Apple announced the terms of their new digital magazine subscription model yesterday in an agreement with app developer and digital publisher Texterity, which they posted on their web site last night. It clears up a number of concerns to the publishing industry, and finally clears the hurdle for existing subscribers of print content not having to pay again for a digital version of the same magazine.
From the Texterity Web Post:
Publishers can sell print subscriptions, and offer “digital companion” access through an app as long as there is no additional fee for those subscribers. It’s a way to offer another incentive for print subs to stay loyal and engaged. Read the rest of this entry »
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Click through to Business Insider’s survey findings for the latest insights in how the iPad is being used, or read on to check out Polymash’s favorites with some surprising statistics: Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE: It appears that due to a serious last minute WIFI connection issue the iPad’s iOS 4.2 release, planned for Friday November 11, will be delayed, and the forseeable impact is that the public release will be postponed by 2 weeks. The connection issues have been posted on Macrumors forum (here and here) as well as on Twitter and Apple’s internal discussion boards.
Hopefully this will still mean a pre-Thanksgiving launch, and we are looking forward to long awaited iPad features such as
Multitasking (AKA fast application switching),
Airprint and Airplay features.
Homepage and Spotlight upgrades
Folders
Widgets
Introduction of Gamecenter
For a nice walkthrough of the features, and to find out exactly what is included in the upcoming iPad release, visit our friends at TiPb and click here for the full feature list
Click throught for a nice summary post from Prescott Shible’s blog on current digital magazine monetization options.
I fully agree with the fact that the biggest current challenge is offering robust subscription models for tablet magazines, but also think that with upcoming solutions from Adobe and other major tool providers, the negative aspects of in app purchases will soon be addressed, in terms of being able to provide tracking intelligence of in app user activities and behaviors.
This was a week for some great ideas to emerge on how tablet platforms and digital readers need to evolve in terms of functionality, features, user experience, social media integration.
Now that the iPad has been on the market for some time and a slew of other tablets are about to drop, usage and behavior patterns are starting to emerge, and ideas on extending tablet functionality are becoming more concrete.
Here at Polymash we have been humbly completing work on extending tablet magazine reader functionality for the information product and educational market, adding plug-in features such as in magazine notepads and social media integration for Apple and Android platforms.
But for a more comprehensive and compelling glimpse at future possibilities, I’d invite you to check out this video from IDEO entitled The Future of the Book
My favorite concepts here:
The idea that interactivity needs to extend to participatory and community based discussions about the material being read. (Ideo calls this “Nelson”)
The idea to link to book clubs, reading lists and recommendation engines (Copeland)
Ideo also proposes a concept (Alice), which allows for co-creating the story, affecting the plot, interacting with characters and so on, and while I love the idea I do see it more in the realm off app and game development.
However long term the creation of truly interactive content will blur the line between app development and content creation…
Frankfurt Book Fair
Also this week the Frankfurt Book Fair took place, and following twitter feeds and blog entries it was apparent that there was much tablet talk and discussion. I’d like to share Joe Wikert’s presentation he gave “My eContent Wish List–Frankfurt TOC 2010” as posted on slideshare, which mirrors some of VIMEO’s vision in a perhaps more pragmatic way:
Having worked with, and around, the limitations of today’s tablet reader technology, the critical element to me is to create platform independent APIs that allow developers to directly access and interface to the publications content
My favorites:
Platform independent readers, with platform independent APIs
Better Social Media integration, for example tweeting from within and article or story
The ability to highlight and annotate content, and then be able to share, archive, collect and search these annotations across publications
There are some great ideas in these presentations, and I hope publishing houses and tool makers in the tablet industry are listening and adjusting to the market needs being formulated.
The above is my favorite quote from the Harrison Survey on the impact that the iPad and other tablet devices are having on the digital publishing and technology landscape in general. I also thought it interesting that the “early adopter” persona / stigma is in fact changing:
“Early adopters of eReading are more likely to see themselves as fashionable, playful, family-focused and kind, as opposed to the technology and leadership orientation of early adopters in prior technological revolutions”
Other Key Points:
Tablet users spend 50% more time reading magazines, 75% more time reading newspapers, and 25% more time reading books.
Accelerated estimates of 20 million tablets sold in 2011, with 13% of all consumers expressing interest in purchasing a tablet in the next 12 months.
Inevitability of tablets as the delivery mechanism for digital magazines
Comfort with digital payment systems that debit accounts
Multi function tablet devices instead of single purpose e-readers
Continued privacy concerns and acknowledgment of the importance solutions in that space
Is it just me, or does it seem that European magazines are way more active in developing iPad and tablet digital publications?
Recently there have been a slew of digital magazines released in Europe, and Axel Springer Verlag is just the latest examples of this. It would also appear to me that the pricing and subscription models are more consumer friendly in the EU compared to the US, where publishers seem determined to set an example and train tablet users to expect high pricing models for Magazine Content.
So which is the better strategy? Attracting loyal readership with low pricing and making money through sales volume is one way, or hold out for higher pricing and risk fewer readers of the digital editions?
While I think the production costs for digital content may seem high to publishers initially, I feel the exponential growth of the tablet market on multiple platforms is being ignored in the US approach. Production costs may be high, but ultimately the distribution costs are not when scaling to potentially millions of readers. To me the scalability of the digital platforms are the real differentiation to print, where each additional copy costs extra ink, paper, packaging, transportation, distribution, warehousing, inventory and waste copies.
So I guess personally I come down on the side of lower pricing and future volume, even if this initially means subsidizing the effort slightly. Plus, establishing and automating digital publishing work flows is an experience best had in the beginning of the upcoming rush to tablet publishing.
Software vendor eMagCreator has chosen to focus on iPhone/iPad publishing and have already released a new mobile version of their online publishing platform eMagStudio, which is one of the first desktop software’s which publishes directly to Apples iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, using the newly developed HTML 5 based reader. The new release is the first of many initiatives towards publishing on Apples mobile devices.
I would anticipate that there will soon be several tools to publish to tablet devices that incorporate HTML5 based capabilities.
My question is how important a “native” tablet experience is to readers, compared PFD conversion solutions. Certainly the feature list for eMagStudio is impressive…
Apple announced the terms of their new digital magazine subscription model yesterday in an agreement with app developer and digital publisher Texterity, which they posted on their web site last night. It clears up a number of concerns to the publishing industry, and finally clears the hurdle for existing subscribers of print content not having to pay again for a digital version of the same magazine.
Posted by JuergenB 
The above is my favorite quote from the Harrison Survey on the impact that the iPad and other tablet devices are having on the digital publishing and technology landscape in general. I also thought it interesting that the “early adopter” persona / stigma is in fact changing:
