Considering the circulation boost newspapers have gotten this year from their e-paper offerings, the New York Times hopes to attract some more new subs through a cross-promotion effort with Samsung. According to the NYT’s pitch, if you order a one-year subscription to Times Reader 2.0, the company will give you a $100 discount toward the purchase of a Samsung Go netbook, the lightweight computer that retails for under $400.
A subscription to the Times Reader 2.0 costs $3.45 a week, or just under $180 a year, an NYT rep confirmed. The NYT first released the e-paper, which lets subscribers peruse articles on their computers in a format resembling the print edition, about two-and-a-half years ago. The 2.0 version came out last May on the Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) AIR and Flash Platform.
As part of the promotion, new Times Reader subscribers who take the offer will get a Samsung Go with the e-paper software pre-installed on the computer. Of course, there are some small catches. The discount can only be redeemed at J&R Music and Computer World stores. The offer expires in March and existing subs can’t take advantage.
The addition of Times Reader subscribers counts towards the NYT’s paid circ, as tallied by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, and it could make Q4 and Q1 results look a little better (or less worse). In April, the ABC set new rules that allowed individuals who got bundled print/e-paper subscription deals to be counted twice. Also, before the April change, ABC only counted e-papers that charged at least 25 percent of the print version charged. In between April and September of this year, the NYT recorded 53,000 subs, more than double the 24,000 it had in during the same period in

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