Well, I'll tell you. We have a back issues sitting there, that we need to sell. If we don't need to print more new issues, we don't. And subscriptions ARE discounted from normal pricing, by the way...
And it's NOT usually cheaper to buy a single issue each time, even at the pre publication discount. I don't understand why people buy the issues individually (Normally costing $55.80) when you can buy a sub once a year for $55.00. But the publication pre-sale is only for a limited time and we mail those magazines out with the normal subscription issues, which makes it easier for us. Of course if you miss the discount period, you pay full newstand price.
At the end of the day however, we just thought it would be nice to give people a chance to get some back issues at a reduced price for Christmas...
Would you like us to put the price up instead?