Are digital magazine subscriptions the future?

I came across this post on the io9 blog, and actually went "SQUEE!" when I read the announcement. It seems that the seminal fiction magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, is going digital. It'll be available for the Kindle, with both a stripped down free option, or a subscription to all of the content for just $12 a year. Yes, that's six issues for $12. By comparison, the print version of the same subscription is $35.97. In the UK, it'll cost 99p a month for the digital subscription.



To be honest, I think digital subscriptions are the way forward. As most people know, I'm in the process of packing things up ahead of a big move, and the storage of magazines is a real headache for me. Yes, it's nice to be able to flick through things but once I've read it, what do I do with it? I don't always want to recycle the issue in case I want to refer to it in future but there comes a point where you're just storing an awful lot of paper. To me, digital solves the problem. I can access an archive whenever I want, but I don't have to worry about finding the space to store physical copies.



Besides, you can't argue with a price like that - effectively £1.98 an issue! I used to subscribe to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction a while back but I didn't renew precisely because I was paying a lot of money for something I couldn't find the room to store. Now I can have it delivered to my Kindle app on either my Netbook or smartphone, I might just subscribe again. It stands to reason that if I can be swayed, so can others, and getting people to read short story magazines can only benefit writers.



What do you think? Do you think digital subscriptions will help bring people back to short fiction?