Free IT magazines
Question for readers: am I being oversensitive on your behalf or do they have a damned gall? There is a company that wants to pay me advertising revenues to promote free magazines and white papers to you. OK fine, great idea. Except the publishers reserve the right NOT to send them to you if you don't meet the criteria. So if your company is the wrong size or your title doesn't fit then you don't get the subscription.
Now I think that if someone expresses an interest in a free magazine they have very effectively pre-qualified themselves.
And I would hate to have one of my esteemed readers knocked back on something I suggested.
I don't doubt that the magazines have to have some decent content in them in order to keep repeat eyes on pages - heck some of them look pretty good - but at the end of the day this isn't The Economist or even ComputerWorld. I don't see that you have to earn the right to ask for it. In fact I think maketeers have a damn gall picking and choosing who they send an advertiser-funded magazine to.
Or do you folk have thicker skin and couldn't give a toss if they turn you down for their marketing material?
Please reply with a comment and let me know what you think.
If you aren't so sensitive, the internationally-available materials are here and all you North Americans can look here at a much broader selection.
Made in New Zealand 
Comments
Not Regulations.. Economics
This is all about economics, not regulations... These publishers make their money from the advertisers in the publications. They promise these advertisers very particular demographics in order to be able to charge premium rates for the advertising. Because of this, they have to be sure that they're actually achieving these demographics. It's usually things like decision making authority and budget in the area that the magazine targets.
I don't think anyone that is smart enough to be reading your blog is going to be dumb enough to blame you when they don't meet the criteria. At least I hope not.
what is a demographic anymore?
yes I understand that, but what is a demographic anymore? if I live in some place called Noo Zealand and I don't work for a 500+ employee company, I'm not worth providing IT advertising material to? Nobody knows what anyone is into any more. "The World is Flat". If I have expressed enough interest to want to read their mag then i think that is a pretty good prequalification of me as a prospect.
The problem this gives me is that i cannot check these things out to see if they are worth recommending to those readers geographically lucky enough to be able to order them.
Anyway the nice people at BMC posted me copies of their excellent Viewpoint mag (three editions) without question. Some are sensible about it :-D
I wouldnt mind some BMC mag's
Would you mind letting me know who to contact to get Viewpoint mag's? I would like to read those.
BMC Viewpoint mags
Right here. Haven't read them yet. They look like snackfood, which is to say light, in small bites, and some of it looks tasty.
Regulations
I think there are government regulations having to do with free distribution and the like that affect this. Not that I agree with those regulations but it goes along with the required distribution numbers that magazine publishers have to print periodically. Something along the lines of publishers are limited in the number of free issues are distributed vs. paid subscriptions, unless they have specific qualifications for receiving them.
Why not?
Hello Skep:
About the "targeted subscriptions", it's not a problem about the IT Skeptic but a problem of the magazines and papers publishers, so I think we all are adult enough to not to blame the messenger.
About the success of this initiative, I think that it will depend on how you do the recommendations. For example, if you provide us with a catalog of magazines and papers like what appears here ( http://itskeptic.tradepub.com/?pt=cat&page=Info ) I think it will have little impact and few bucks are going to come.
But if you read some of those papers and recommends them based in your smart opinion, I'm sure that you will have a really big impact there.
Good luck!
Antonio