After some disappointing initial sales, magazine publishers are looking to offer their own digital storefront for tablet-based magazines, just as Apple is set to announce a subscription model for tablet and iPad-based magazines, according to two separate reports.
According to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Next Issue Media, a joint venture between five media companies, will launch a service for distributing digital publications on tablets. The story quotes Morgan Guenther, NIM’s chief executive, who adds that NIM will likely go live with two titles from its four magazine owners — Conde Nast, Hearst Corp and Meredith Corp — by the summer.
The offerings could include versions of newspapers from News Corp, the fifth member of the consortium. The service will initially be Android-based, but eventually will be platform-agnostic. The main benefit to publishers, according to the article, is that they would be able to recognize current print subscribers and offer them special deals.
Meanwhile, Adweek reports that Apple is close to announcing a magazine subscription model for the iPad. The story quotes an unnamed publishing executive who says, “People are pretty confident” that Apple and magazine publishers have ironed out an agreement. Until now, iPad-based magazines had only been available as single copies.
The move comes as publishers report weak end-of-the-year sales for the iPad editions of their magazines. Vanity Fair, for instance, sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from 10,500 for its August issue. Wired’s digital edition sales fell from 100,000 in June to 22,500 in October and November. The lack of a subscription option in the App Store is often cited as a cause for their collective decline.
Since single-copy prices of $3 to $4 are seen as a barrier, the notion of a “Hulu for magazines” has been bandied about for some time. One sticking point is that magazine publishers want to handle subscription and pricing themselves, without going through iTunes.
Image courtesy of Digital Trends
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