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I received a notice in my inbox that Amazon was giving away Free subscriptions to the venerable genre magazine: Fantasy and Science Fiction. Intrigued, I clicked on over to the subscription page here, and it looked completely legit. However, you might notice a fair number of low rated reviews. Which I found odd, since it's brand new. Apparently, there is some confusion about this. Because what is offered for free is a limited portion of the magazine. It's the non-fiction content, and one of the stories from the issue. To get the full subscription, you pay 99 cents a month.
There's two things, however, that make this initial page a touch confusing. The first, is that when you click the link, you get the standard disclaimer that the first 14 days of a subscription are free, and you won't be charged until after that. Which is true. It's just that in the case of the free Digest edition of F&SF, you'll pay $0. Okay, that could have been implemented a touch better, because clearly enough people missed that to give negative reviews. The other touch of confusion is calling the abridged version of the magazine a Digest. F&SF is printed in Digest format, as opposed to full sized magazine format, and that could cause a bit of confusion. Not that it excuses one from reading the text there, but it's something they could have avoided by using a different word like :Sampler or Abridged edition. Frankly as such things go, it's a pretty small nit to pick. More troubling is the fact that I can't get my magazine content on my PC. This isn't unique to F&SF. This is a general magazine subscription issue. It's one of the things that frustrates me in regards to say, my subscription to Clarkesworld. It's not that I mind the subscription. But I can't read it on my PC. Of course for CW, I can just go to the website and read it on my PC anyway, so it's not the same frustration as my Asimov's subscription. But, it would be nice, if they could resolve this, because it's kind of a hole in the content system of buy it and read it on whichever device suits you.
All in all, it's a good thing to see more genre magazines showing up on the Kindle shores. I hope it's helping to keep these magazines going.
There's two things, however, that make this initial page a touch confusing. The first, is that when you click the link, you get the standard disclaimer that the first 14 days of a subscription are free, and you won't be charged until after that. Which is true. It's just that in the case of the free Digest edition of F&SF, you'll pay $0. Okay, that could have been implemented a touch better, because clearly enough people missed that to give negative reviews. The other touch of confusion is calling the abridged version of the magazine a Digest. F&SF is printed in Digest format, as opposed to full sized magazine format, and that could cause a bit of confusion. Not that it excuses one from reading the text there, but it's something they could have avoided by using a different word like :Sampler or Abridged edition. Frankly as such things go, it's a pretty small nit to pick. More troubling is the fact that I can't get my magazine content on my PC. This isn't unique to F&SF. This is a general magazine subscription issue. It's one of the things that frustrates me in regards to say, my subscription to Clarkesworld. It's not that I mind the subscription. But I can't read it on my PC. Of course for CW, I can just go to the website and read it on my PC anyway, so it's not the same frustration as my Asimov's subscription. But, it would be nice, if they could resolve this, because it's kind of a hole in the content system of buy it and read it on whichever device suits you.
All in all, it's a good thing to see more genre magazines showing up on the Kindle shores. I hope it's helping to keep these magazines going.
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