A personal reading issue is, in KeepAnalog's working definition, a finite selection of reading explicitly chosen by one person, organized as an editorial path, and accompanied by its provenance. It is not a legal term or a category accepted across the publishing industry.
The definition matters because “personal” can be confused with algorithmic recommendation, ownership of the content, or permission to reproduce it. Here it means something else: the person decides what to propose for inclusion and approves the selection and order of a manifest before purchase.
This guide is part of A guide to saving articles and reading them later, which organizes every guide on the topic.
Four parts of the definition
1. An explicit selection
The starting point is not a feed predicting what should be interesting. It is a set of public URLs supplied by the person. In V1, the detected resource must be HTML or PDF. That identifies a technical input type; it does not establish that the work is eligible for print.
2. A finite path
A folder records items. An issue adds decisions about scope and sequence: what belongs now, what remains outside, and where the path ends. A month organizes CurrentIssue, but it does not trigger an automatic charge or print run.
Format and page count come from the current catalog. When one of those values is missing, you can keep adding reading, but the system does not close the manifest or enable purchase.
3. Visible provenance
Changing format should not erase where a piece came from. Author, title, URL, date, and version are different facts, and not all of them are always available. The rule is to preserve what can be verified and not fill a gap with an assumption.
The W3C PROV standard provides a vocabulary for entities, activities, agents, and relationships such as derivation and attribution. KeepAnalog does not need to expose that ontology to a reader in order to adopt the principle: an issue is derived from specific sources and should retain an understandable path back to them.
4. Review before production
The editable selection is CurrentIssue. When the person closes it, KeepAnalog creates an immutable EditionManifest with a checksum. Approval happens before checkout. Settled payment precedes human cover work, rendering, preflight, and internal QA approval. In V1, the person does not approve the cover or final PDF.
That sequence keeps “personal” from becoming a synonym for an improvised process. The selection belongs to one person; production retains separate gates.
Personal does not make the content one's property
A public URL makes a page accessible; it does not automatically grant a right to reproduce its expression. Argentina's Law 11.723 recognizes authors' powers that include publishing, adapting, and reproducing a work. The law also contains specific limits and exceptions, but applying them requires context and cannot be replaced by the rule “it was on the internet.”
A personal issue therefore requires two separate decisions:
- Editorial decision: this reading belongs in the selection the person wants to review.
- Rights decision: there is a valid basis for the particular proposed use.
The first decision never resolves the second. This explanation describes a product boundary and is not legal advice.
What a personal reading issue does not promise
The definition does not claim that an algorithm understands a person better, that paper improves memory, that every link can be printed, or that the product is available worldwide. Argentina is the initial market; localizing the site in English does not change its currency, jurisdiction, or availability.
It is not identical to a traditional magazine made for a general audience, either. The selection begins with one person. It may borrow sequence from a magazine, closeness from a notebook, and attention to provenance from an archive without becoming any one of those objects.
The shortest version of the definition is: explicit choice, a finite path, verifiable provenance, and gated production. Without one of those elements, “personal” risks becoming a vague promise.
Sources
- W3C, PROV-O: The PROV Ontology, a recommendation for representing and exchanging provenance.
- Argentina, Law 11.723 - Legal regime for intellectual property, updated official text, re-read on October 6, 2026 (article 2 lists the author's powers).
- Product facts: KeepAnalog's product plan and Argentina catalog (eligible HTML/PDF links, a manifest approved before checkout, no automatic charging or printing).
For now, KeepAnalog's pilot is in Argentina only, with no delivery in the United States.