Launch, then iterate: Huffington iPad magazine now available free

Previously for sale at $0.99 a copy or $1.99 a week, Huffington, the iPad magazine from Huffington Post is now being given away free on the Apple Newsstand. According to a story on Mashable, the magazine's app in its paid form had been downloaded 115,000 times.

Huffington is intended to be a sort of "slow journalism" equivalent to the hyperactivity of the online site, giving readers the opportunity to read at their leisure.

“In the end, we felt that asking people to pay for the magazine was inconsistent with The Huffington Post itself, which has never charged for content,” a spokesperson for the Huffington Post Media Group wrote in an email to Mashable. “As with everything we do at HuffPost, we launch and then iterate. This was an iteration on that basis.”

Avenue Calgary out of the chute with Stampede issue on new iPad app

Avenue magazine, the Calgary-based city lifestyle title, has used the occasion of the Calgary Stampede to launch a free iPad app of the magazine.

“Our digital app is taking the traditional print magazine to the next level,” says Avenue’s creative director, Anders Knudsen. “Now, you can enjoy and experience Calgary’s favourite magazine in a whole new way. Everything is better. The visuals are richer, we can put more stories in and more videos on…. It really has given Avenue magazine a whole new edge.”

Avenue is published by the Redpoint Media Group, which also publishes Avenue Edmonton, Wine Access and  Westjet's up!

iPad Newsstand making sales of $70,000 a month for in-app publication apps

The top 100 grossing publication apps in the iPad Newsstand are bringing in about $70,000 a month, according to a two-year study carried out by analytics firm Distimo. In that top rank are the New York Times, TheDaily and The New Yorker. According to a story in Minonline, the Newsstand  -- which is only about six months old -- represents about 7% of the top 200 grossing apps.

Almost all of this revenue is coming from in-app purchasing. For February the top 5 grossing Newsstand apps were The Daily, NYTimes for iPad, New Yorker Magazine, National Geographic and Cosmopolitan.

Huffington Post to release weekly roundup of best posts in an iPad magazine

The Huffington Post will soon launch a weekly iPad magazine that will summarize the best of its reporting, blogs and video. According to a story posted by The Economic Times, president and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington told the Digital Media Summit in Toronto that

"It's just going to be in terms of what is considered the best quality stuff we had that week, not necessarily the most popular stuff we had that week."

It is probable that the new digital weekly will carry material selected from all of its various editions, including the Canadian one. 

Some U.S. publishers leap on Apple's new iOS newsstand feature

"It's kind of like having the paper delivered to your front door. Only better."

-- from the Apple website, referring to a feature in its new iOS --  a virtual newsstand which lets readers access magazines and newspapers quickly on iPods and iPads and alerts them automatically when a new issue is available.

According to a story on Folio:, 

When viewing the Newsstand in iTunes, some featured titles include Wired, The New York Times, National Geographic Magazine, The Daily and Reader's Digest. Bonnier, always an early adopter with almost everything app-related, says Popular Science, Popular Photography and Sound + Vision are available on the iOS 5 newsstand as well.

Staff-written magazine archives can be repackaged and re-sold as "collections"

A new revenue opportunity may be open to magazines which can repackage their archival material into iPad-only collections, according to a story about The New Yorker, published by Reuters. At the Ballpark, a collection of staff-written baseball writing from 1929 to 2011, features John Updike, David Grann and the inimitable Roger Angell. The revenue came from sponsorship by United Airlines. There was also sponsored golf and "sustainability" collections.

"Nearly all of these pieces are timeless, just waiting to be rediscovered," writes Felix Salmon. "And the New Yorker’s archives are so deep, and are of such high quality, that there’s really no limit to how many of these things it can produce. Each one is very cheap to put out — just cobble together a bunch of articles under a theme, and get a TNY writer to pen a short introduction. Meanwhile, the advertisers get to align themselves with popular or trendy subjects (golf, “sustainability”), and reach an audience which is affluent even by New Yorker standards."

One of the things that Salmon doesn't address is non-staff written content. Today, magazine publishers strong-arm freelance writers to obtain "all rights" (usually for the same price as one-time rights); but previous to that, most archives of most magazines consist of material that was bought on a first rights basis and reverted to the writers afterwards. For magazines in that position, there is a lot of paperwork (and expense) getting the rights to package such archival material.

iPad magazine adoption is a little bit of history repeating itself: CJR

The adoption of iPad magazines is following a similar trajectory to that of other major publishing formats going back generations, says a story from the Columbia Journalism Review, cautioning that looking at falling sales figures over a short span doesn't really reflect the longer-term impacts.

iPad magazines are not stumbling for the exact same reasons that the first books, print magazines, or “web logs” were slow out of the gate—each new platform had and has its own cultural, political, and technological challenges. But there are similarities between how those new technologies were received in the public eye and mind then that suggest the iPad magazine, rather than being in dire straits, is simply following a well-trod path.

