Editorial

As you may already have noticed else where in this issue, the price of each double-sided Antic Monthly Disk has been slashed almost in half-from $10.95 to $5.85. And the newsstand price of the monthly magazine-plus-disk Action Edition was lowered by three dollars -- now $9.95 instead of $12.95.

At the same time, we have been forced to raise the North American newsstand price of Antic 45 cents in order to bring income more in line with current costs. When you compare a $3/$5 disk-price reduction against a 45-cent magazine increase, we think the overall change seems pretty fair.

Also, Antic Publishing is not raising any subscription prices at this time. And we presently have no plans for any subscription price boosts. This means it's a better deal than ever to subscribe to your favorite Atari magazine--only $28 for 12 Antic issues in the U.S. And for a short time only, a special offer of $79.95 for the Action Edition of 12 disk issues.

Our primary purpose in drastically cutting prices of the double-sided Antic Monthly Disk is to make it a lot easier for Atari "power users" to build up a large library of useful and valuable software at a lower cost than ever before possible! This magazine's surveys during the past two years have shown clearly that Antic readers now consist almost equally of programming hobbyists, and power users who are not heavily interested in writing their own software.

Typing in magazine listings is an excellent way to learn programming. But it cannot be an especially gratifying experience for people who just want to use the software, rather than figuring out exactly how it works. Now for less than $6 a month, you can get a disk that immediately delivers every program in the issue--plus Xtended Disk Bonus software that's too big and powerful to be printed as a type-in listing.

The Xtended Disk Bonus is a new feature starting with this issue of Antic. Every month we will publish at least one disk-only program. Whenever possible, this Xtended Bonus will be a listing that is too big or too complicated to have been accepted as a type-in listing. This month's Xtended Bonus is a full-featured 8-bit word processor, written in speedy machine language by professional programmers. Next month, the disk bonus will a professionally programmed 8-bit database. In future months, there will also be Xtended Disk Bonuses for the ST.

Because readers don't need to type in the Xtended Disk Bonus, we will bring you big, ambitious application software written in any language that has a "stand-alone" option. (Standalone programs can be used by readers who don't own the actual language.) In the past, Antic has been unable to accept many otherwise excellent programs simply because they were too big to print, too hard to type, or written in a language that most readers couldn't use.

But now the Xtended Disk Bonus feature lets us bring you a new treasure trove of powerful software at unheard-of savings--a double sided disk with close to 176K of Atari programs per month for less than $6. We can hardly believe it ourselves... By the way, Antic would like to thank the thousands of readers who have been voting for their favorite features in recent issues by circling numbers on the monthly reader servicel card. At this writing, your first ballots are just being tabulated.

Nat Friedland
Editor, Antic