Cage Match at the Newsstand
Media Apps for Android Tabs, Part III
Magazining
Among magazine publishers, the words tablet and salvation have become inextricably linked. Salvation is an idea with appeal to publishers—the past decade has been rough, and they’re often accused of missing the bus on the Internet. Since nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of being hanged twice, major publishers embraced Apple’s iPad as soon as they heard about it. Even before the iPad was released, several companies formed a consortium to standardize app development and coordinate strategy. And a couple of magazines (notably Wired and Sports Illustrated) brought out some very compelling demonstration apps. Predictably, however, the ship of optimistic expectations quickly ran aground on the rocks of conflicting commercial interests.
Selling single issues of a magazine in app form is all well and good, but publishers would rather sell subscriptions. This only makes sense. Most print magazine readers get their copies through subscriptions, instead of buying single copies at retail, and the predictability of subscriptions lets publishers base their advertising rates on a known quantity. But Apple wants its piece of the pie, too. After some hemming and hawing the company decided that 30 percent of subscription revenue would be a publisher’s price of admission to the iTunes App Store if the publisher wants to sell so-called “in app” subscriptions. Publishers are free to sell apps outside the App Store… but only if they offer the App Store option too. And Apple steadfastly won’t share customer data on subscriptions sold through the App Store, data which publishers are used to getting from print subscriptions, and want very much.
Publishers often use print subscription agents who take a much higher cut than 30 percent, but that doesn’t make them happy with Apple—to the contrary. Until Apple established a pricing policy no one was allowed to sell subscriptions through the App Store, and now that the policy’s established, no one likes it.
Meanwhile, a company called Zinio has found itself unexpectedly in the catbird seat. Zinio sells e-reader software to magazine publishers, which gave the company a headstart when it came to app development. Many publishers—thousands of them, apparently—have allowed Zinio to develop subscription apps. It turns out that Zinio has been selling magazine subscriptions through the iTunes App Store very quietly and apparently under Apple’s radar for quite some time now.
Users of Barnes & Noble’s color Nook tablet can buy both single copies and subscriptions to about 100 different magazines, and B&N claims business is booming. Sadly, this “newsstand” feature is not available to Android users of the Nook app, which is frustrating, since the color Nook is Android-based.
Amazon offers a ton of magazines to users of the Kindle device and to users of the Kindle Android app, but the fact that they’re delivered in black and white takes a lot of the fun out.
Back in the Android world, Zinio has been named the official magazine supplier to the Readers Hub, a wonderful place where Android readers can go to buy subscriptions to thousands of periodicals from around the world. The problem is that the long-promised Readers Hub doesn’t actually exist yet. At the moment, Zinio’s Web site says that Zinio for Android is “coming soon.” They may deliver in full tomorrow, for all we know, so keep one ear to the ground if the idea of buying magazine apps in one central place is appealing.
You can use the other ear to keep tabs on Google. The company senses opportunity in publisher’s discontent with Apple, and on February 16 announced a new program called One Pass, designed to enable periodical publishers to sell and deliver content. It offers more delivery flexibility than the App Store and Google asks for a 10 percent cut, as opposed to Apple’s 30 percent. The program is still very much in the early stages, but Google seems committed to improving on the Apple model.
Meanwhile, a few magazines have produced Android apps accessible through a name search in Android Market. They include Dwell… Elle… the New Republic… Newsweek… Nylon… OK!… People… Popular Science… Prevention… Sports Illustrated… and Time. Some magazines have produced specialized Android apps, such as the “Cosmo Sex Position of the Day,” (if you’re patient enough to wait for the download!), and some developers have produced curated apps, such as “Teen Magazines Entertainment,” which pulls its content from Seventeen, Teen Vogue, People Style Watch, et al. We should add that several magazines’ Web sites (NewYorker.com, for example) serve their online content in mobile format when accessed from mobile devices. This sort of bypasses the need for an app.
But considering that there are something like 20,000 magazines and journals published every year in the U.S. and Canada, the little list of magazine apps in Android Market looks kind of lame to us. It’s a shame, really. In some ways, magazines produce perfect content for digital tablets—vivid, graphic, delivered in discrete, bite-sized chunks, and usually written for readers who are passionate about a special interest.
This suggests that may be just a matter of time before the list of magazine apps grows longer—and time moves quickly in the world of digital tablets. But remember the Bonnier research we were talking about earlier? Because the experience of reading periodical content on a tablet is different than reading it in print, how we think of magazines and newspapers is likely to change as technology evolves and digital tablets become more integrated into our lives.
In the same way that news readers like Pulse allow tablet users to build “better newspapers,” other information sources could just as easily become “better magazines” on tablets. On a tablet, sites like Salon and Slate are on equal footing with their print competitors… in fact, they may be one step ahead of their competitors since they were designed for screens in the first place. And on a tablet, Snowboarding.com and BoardTheWorld.com can have the same presence as Bonnier’s Transworld Snowboarding magazine, which obviates any advantage that Bonnier brings from the world of print. It’s possible that tens of thousands of blogs and Web sites are in a better position to build engaging Android apps than the print products they compete with.
Right now it’s hard to find more than a smattering of Android tablet apps that equal the convenience and pleasure of reading periodicals in print. But we’re inclined to believe that when something equally compelling does come along, it may not come from traditional print publishers… which means that the device publishers are turning to for their salvation may prove to be their undoing instead.
Filed under: GentryMedia •Apps4Tablets •
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