Subscribing to the Idea of Magazines on Floppy Disks

They are magazines that are virtually weightless, yet the pictures and drawings inside can dance. Or disappear at the push of a button.

Space-conscious consumers might also pop a hundred or so of these magazines published on floppy disks into a briefcase, although it might take a month to read all their contents.

But despite such less-is-more wonders, don’t expect your weekly issue of Time to be sold on a floppy just yet.

There has indeed been new life in the computerized magazine world lately with the addition of two new disk magazines sporting advanced technologies: Big Blue Disk and PC Life, both for IBM machines or their clones.

Yet, according to many observers, the basic problems remain. People still look like Max Headroom’s poorer relatives when their pictures appear in disk magazines. Perhaps more importantly, it’s hard to curl up with a magazine that must be read on a computer.

Reading on the Screen

“One area where the technology still falls short is making it enjoyable to read things off the screen,” commented James Fallows, the Washington editor of the Atlantic who writes occasionally on high-tech matters. “I like writing on a computer, but I hate reading something of any length on one.”

Though some insist that periodicals on floppy disks could be the magazines of the future, Fallows and most others in the publishing industry are not yet convinced. As Fallows put it, “To me, computers still seem more likely to affect the writing and production of magazines than the reading of them.”

Whether or not magazines on floppy disks become the magazines of the future, they are already the magazines of the present for several thousand computer screen readers. And these people pay relatively dearly, spending anywhere from $7.95 to $14.95 per individual issue, slightly less by subscription.

The most advanced of these “magazettes” (a combination of the words magazine and diskettes, techno-speak for floppy disks) offer animated graphics and working samples of sophisticated software programs. In addition, they contain standard text features typically found in paper magazines about computers.

Magazines on floppies, all of which currently cater to readers interested in computers, first appeared in 1981 with Softdisk Magazette, for Apple users. Today, it’s estimated there are more than a dozen such magazines on the market, with readership growing as more people acquire computers.

But the medium appeared to be facing a most uncertain future for several years. According to Al Vekovius, a managing partner at Softdisk Inc., at least one-third of all the disk magazines ever published have failed.

In the early days, said Vekovius, both subscribers and magazines “dropped like flies.” He suspects it was mainly because the cost of unprogrammed floppy disks was high: $5 wholesale. To cut costs, Vekovius recalled, subscribers had to send in old disks each month to have them reprogrammed with new issues; this continued until the price of disks dropped below the price of first-class mail.

Other initial problems faced by Vekovius and his partners Jim and Judi Mangham included disinterest from advertisers and software distributors.

Those circumstances improved and then last year, the field was revitalized with the debut of Big Blue Disk, published monthly by Softdisk Inc. in Shreveport, La., and PC Life, published bimonthly by Microstar Graphics in Syracuse, N.Y.

The two have similar circulations: about 15,000 readers. But PC Life seems to have won the hearts of critics. They’ve praised PC Life with such acclamations as “the first disk magazine worthy of the name,” “graphically it’s a beauty” and “The best disk magazine I’ve ever seen!”

Even so, reading a magazine on computer is still slow and tedious. Before PC Life can be read, for instance, a computer and a graphics board must be set up. Then the disk must be inserted and commands typed in before pictures and type show up. Because of the slowness of most machines, turning a page takes several seconds. And it may take 15 seconds or so for the graphics to stop cavorting and the reader to see what a page finally looks like.

According to Mike Sullivan, PC Life’s editor/publisher, such speeds are improving with recent advances in hardware. But even at the turtle pace, Sullivan is excited about the possibilities of this technology.

He’s particularly pleased that his magazine allows readers to use and see for themselves how various software products actually work. And he takes pride in offering ready-to-run computer programs. “A lot of computer magazines give you free utilities (programs),” he said, “but then you have to type the whole program onto a disk, whereas we give you the program already on a disk.”

Enough Good Stuff

While both Sullivan and Vekovius claim their magazines provide high-quality programs, not everyone agrees. “The problem is that they (magazines on disk) are coming out monthly or bimonthly and there may not be enough good stuff (programs) to warrant that frequency,” suggested Steve Ditlea, who has covered the personal computer field for general interest and computer publications since 1968.

