Quote Originally Posted by Mr Smith View Post
Regarding sentence number 3, please can you offer a complete translation of it, as I have only managed to grasp the first part:

3. Дело в том, что у людей теперь большой выбор, но цены на газеты и журналы слишком высокие, и нужно много денег, чтобы выписать всё, что они выписывали раньше.
"The [crux of] the matter is that people now have a large selection [from which to choose], but prices for newspapers and magazines are too high, and [people] need a lot of money in order to subscribe to everything, to which they formerly used to subscribe."

Note carefully that in the original Russian , the "что" in "всё, что" is STRESSED (so it's pronounced shto, not shtuh, if you read the sentence out loud!).

And it's stressed because it's not functioning as the conjunction "that" (as in "He said that he would be there"); it's functioning as an interrogative pronoun, and can be translated as "what" or "which". Thus, "...всё, что..." can be translated as "everything which" or "all of the stuff." (Compare Что блестит -- не всё то золото, "[That] which glistens -- not all [of] that [is] gold.")

Quote Originally Posted by Mr Smith View Post
I don't understand what 'earlier' is meant to mean in this context. Who subscribed to what 'earlier, and WHY? Does this last bit insinuate that subscribing earlier was a less costly option? Was it the Petrovs who were subscribing earlier or people in general?
Taking your questions in order:

1. раньше in THIS context means "in the past; in former times; in the good old days" (as opposed to "a few hours ago" or "sooner than other people", which can be used to translate раньше in other contexts)
2. People in general formerly subscribed to lots of newspapers/magazines, back in the good old days when they cost less.
3. People in general, the Petrovs among them