"One price shopping" regardless of platform likely says The New Yorker editor

While magazines currently are in botherations about how to price digital editions to new customers or their existing customers, a reasonable bellwether of where we might be going is The New Yorker. According to a story by Nat Ives in Ad Age, The New Yorker is moving towards a model where one fee covers all platforms, rather than charging one price for a print edition, another for a digital app or still another for new devices like the iPad. 

Magazine publishers have been excited to sell iPad editions, seeing it as a promising way to finally wring circulation revenue from digital media -- revenue the web has not delivered for most titles. But subscribers would appreciate a way to access brands' content wherever it appears without feeling nickel and dimed. And the current digital pricing model in the magazine business punishes existing subscribers.

The New Yorker, for example, sells new print subscriptions for $39.95 a year, sells a Kindle edition for $2.99 a week, and, if the iPad edition expected this year follows current industry practice, will sell the iPad app for something close to the print cover price, $5.99 a week at The New Yorker. The idea likely to reach fruition "fairly soon," Mr. Remnick said, will offer the print edition for one fee and the magazine plus everything else for another fee.