Subscriptions
Pelagia is funded by readers. Subscriptions cover roughly sixty-two percent of the journal's annual costs and the remainder comes from the Mosharrafa Foundation grant and the desk's limited consultancy work, as described in the funding note. We do not run paid placements, do not accept hosted reviews, do not earn commission on any booking, and do not auto-renew. When your year ends, the file delivery stops; you can re-subscribe whenever it suits you.
€12/year
For someone planning a single Nile cruise this season and who wants the briefings to plan it well.
€38/year
For the traveller comparing several specific vessels, or for someone planning a second or third cruise after a first.
€98/year
For institutions — university libraries, foreign embassies, travel reference desks, journalists writing on Egyptian river travel.
How it works
Once a subscription is placed, the administrator Mona Selim sends a confirmation email within two working days, with the subscription identifier and the access link for the reader archive. From the first of the following month, the monthly issue arrives on the first Sunday of every month, sent from the editorial email address on a fixed list. There is no marketing email, no engagement survey, no birthday discount and no third-party newsletter cross-promotion. The administrator can be reached by email or on Tuesday and Friday telephone hours for any subscription matter.
Payment is taken once a year by direct bank transfer in euros or by PayPal at the reader's option; institutional readers are invoiced and may pay by SWIFT transfer. The bank details and the IBAN are confirmed on the order email — we never send them unsolicited. A subscription is effective the day the payment clears the journal's account; the reader is notified by email when this happens.
The subscription year is calendar based — a subscription placed at any point in the year covers twelve months from that date and ends on the day before the anniversary. Three weeks before the end of the year the administrator sends a single courtesy reminder. The reader chooses whether to renew. There is no automatic renewal under any circumstances; we do not retain payment instruments. If the reader does not renew, the archive access closes on the anniversary date and no further emails are sent.
The seven route briefings — including the long-form pieces on the corridor, the boat-class comparison, the seasonal calendar, the Lake Nasser extension, the Abu Simbel day file, the Edfu-Kom Ombo stop notes and the budget guide — are free to read on the public pages of this site without a subscription. The monthly file is the subscription product; the briefings are the journal's open output. The methodology document is also free and is updated each March.
We do not charge a fee for: answering a reader question by email at the contact form, sending a sample back-issue once per reader, accepting a reader-mail letter for the monthly section, correcting a fact we have published in error, or providing a journalist with a transcript of a captain interview that has already been published. We do charge for: institutional library access beyond eight readers, custom research outside the gazetteer's scope, and the discounted printed annual digest.
Because the Reader tier is intended for the traveller who needs the journal for one season only and who would otherwise not subscribe at all. Twelve euros covers our marginal cost of distribution; the tier exists for accessibility, not margin. The journal is sustained by the Logbook subscribers and the institutional Captain tier.
Because monthly billing would require a payment-processor account that retains the reader's card details, and we have chosen not to operate that. Annual transfer keeps the administrative overhead low and keeps the reader's payment data with the reader's bank, not with us.
Yes. At the contact form, select "gift subscription" in the topic dropdown and tell us the recipient's name, postal address and the date you would like the welcome email delivered. We will hold the gift until that date and send the welcome under a brief covering note crediting you as the gifting reader, unless you ask us not to.
Nothing changes. The journal is sent by email; the archive is accessed by a per-reader link that does not depend on country. If you would like the postal back-issue redirected to a new address, send the new address to the administrator and we will update the record.
No standing discounts. Students at any university may write to the desk for a Reader tier at €6 (half price); we ask for the student identifier number, no document is uploaded. Journalists writing on river travel may write to the desk for a complimentary Logbook tier covering the duration of one specific piece; this is granted on request and is logged in the annual transparency note.
You can write to the administrator and ask to cancel at any time. We refund the un-elapsed months pro rata, rounded to the nearest whole month, in the original payment currency, by reverse bank transfer or by PayPal at your preference. The refund is processed within ten working days. Access to the reader archive ends on the date of cancellation.
The journal is a digital publication supplied from Egypt to readers worldwide. We do not charge EU VAT at point of sale because we do not exceed the EU low-value supply threshold for digital services and we are not registered in any EU member state for VAT collection. Egyptian VAT is included in the displayed price. Readers in jurisdictions that levy a local import tax on digital subscriptions are responsible for that local tax; we have not had to address this in eight years of operation.
The licence covers up to eight individual readers at one institution — typically a reference desk staff and the heads of department who use it. Each named reader gets a separate archive access link. For institutions above eight readers we issue a custom licence at a custom price; write to the desk with the proposed reader count.
The Reader tier has been €12 since 2021 (€8 before that). The Logbook tier has been €38 since the journal launched. The Captain tier was introduced in late 2020 at €98 and has not changed. We do not increase prices for existing subscribers within a paid year; any future increase would apply only to new subscriptions and renewals from the announcement date.
Questions on subscription handling, billing, refunds or institutional licences should go to the administrator at the contact form. Reader questions on river travel itself should go to the editors at the same form; mark the topic accordingly.
Choose a tier above and complete the contact form. Confirmation arrives within two working days. The first monthly file lands on the next first Sunday after payment clears.
Start with Logbook Browse files first