A reader sent me his automatic renewal notice from the New Yorker:
Thank you for subscribing to The New Yorker. Your current subscription term expires in the month of November 2018. I want to remind you that, as promised, your subscription will be automatically renewed for another 1 year and your card will be charged at the rate of $149.99*.
The asterisk is plus any applicable sales tax.
The reader’s reaction to the $149.99 a year subscription price: “I opted out of automatic renewal so the subscription I have for $99 will just end in November. I wonder if they offer different renewal prices based on the subscriber’s zip code. One person on your web page said she got a good renewal deal by calling and I might try that.”
The New Yorker’s entire subscription effort now is based on frequent pitches offering 12 issues for $12 as a great deal or 12 issues for $6 as a special half-price deal. But it offers no clue as to how much the one-year sub will cost after 12 weeks. I’ve heard $99 a year, $119.99 a year, and now $149.99 a year. My sub now has lapsed—it was a $99.99 a year deal that included my subscription plus a gift subscription—in effect $50 a year for each sub.
Given the precarious state of print magazines—New York magazine appears to be for sale—and given that Conde Nast, after the death of magazine fan Si Newhouse, is selling Brides, W, and Golf Digest and has replaced the high-priced editors at Vanity Fair and Glamour, you might guess that the New Yorker is trying to make its balance sheet look better to potential buyers by milking its current subscribers. $149.99 a year? Will enough of you ignore the automatic renewal you signed up for so we can get away with that?
Probably the best outcome for the New Yorker is finding a buyer as rich as Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, who bought the Atlantic from David Bradley and seems more concerned with maintaining the Atlantic’s prestigious place in American letters than in the bottom line.
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