The bend in that path that we’re still waiting for is the one where cheaper prices, wider availability, and normalization mean the new publishing platform takes off.

The story points to the fact that, while history doesn't necessarily repeat itself, there are interesting analogies. Paper was once extremely expensive and hard to get, which ensured it was an elite product for some time, but that as it became less expensive, its use in disseminating printed material became more widespread. Newspapers proliferated only when availability, affordability and literacy enabled them to.

The story of magazines follows a similar plot. While newspapers focused on the news, magazines were largely considered a frivolity for the leisured middle class. Despite their physical appeal, adoption was limited. What factors changed that? The same factors that helped the printing press and newspaper hit mass market: a cultural shift and increased distribution. People had more leisure time and magazines were able to offer more value—including photographs and illustrations, for example—at a lower cost.

Digital magazines are less a technological revolution than a portable form of something that already exists, says Zachary Sniderman.

The final test for iPad magazines will be whether, like newspapers and magazines and blogs and even Gutenberg’s press, people will become habituated to its new format. The success of the iPad will likely come down to whether we buy its distribution model and accept it into the culture, or decide that iPads, tablets, and their magazines, really are just a gimmick.

Publication engagement said to be much higher on an app than on a website

Word from Britain is that readers spend more time reading a publication using apps on a tablet than on the publication's own website. A story from paidContent.org  about research by Tiger Spike says that tablet users spend an average of 30 to 34 minutes on the sites it has developed for clients such as the Telegraph Media Group, The Economist, the Australian and the Mail Online. It also found that page views are five times the average for publications consumed on the web.

At a recent City University panel discussion, News International’s chief marketer Katie Vanneck-Smith said, since introducing charges, The Times readers are “three times more engaged in terms of propensity to comment, time spent on website, they click more to advertisers”. This is likely because fleeting users, who arrived on single pages via search engines, have been turfed out. Previous research shows some tablet owners have shifted their reading of articles from the web and daytime to the evening and tablet.

Preview of Next Issue Media digital newsstand for U.S. titles now online

A consortium of five major U.S. magazine publishers who formed Next Issue Media in 2009 have finally unveiled their "digital newsstand". According to a story in MediaDailyNews, a preview is available exclusively on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.0, but will be introduced as a standalone app later this year.

Next Issue Media was formed by Conde Nast, Hearst Corp., Meredith, News Corp., and Time Inc. with the goal of creating a shared digital newsstand to scale up digital content consumption. So far, the preview gives  access to a handful of titles  including Fitness, Esquire, Popular Mechanics, The New Yorker, Time, Parents and Fortune.

Visitors to the web site can sign up to receive email alerts telling them when magazines' digital issues are added to the list.

A story on Wired  says

Limited though it may be, the Next Issue preview is still noteworthy because it demonstrates that the big publishers can work together toward a vision that many in the industry view as the digital endgame: a virtual newsstand where readers can pick and choose among titles, just as they might if they were browsing at Hudson News while waiting for the subway.

“Our aim has always been to get our magazines in front of consumers wherever they might be,” Condé Nast president Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr. wrote in an internal memo Wednesday. “The same holds true for our digital editions and apps, and Next Issue is another step forward in realizing that ambition.”

 On Monday, Conde Nast began digital subscriptions via Apple's iTunes store to four more titles (The New Yorker digital edition was launched on iTunes last week and became one of its top grossing apps.) The titles are Vanity Fair, Glamour, Golf Digest and Allure. The digital subs are $19.99 a year and current print subscribers get the digital editions for free.

Cheaper, faster, bigger volume: is this really the way to go with magazines?

The announcement this week that future subscribers to The New Yorker will be offered a package including both the print and iPad edition in the U.S. for $69.99 is an indication that the publisher Condé Nast hopes to make up for lower consumer prices digitally with higher volumes of circulation.

David Carr in the New York Times says this may well double the circulation of The New Yorker, but at what cost? He quotes Chip Block, a now-retired publishing executive who says that digital platforms like the iPad offer the possibility of publishers being more circulation-and reader-driven than wholly in thrall to advertisers:

“Publishers will make another mistake if they focus on advertiser rather than consumer economics for digital editions. The first priority for publishers should be to create an excellent consumer experience. If they do that with viable economics, the advertisers will follow.

