Publishers want to be Apple tablet-ready, without losing control

U.S. magazine and newspaper publishers are discussing the possibility of creating their own digital storefront tailored to the much-anticipated Apple tablet.

A story in Advertising Age reports publishers want to avoid the fate of the music industry, which became captive to iTunes (which dictated download music prices to them). And they don't want to see repeated what happened with Amazon's Kindle (which exerts total control over magazine and newspaper subs, refusing to provide publishers with information about their own subscribers).

"There's a lot of activity right now at all of the major newspaper and magazine publishers around 'What is our role?'" said one magazine executive this week, who declined to speak on the record because of the sensitivity around interactions with Apple. "A lot of the conversations are around 'We need to control the customer relationship.' We are not interested in doing an Amazon thing or even an Apple thing where they own the data...."

The goal of an industry digital storefront or other strategies is to make the most of new reading devices without making the mistakes of the past and without letting the makers of the devices gain all control, the story said.

"People put their hands out and let [Steve Jobs of Apple] put the handcuffs on them," he said. "The same thing now is happening with the publishing industry. They are afraid to do anything, to say anything. At the same time, they're saying, 'Let's see what other options we have.'"

A magazine executive said:

"In the music industry, the iPod itself had the dominant control over the experience. Once the iPod controlled the experience and was the element that was the most dramatic improvement, the content became a commodity on the device, and the device became the experience."

"If publishers were to get together and agree at least on what the format would look like then the device companies don't dictate so much that they define pricing and distribution."