If you’re interested in how magazines are approaching the e-reader market (iPad for now) this exchange between Josh Quittner, editor at large for digital development at Time Inc and Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine is pretty interesting. Jarvis was critical of the Time app (“I think the TIME Magazine app is the most sinful piece of shit ever“) for how walled in it was. Quittner responds on The Third Screen:
Google is a great business—for Google. We all know that it has made Google an enormous amount of money for itself and its shareholders. And I have no doubt that Google ads and the attendant freeconomy keep bloggers like you in cigs and the occasional bottle of Midnight Train. The notion, however, that ALL media must be free, and linkable, and remixable and open not only doesn’t work for large, news-gathering organizations, it’s turning out that it’s not even what all readers/consumers want. There is no single recipe for success in the media business, professor.
In the comments someone asks Quittner about the price which in my mind is something that needs to be ironed out quickly in the early stages of e-readers.
I understand the point of charging what the market will bear but I do have other entertainment options and the magazines that get pricing right will get my long term loyalty.
To which he responds:
Like you, however, I made an erroneous assumption: That the incremental cost of making a digital copy was zero. In fact, it’s not. A typical issue of Time is about 80 megabytes, which costs a lot more to deliver than you’d think. (I’m told, in fact, that it’s weirdly close to how much it costs us to deliver an issue of a magazine.)
On the pricing front I was surprised to see National Geographic going for fifteen bucks because I know they’ve got a lot of interactive stuff baked into their Zinio offering. It turns out all the Zinio magazines are priced the same as the print subscriptions (Esquire is eight bucks for a year) and that the newest release of their app has solved a ton of issues and is running quite well now. Most of the magazines seem to be about a buck and issue which is not bad even if they are only scanning the pages.
Based on the number of titles at Zinio it will be difficult for other magazines to charge more for their electronic version. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
21 Comments
very nice. their offers are very impressive… the ipad app is a bit… well… it could be a bit more userfriendly, but I think for these prices I’ll test it a bit, and maybe they’ll update the usability a bit also.
thanks for the tip.
teymur.
I recently installed Zinio and found it to be a pretty sweet option to traditional mags. Pricing, well while a bit high…so is the price for the iPad! If you bought into the iPad cost then my guess is you won’t flinch on the digital pricing. In the end, I dig being able to browse the mag full color with the iPad and be able to lose all the paper clutter in my office and family room.
One thing I’d be curious about is the “archive” function of the program. While they allow for “unlimited” downloads, I would doubt this would continue due to bandwidth etc. Who knows maybe they will. I’d love to be able to get my hands on some of the issues I’ve lost in the past of my favorite rags.
I’ve said it before, I doubt the current big publishers of print magazines will emerge as the big winners in the electronic market. They all seem fixated on extending the market for their existing magazines to a new medium rather than taking a blank slate (or maybe blank pad) approach to a new market opportunity.
I am not convinced that subscriptions to serial publications will be the preferred way people acquire electronic content. People will be more drawn to individual topics. Topics might consist of a bundle of related articles, images, video, etc. But one-time purchases will be more appealing than 12-month subscriptions. If that assumption is true, it creates some very interesting opportunities for new ventures and collaborative efforts which could pose a significant challenge to established publishers.
The winners in the electronic market will be the ones that figure out how to package content in appealing ways. It seems the big publishers seem more focused on cost reduction for existing products. Of course it is going to cost money to distribute electronic content. Duh. And it’s going to cost money to create it, edit it, design it, format it and store it.
There are still some huge issues with respect to formatting, pricing and distribution that pose significant barriers to the success of the electronic content market. Personally I think the lackluster iPad confused the market more than solidified it around a gravity platform (a la the IBM PC in 1981). Apple isn’t handling this well. They are better at designing cool hardware and systems software than market making. And this market will never succeed if it is controlled by a single distributor.
The next 12-18 months should be interesting.
Obviously it’s early in the game but magazines on the iPad are a mess right now. Ive been buying them up to see the experience each magazine app gives the user and they are all over the board… From terrible to not-so-terrible-but-not-great.