Publishers lost track of that idea years ago when they embarked on a mad scramble for ad revenue at the expense of both product and circulation economics. I asked this question years ago: who put the popcorn salesmen in charge of strategy? It may be that movie theaters can make more money from popcorn than revenue from admissions, but that does not mean that the popcorn salesmen know what makes a movie attractive or anything else about the economics of production and promotion.

Publishers have consistently blundered since the 1990s by trying to fit new tech into the comfortable box of economics they have lived in for so long. Will they continue to do so? Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos have thrown publishers a lifeline. Will they be smart enough to grab it?”

One commenter to the Carr article says it is unreasonable effectively to charge $20 for the digital edition of a magazine (the best print rate being about $50) that subscribers already pay for in print.  (It should be noted that current subscribers can register to get the iPad version at no additional charge.)

I do understand that the digital issues cost Conde Nast money and I want The New Yorker to be profitable; but there isn't really a marginal cost to making the digital version available to people who already subscribe. Perhaps, at some point in the future, it will make sense to charge a premium to receive the PRINT New Yorker; but I don't think we're there yet.

Time Inc. and Apple make a deal: print subscribers get iPad editions free

Time Inc. and Apple Inc. have apparently come to an arrangement about serving its existing subscribers on the iPad. It was reported today from multiple sources that this breaks an impasse between the two companies that may augur well for all magazines being delivered to subscribers on tablets. (It doesn't yet solve the problem of selling new subscriptions for iPads and retaining access to customer data.) The Wall Street Journal reports that

Starting Monday, subscribers to Sports Illustrated, Time and Fortune magazines will be able to access the iPad editions via the apps, which will be able to authenticate them as subscribers. Time Inc.'s People magazine already had such an arrangement, but readers of most publications have had to pay separately for the iPad version regardless of their subscriber status...

Time Inc. and other major publishers have yet to agree with Apple on terms for selling subscriptions to their iPad editions, the next step beyond making them available to existing print subscribers. Talks are hung up on Apple's resistance to sharing information with publishers about their iPad customers, which publishers say is critical to applying the "TV everywhere" model to magazines.

The standoff has left most magazines with only one way to sell titles on the iPad: one issue at a time, which publishers say is asking too much of readers, particularly of the weekly magazines that form the core of Time Inc.'s business. In recent months, a number of the Time Inc. executives involved in talks with distribution partners like Apple and Google Inc. have left the company, leaving what some see as a gaping void in a critical area.

Time Inc. executives say Mr. Edelson, who is Time Inc.'s general counsel, has quietly been spearheading talks with Apple for some time and meeting frequently with Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet services. They say the latest deal to make iPad editions free for print subscribers is a sign the two sides are moving closer.
Apple declined to comment.

Inflights flying high with iPad versions of seat pocket magazines

That venerable category, the in-flight magazine, is still going strong but many publishers are putting them up on tablets such as the iPad. A story in the blog Jaunted lists some of the airlines that are putting their custom magazines on iTunes-available iPads:

• United Continental -- Hemispheres
•  Lufthansa -- Magazin 
• Malaysia Airlines -- Going Places
• TAP Portugal  -- Up 
• Sky Mall 

 [h/t to Arjun Basu]   

Wall Street Journal tops 200,000 tablet subscriptions for the paper, worth $41.5 million

As but one indicator of the growth of digital uptake by the public, it has been reported by MediaDailyNews that The Wall Street Journal has sold 200,000 digital subscriptions for tablet devices. The subs, 75% of which were sold in the last year, seem to have benefited from the launch of Apple's iPad.

WSJ's audience is quite specialized and is in particularly high demand. It is one of the few publications which led the way with a paywall and made it profitable.

The estimate of the value to the paper of the tablet subs is about $41.5 million.

iPad magazine apps growing, just not quite so fast

The addition of magazine apps onto the iPad have gone up 10-fold since last April. The pace of growth, however, has slowed between January and February, something that the Association of Magazine Media (MPA), which released the study, attributes to post-holidays lassitude. The data is gathered by iMonitor, a tracking system developed for MPA by McPheters & Company to track the addition of apps onto Apple's iTunes store. [reported by Folio:] There is, so far as we know, no equivalent data for Canada.

Rogers Publishing chose U.S. agency Built by the Factory to create iPad app

Does anyone else find it interesting that Rogers Publishing turned to a U.S. firm to develop its iPad app for Maclean's magazine, launched last month? We know this because of a release issued by the interactive agency, Built by the Factory. (There was no mention of the developers in the original Maclean's press release.)

