My first subscription arrived last night for Zinio and I have to say I continue to be impressed by how this works. I was able to sign up for a year of electronic delivery by filling out a quick marketing survey… usually the kind reserved for controlled circulation publications. The best part of the electronic delivery is that my issue actually arrived early. I really like Business Week and enjoy reading through it each week, but hate that it does not always arrive on Friday as I expect. In fact often times it does not come until Monday well after content is posted on the web site.
I still have yet to pay for an issue, but so far Zinio continues to be a cool way to read. Hopefully their model will continue to support my free loading.
Warning!
Be prepared for disappointment when taking out an electronic subscription with Zinio. Only about 3 to 4 issues into my 13 issue annual subscription to one of the magazines they offer, deliveries stopped arriving. The magazine publisher and Zinio have had a “falling out” and each is blaming the other. The poor subscribers are left empty-handed in the middle. No announcements have been sent to subscribers, and when inquiries are made, Zinio blames the troubles on “technical problems” Two month technical problems!
No more Zinio subscriptions for me!
I actually have not been tempted to subscribe to Zinio. I had tried to use many of their ‘sample’ issues, and then when I ‘upgraded’ to Version 3 (?) nothing worked. I had to de-install, re-install, and at the end (after that failed), remove all ZINIO related #$()@# from the registry. Such is the fun of applications!
I am telling people about Texterity. They are not as slick in the publicity department as Zinio (I’ve already complained about Zinio’s claim of “300 magazines” or some such bull*$(# when they appear to have less than half of that – oh don’t forget to subtract out a few dozen soft-core porn mags)… But anyway, Texterity at least seems to have the right philosophy about things. It works on my Mozilla browser, on my Safari, and on even on IE (OK Microsoft is getting a *little* better ;).
Anyway, check out the texterity exmple page lots of magazines and worth checking out.