Ditlea, who also served as editor of “Digital Deli: The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of Computer Lore, Cultures, Lifestyles and Fancy” (Workman, 1984), considers magazines on floppy disks “an idea whose time has gone.”

John C. Dvorak, the columnist for PC Magazine who called PC Life, “the best disk magazine I’ve ever seen,” agrees. “It’s unfortunate that they (disk magazines) call themselves magazines, because they invite the unfair comparison. They do have the advantage of being able to provide the user with programs for the computer, but unfortunately there have been very few useful programs I’ve ever seen on these disks. . . . If it was great software that could make somebody a lot of money, I guarantee they wouldn’t be giving it away in a magazine disk. . . . Expecting greatness from a magazine on diskette is like expecting gourmet food on an airplane. The limitations are too extreme.”

As for the popularity the magazines have enjoyed, Dvorak attributes it to the fact that “technology has peculiar appeals to certain segments of society. It’s sort of a technology-for-the-sake-of-technology mentality.”

But Dvorak, Ditlea and others are excited about the possibility of magazines appearing on another type of disk: CD-ROM (computer disk, read only memory), which employs the same compact disks used for high-quality audio recordings. CD-ROM, however, uses compact disks for printed data storage as well as the storage of sound data.

“The so-called disk magazines are going nowhere, but we’re looking forward to CD-ROM because on that we could put a whole year’s worth of Macworld (magazine), on one disk,” said David Bunnell, editor-in-chief of the firm that publishes Macworld, PC World and Publish!, all print magazines for computer users.

“One idea that we have is to put a whole year of PC World or Macworld on a CD-ROM disk with enhancements. It’s like a new medium. If you just take something that’s already in print and put it on a disk, that’s not too useful. But with CD-ROM you have virtually unlimited memory. You could have an article let’s say about (computer) monitors. You could attach a bibliography or footnotes. If we published a list of all the monitors we know about in our magazine, it would take 25 pages. But on CD-ROM, we could do that easily. You could also have author’s notes.”

Will Publish on CD-ROM

Within two or three months, Bunnell added, his company will publish a copy of PC World on CD-ROM as an experiment. He’s convinced the whole notion of transferring traditionally printed materials to the computer will “work much better when we have CD-ROM. There will be CD-ROM drives both for the Macintosh and the (IBM) PC that will be readily available by the end of 1987.”

Peter A. McWilliams, author of “The Personal Computer Book” (Doubleday, 1980) and editor/publisher of the McWilliams Letter, also feels magazines on floppy disks may soon be replaced by magazines on CD-ROM.

He points out that one of the most intriguing uses of CD-ROM for any type of reader is what can accompany any text. “You could have the entire Oxford English dictionary on line,” he said, explaining that if someone didn’t know the meaning of a word, he could simply put the cursor on it and access the definition.

Ed Kelly, the editorial manager for CD-ROM and related products for Microsoft Corp. (a pioneer in CD-ROM technology), predicts that magazines and book companies will see CD-ROM as “a logical extension of their paper-based products.”

Kelly notes that on just 20% of a single CD-ROM disk, “you can get an entire 20-volume encyclopedia. And you already have CD-ROM products available. They’re for financial data bases and other specialized data bases . . . but the prices are coming down. I see a very bright future for magazines on CD-ROM.”

William Gorog, president of the Magazine Publisher Assn., isn’t so sure. Gorog, who refers to himself as the “grandfather” of Lexis/Nexis, a leading retrieval system for magazines and legal data, believes that floppy and CD-ROM disk technologies may well serve people who need to do research.

But he doubts general interest readers will be tantalized by the new technologies. “The magic of magazines has as much to do with the presentation media--the glossy paper, the four-color pictures--as anything else. People like to curl up in a corner with a magazine. They don’t like to curl up in a corner with a computer.”

Gorog has heard of no general interest periodicals seriously considering offering readers magazines on any type of disks. As he put it, “People still buy magazines because there’s a pretty picture on the cover and they want to read it.”