2. I looked at that example, but I can't read the stories. Why not? You need to be a subscriber to be able to use all the tools and access the daily e-edition. If you're already a print-paper subscriber, you can access it for free. If you're not, you can sign up for an electronic-only edition. More on that below.
3. What are some of those tools? You can click on any story, ad, or photo in the entire paper and call up a text box for easy reading. You can also view it up-close exactly as it appears in the printed newspaper. You can enlarge the text, you can e-mail the story to a friend, you can print it, you can click on a button to have the story read out loud to you. You can call up a gallery of all photos or all ads in the paper. You can save the entire document as a PDF to your computer so that you can read it offline, if you're going somewhere without Web access. You can "clip" stories for later reading. You can click on web addresses on advertisers' ads, and go straight to the website listed.
4. Is it just for today's paper? No. You can access a week's worth of papers at a time.
5. Is it searchable? Yes. Forgot to mention that. You can search by keyword for any of the editions on the site. If they're older than a week, you can search the Mercury's text archive, which goes back to 1996. That's a separate process.
4. So what's NOT in the e-edition? The preprinted insert advertisements that come with the print edition are not included in the e-edition.
5. How does this relate to TheMercury.com? TheMercury.com will continue to have a great deal of free content, including breaking news updates, video, interactive features such as message boards and blogs, and searchable databases, such as all the appraised property values for Riley and Pottawatomie counties, a database of all property-code violations listed by addresss and/or landlord name, and a searchable database of houses for sale and apartments for rent. What has changed is that we're now making available the full content of the newspaper to subscribers.
6. Why are you charging money for access to the newspaper content? The snippy answer is that the Mercury has been a daily newspaper for 100 years, and people have had to pay if they wanted access to its content for that entire century. But it is true that, since 1996, The Mercury has put some of its content online for free -- and it is true that the move to a full e-edition for paying subscribers represents putting some material behind a "pay wall" that might have been free before. (Please note that there is far more material in the e-edition that was simply never available before online.) Anyway, there are a couple of reasons for the move: First, we believe that the material we produce has a real value. It costs The Mercury upwards of $1 million per year to gather, edit and produce the kind of news report we believe the community needs. To give away that report online is simply bad business. Second, we believe that advertisers in the printed edition get a better value when their ads are also available to our online audience, which is considerable and growing. Third, we believe that the e-edition we are producing is a quality product that leverages the advantages of electronic publication with the traditional advantages of the printed paper.
7. How much does it cost?
--If you're a print-paper subscriber, it doesn't cost anything. You merely have to agree to sign up for our EZ Pay system, which allows us to withdraw your regular subscription payment from your checking account -- similar to the way you probably pay many bills already. Get started here.
--If you're not a subscriber, you can subscribe to the printed paper and get the e-edition for free. Or you can sign up for the e-edition exclusively with a simple process using a credit card. A subscription costs $12.89 per month, or less on a monthly basis if you agree to a longer term. That's the same price that in-town customers pay for a carrier-delivered subscription.
8. Why don't you charge less for an e-edition subscription? After all, doesn't it save you the cost of paper and delivery? Fair point, but, again, we believe the content has a real value -- a value pretty well established by the thousands of customers already paying at that rate. (Also, just for the record, most of our costs are not in the printing and delivery.)
9. What time will the e-edition be available every day? By 6 p.m. on weekdays and by 8 a.m. on Sundays.
10. Do I need any special software to access the e-edition? No. A regular Internet browser should do it. If you have trouble, let us know.
11. Why do I have to register before I can subscribe? We need you to establish a username and password, and we want to know a little about our audience.
12. I advertise in the printed paper. Is there an extra charge if I put my website address in the ad? Not at this time. Like that answer?
