s subscription only costs $10! (That’s about the same price as I pay over here for a single issue.) Great! Oh wait, that’s for US only. Let’s check ‘International’: for Europeans it’s a hefty $70.
Even if $70 is not the end of the world, why on earth would I pay a 600% premium for just transport? This made me think of the Brewster Kahle speech on NotCon 2004. The founder of the Internet Archive has set up the Internet BookMobile, a vehicle with all technology on board (Internet, color printer, binding machine) to print books on demand. His claim is that it costs $1 to print a black/white book with a color cover, while it costs $2 for a library to handle the lending of a book. Printing a self-made book (uploaded in PDF format) through the CafePress site costs $4.50. Kinkos charges a bit more ($5.95). So if one had to print 1000 copies for Western Europe and ship them from France, Germany or Poland (cheaper labor), this should be possible for less than $5 per copy?
So here’s my question: given the state-of-the-art in on-demand printing technology, isn’t it possible to have US-based magazines digitally transferred to a European location and printed closer to the reader? So I could subscribe to Wired, Fast Company ($56 for Europe instead of $12), Business 2.0, Rolling Stone ($65 for Europe instead of $13), Time Magazine, Newsweek (70€ instead of $30 per year) and – what the heck – Playboy ($45 for Europe instead of $12) for what one Wired subscription costs now?
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Chris Anderson, editor of Wired here:
Thanks to the miracle of technorati watchlists, I saw your post. Excellent point–$70 does seem like a lot. I’ll talk to our circ people and find out why that is, and whether we can’t lower it.
Well Chris, I ended up buying the subscription anyway, since buying them 1-by-1 is also an expensive habit, and I want to have ‘em all.
Hey ! It is true… We would like to read Wired I would not say at the US price, but let’s say 50 euros…
If I can give you an advice, if you work in a US company, you can ask Wired to send your copy to the HQ and then by internal mail send it back in Belgium(using a mail stop)
It is the way I do when I buy books in the USA… The problem is that the magazine will be put in my(physical) mailbox 
and my colleagues can steal my copy—or let’s say borrow it 
Or we can find a bookshop in Belgium… But is it not 7 euros a copy ? That’s a complete shame… Or we can buy one and share it
See you, Rudy
I did it finally by internal mail… 10 bucks not the end of the world…
but of course compared to your solution. there will be a delay…
I have had a subscription to Wired a few times. The funny thing is that the publishing company, Condé-Nast, did not seem to do any effort to invite me to renew my subscription. So after a year, my subscription expired without any notice.
Have you considered this alternative way to get a subscription to Wired: for $35, become a subscriber of http://www.salon.com. You’ll get a free subscription to Wired Magazine. O sh*t, it’s only valid for people with a U.S. address.
Well the very same happens with the subscription to Argentina. The internet+printing on site option seem to be the right idea.
For example, The Economist climb up to U$ 219 for Argentina against U$ 129 for the states.