I have months of issues of The Economist on my smart phone (legally) and yet I am not a subscriber — I use Zinio for access through my local public library.
Oddly, I sometimes feel vaguely guilty about this — but not very. I am a mid-level government employee and while there was a time when I could fit subscriptions to The New Yorker and The Economist plus a few bicycling magazine into the family budget, it feels too much a luxury when I can simply log onto the public library site and download, “for free” (by which I mean having paid in part with my local property taxes).
It is not obvious to me that publications such as yours feel much affinity for readers who come to you through such platforms, and I wonder just how many (or few) there are of us who do this regularly. I also wonder if it makes financial sense (for you, the publisher). I do recognized that I lose out on the ability to interact as a subscriber with your web site, but there are trade offs to everything.
