Take our digital magazines...please, say publishers

Faced with a slower-than-expected uptake of digital magazine subscriptions and the fact that many consumers don't know the difference between a digital magazine and a website, a bunch of U.S. magazine companies are giving 50 million free digital magazine subscriptions away.

According to a story in Folio:, 200 companies like Hachette, Wenner Media and Reader's Digest are using a new site mounted by digital magazine vendor Zinio. It's called GoReadGreen and it hopes that readers can be convinced that they should use digital magazines to be environmentally friendly.

“We’ve seen thus growing undercurrent of consumers who see the benefits of sustainability,” said Jeanniey Mullen, executive vice president, chief marketing officer at Zinio. “But the general consumer walking down the street doesn’t even know what a digital edition means—they think it means the Web....We wanted to do something on a large-scale that would take the barrier of cost away and allow consumers to sample digital editions, while publishers can provide the environmental benefits of digital and not incur the huge waste—and huge cost—of printing magazines.”