“As soon as we got our hands on the iPad last spring, we knew we were looking at something important for the future of our magazine,” said Maclean’s executive editor* Steve Maich [in a Built by Factory release]. “Our close collaboration with Built by the Factory resulted in an app that is a beautiful rendering of the magazine and also takes full advantage of everything the iPad platform has to offer.”

Other successful projects for the BBTF included Ben Stiller's STILLERSTRONG.ORG, Los Angeles Times for Causecast and LeBron James with State Farm.

According to Dana Randall, Built by the Factory’s co-founder and CEO, “It is our extreme pleasure to assist Rogers Publishing with heralding in this new technology for their premier magazine, and the unique combination of usefulness to the end-user, a comfortable and intuitive interface, easy sharing options, and additional features like in-line video, at-a-glance page viewers and in-app purchasing truly embrace the capabilities of digital publishing while staying true to the readers.”

*Also group publisher of consumer business magazines. 

Fast out of the gate, iPad magazine sales slowing by the first turn

After an initial flurry of sales, particularly for Wired magazine, which was first out of the gate, iPad magazine app sales have, um, plummeted. The chart is from Silicon Valley Insider and shows the sales of four leading Conde Nast titles (CN being one of the most aggressive investors in iPad apps.) Whether the reported "digital newsstand" that Apple is promising will goose up sales remains to be seen. And still to be addressed is the issue of control of subscriber information, which Apple refuses to share with publishers.

Virgin to announce rival iPad paper to Murdoch's The Daily

Richard Branson, an aggressive entrepreneur on several fronts, has announced that his company Virgin will unveil a custom-built iPad magazine in New York next week. According to a story in the Guardian, the new paper will be more entertainment and less current affairs than the impending launch of the similar iPad paper The Daily being hustled to market by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (in collaboration with Apple). That venture is said to be costing Murdoch $30 million to launch.

"By announcing further details of his iPad magazine in New York, Branson is making an explicit move of his tanks onto Murdoch's lawn," [the story said]

The new, as yet unnamed, magazine is being led by Branson's 29-year-old daughter Holly and is to be edited by Anthony Noguera, former editor of Arena, Zoo and FHM.

Tablet market may be growing, but it's "nascent", says Nielsen study

Survey results released by The Nielsen Company is a sharp reminder of how small the tablet market is right now, though holding out some promise. A story published by Folio: says the study was an attempt to review how people are using their mobile devices such as smartphones, e-readers, iPads and the like. 

The survey found, when it polled 5,000 device owners, that only 4 per cent owned tablet computers -- a reflection of the fact that only 8 million units have sold worldwide -- and Nielsen described the tablet market as "nascent". Nielsen found that 41% of respondents downloaded magazine apps on iPads.
 

While the study indicates that the iPad beats the iPhone in print and video consumption thanks to its larger screen size, paid magazine apps face stiff competition for the owner's attention. The study says 91 percent of iPad owners have downloaded an app, but magazines are far from the most popular content. Games (62 percent), books (54 percent), music (50 percent), shopping (45 percent), and news & headlines (45 percent) are the top five most popular download categories among the survey respondents. Out of 15 categories, magazines (41 percent) came in 9th, two percentage points above the banking and financial categories. 

Forty-six percent of respondents say they share their tablets with others (does this count as a passalong?) compared to 34 percent of smartphone users. Time spent is a bit of a mixed bag—30 percent say they spend less than 15 minutes with their magazine apps, while 60 percent say they spend between 16 and 60 minutes per session.

More than three times the time spent reading mags on iPads as on iPhones, study says

iPad users read magazines more than three times as much than they did on an iPhone, according to a Nielsen study on connected devices, reported on the site gigaOm.This should probably not be surprising, given the teeny screens on phones, but it is encouraging information for magazine publishers hoping that their online apps will build new business and readeship.

The study also said that 43% of iPad users spent more than 30 minutes reading magazines on their devices.

Wired magazine sells as many paid iPad apps as it sells on the newsstand

From the iPad magazine watch desk:

• Wired magazine's iPad app is so popular (73,000 downloads @ US$4.99 in 9 days) that it nearly eclipses the magazine's newsstand sales, according to a posting on eMedia Vitals. 
• Popular Science has sold 39,000 iPad issues since April
• iPad owners are spending at least 60 minutes with each issue
• Vanity Fair, Time and Men's Health have so far declined to release iPad-related numbers.

"So what we definitely know is that the iPad is good for publications that appeal to early adopters. Not exactly the GQ/Men’s Health set. Maybe if they changed the titles to Geek’s Quarterly or Men’s Unhealthy?"