As for pricing, id like to see a real world pricing model. I don’t mind paying for content (I’m over 30 so maybe that’s why). For something like an e-magazine (I hate that name) I don’t mind paying more on for a single issue than I do per-issue with a subscription (which nobody is offering yet). And as Tom suggested a per-article price would be great as well. Magazines are often like albums… One great article mixed with a bunch of crap.
And let’s not even get into magazines as apps on the iPad… Right now, that’s what they are to Apple… Apps… So, don’t go looking for Playboy any time soon (is playboy porn?) or a lot of fashion mags that often have a lot of nudity. And even when a magazine is accepted into the iTunes store, good luck finding it. Right now the only really way to fine them is to do a search for “magazine” and wade through all the results (not all of which are actual magazines). Should Penthouse be able to have an iPad app? Will Apple make exceptions to their app approval process for magazines?
The only positive way to look at all this at the moment is to say it is VERY VERY early in the game… Dark ages early.
I wrote about this on the subject a while back:
http://jeffsingerphotography.com/blog/2010/04/16/ipad-the-future-of-everything-everywhere/
Jeff
-written (somewhat painfully) on my iPad.
Broadband became widely available in 2001*, so magazine publishers have had roughly nine years to figure this out for the desktop computer (they haven’t). What makes anyone think they’ll get it going on something like the iPad in less than three years?
The iPhone didn’t get it’s rampant success with apps until several years in too, two or three if I’m not mistaken. Being an early adopter, I looked forward to the day when Apple opened the phone to apps. Before then it was just a fancy phone with a few widgets, only a couple of them really useful (maps, email).
The iPad is going to take the same course. Jeff Singer is right. We are in the early, early, early stages of a possible digital revolution. What is most curious is who will get it right first. Then the rest will follow. Big money to be made for the leader, as usual.
*[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Broadband_Internet_become_widely_available
@Chris Schultz,
I see young people buying these iPads. And young people think everything is free. Cannot imagine in my wildest dreams them forking over their VISA number for an electronic version of a catalogue, er, I mean magazine. I just think, that they think, if they’re looking at it on a computer screen, it ought to be free.
As to who is going to make “the big money”, I’d say that would only be Apple, in taking a third of all the App money.
Human Nature is at work here, and Human Nature says: Everything on the web is free. Period.
@Reader, Maybe your nature prevents you from buying content, but mine does not. I am willing to pay for quality content, period. I suspect most people are, and Apple has made it easy for them to do this. Now publishers just need to fulfill their end of the bargain.
@Reader,
It’s a matter of cost vs. convenience. Or, time vs. money. Very young people might have the time to say, pirate music. It takes awhile to find things though (esp. if its obscure), and download via torrent is relatively slow. But as they get jobs and grow older, they have more money than time. So they purchase through iTunes, because that $10 is inexpensive for the 5 minutes it will take to acquire.
The trick is to make it easy enough to acquire, and cheap enough to not have second thoughts. There will always be some people with more time than money, and those people will not want to pay. Fine. Aim your efforts at the huge part of the market that is willing to pay a few dollars for ease of access.
I don’t think this will come from the current big media companies. They’re too bloated, slow and have an army of lawyers, accountants and control freak managers. They will all design their own incompatible delivery systems, and they will suck and few will buy into them.
Apple was really successful with iTunes despite being outside the music industry. That’s why it worked. Easy and cheap too.
Not so sure about publications though, especially as Apple are becoming increasingly controlling, and apparently puritanical.
@craig,
Excellent point on the more time vs. money, there is a market for quality news and editorials instead of hack bloggers. The problem is that the big firms will get subscriptions while the rest will depend on advertising revenues. Thus we are back in T.V. land where one channel hosts various content.
What we need is the converge of T.V. and Internet to occur so that print and video has a platform, with a cheaper iPad, and HDMI Internet cable service it will happen.
With one exception, I have a hard time imagining people spending money for electronic subscriptions. With so much content for free on the web, why would people pay for a magazine? Especially when you can get a physical printed copy, in your hands, at the same price.
It seems that publications should bite the bullet on digital subscriptions rates just to boost their “visitors/clicks per page” to boast to their advertisers about.
