MORE ON IMPORTED MAGAZINES
One of my readers posed a question about the cost of The Economist magazine here in Bangkok, and in the interests of providing the best possible answers to all questions about publishing and the media in Thailand I got a copy.
The cost is 210 baht, and for that you get the Asian edition which is printed in both Singapore and Hong Kong. The Economist isn't alone in having an Asian English edition. The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Time, Forbes .. they all have them. And BusinessWeek has its local language editions in Thailand, Indonesia and China.
Less than two years ago The Economist was on sale here for 170 baht, so that's close to a 25% increase in less than 24 months. Yes - you can get quite a bit of content online and for free but print publishers in general still keep some of their best content for the magazine. That model is changing but not as fast here as in other parts of the world.
2 comments:
That is a stiff increase, you are right. I wish I had kept copies of the magazine which I bought at the newsstand here eight or nine years ago, the last time I bought copies regularly.
The magazine runs a Big Mac index comparing Big Mac prices in big cities, as an indicator of the rising cost of living. I wonder if they have ever run an index showing increases in their own newsstand price.
There are lots of factors involved in that increase. Paper, print, wages and distribution costs have all shown similar increases I would imagine, and at the same time advertising revenue has been squeezed.
All good fun if you're in publishing - trust me on that !
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