Now the exception, if the digital version offered more content and no advertising, I might be inclined to pay for one. However, I just don’t see that being economically for publishers.
This pretty much sums up the whole “iPad will save publishing” bullshit:
http://9to5mac.com/app_average_gq
It’s arrogant to think people would pay full price for e-magazines after already shelling out $500 for the device. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Maybe if Conde actually understood new media and didn’t think of it in terms of issues or a monthly production cycle they would actually be able to make something relevant, but they’re still stuck in the paper/press mindset and probably won’t move on any time soon.
It’s not just publishing either – I have an iPad and love it, but really resent that app developers are expecting people to pay $10 for the iPad version of apps which are free in their iPhone version. Hopefully this will correct itself soon.
There are a couple of things I don’t understand.
One if Natgeo can create a digital version of the magazine for Zinio why isn’t their dot com the same? I went to several of the big player websites and it is nauseating. It is like be run through the narrow confines of the supermarket checkout where you are inundated with the globe, star, national enquirer, people, gum, candy, movies whose run at the theater was dismal. The want you to think it is convenient to have all the neat little goodies when in actuality it a disgusting affront to the consumer.
Two why do it on the front page of the dot com site versus the appeal of the magazine. That is why people wanted the subscription in the first place. The originals were filled with content and small percentage of advertisements. Now day we are given a magazine that is sixty percent advertiser content versus true content that the consumer wants.
Why do double the work? Create the platform that is universal, it may take a bit more on the front end and after it is done, the consumer will hopefull more willing to bite. Let your content be king so you stand out.
Gee, I wonder who has to do that to get work?
So much for saying there are costs to publishing issues on the iPad. GQ VP of publishing:
“This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage,” GQ vice president of publishing Pete Hunsinger told reporters. “Everything is profit…”
http://www.cultofmac.com/conde-nast-365-ipad-gq-sold-so-far/
They are also saying they’ve only sold 365 issues so far, but that was for the December 2009 issue.
one problems with this is – subscriptions in the u.s. are cheap! I would totally pay 15 Dollar for 12 issues of National Geographic – of the iPad version – if I have to pay the newsstands price of (guessing here, we don’t have the same mag over here) 4 – 5 Dollars per issue.
In my opinion, the iPad will not solve any problem of the magazine industry, but it will give them one more piece to their cake. One more thing they can offer and stand out, one more product.
And since I said above – I’d get the digi subscription, I’d prefer the paper version actually, but would love to have a digi version on top. BUT, if they had special content, again, I’d be highly interested.
@christian,
I subscribed to the paper version of National Geographic for my kids for $12. 20% more for a magazine you can’t cut up and paste onto a piece of paper? Yikes.
@dude, as I said, the subscription for the paper version are cheap in the u.s.
Anything with a smaller circulation, special interest or higher quality will cost you in most countries in europe the same as the newsstands price or most of the times 10% less, maybe 20. There’s not even such a thing close to like 1Dollar for an issue for Playboy if you subscribe.
It will work eventually when they adopt a model like youtube and flickr. For the majority it’s free. If you want a premium account, you pay. The small amount of premium accounts make up for the free and advertisers pick up the profit. It’s being going on for awhile. Nothing will happen significantly for a few years, as has been stated already.
Nothing will save the magazines per se, but they aren’t going to go away for sure, iPad or no.
[…] APhotoEditor talks about “electronic magazines“ var addthis_language = […]
Media Bistro (mediabistro.com) just reported: GQ sells 365 copies of their Men of the Year Issue on the iPad. No one really seems to know whether that’s a good sign. The corporate brass says all the right things about extra revenue and free profit, but there’s too little data to call the project a success or not. The May issue is also available on the platform, so we’ll know more in a few months when Condé Nast releases those sales figures.
There’s this thing called “added value” and unfortunately right now the big publishers aren’t offering any of it to iPad owners. They seem to think the iPad UI itself is added value. Give me a break.
[…] have lots of time but not a lot of money. Adults have lots of money but not a lot of time“. This observation was used to explain why people buy an iPad; they are buying the convenience that the device just […]
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