


Loughlin, executive vice president of Hearst Magazines. “We are still very much in the first inning of the game,” said John P. This year is when many publishers see the tablet business really taking off, with some estimates putting the number of devices to be sold near 50 million. “That’s not the purchase behavior that we see in a digital newsstand or an app store.
#Limiting time on ipad Offline#
“This is not the same kind of impulse sale that’s offline at checkout,” said Steve Sachs, executive vice president for consumer marketing and sales at Time Inc. With limited exceptions, most magazines rely not on newsstand sales, which are impulsive and irregular, but on subscriptions.Ĭonsumers tend not to make magazine purchases in the App Store in the same way they do at retail newsstands, publishing executives said. Being able to sell subscriptions through the most popular tablet device on the market is no small matter for publishing companies, which have always relied on subscribers as the cornerstone of their business. Swinand.īut there are many kinks that still need to be ironed out in this young business. “You have a way to monetize your content in an evergreen environment,” said Mr.
#Limiting time on ipad download#
For example, for $4.99 iPad users can download the new Condé Nast Traveler application on Italy or the Real Simple guide to cooking meals that take 40 minutes or less. Stand-alone special editions that offer readers how-to tips on everything from travel to cooking to painting your house can be perennial sellers with no shelf life. Tablet applications also open up a business for magazines other than just selling their regular monthly or weekly issues. “So instead of you actually have apps that allow you to create richer content experiences.” “There’s a whole other transition taking place with the death of the Internet and the birth of the app,” he added. Swinand said he had noticed magazines embracing tablets in a way they never did with the Internet. The picture quality can be far better on a tablet than on a computer screen the ability to create multimedia, interactive storytelling is greater and there are more opportunities for advertisers to innovate. Tablets, they believe, offer magazines a do-over in digital form. And what the tablet market finally provides is a viable digital business, something that eluded them with the rise of the Internet. Magazine publishers who are still stinging from the economic collapse of 2008 want more than anything to settle on a business model that works on their terms. But no such deals have been struck yet with Condé Nast, Hearst or Time Inc., said people close to discussions with Apple that were intended to be private. It is expected that magazines will eventually have an arrangement similar to the one the News Corporation has with Apple that allows for iPad subscriptions. He has personally involved himself in its development and has been known to drop in on The Daily’s offices from time to time on the 26th floor of company’s Midtown Manhattan office tower.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/004-how-to-enable-ipad-parental-restrictions-1994492-a2a9c2db4e0646dca692feb5e2a7ac69.jpg)
The project is a top priority for Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation. They want to subscribe, and they don’t like the idea of paying $4.99 a month.” “If you look at the Apple store,” said David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, which offers five publications on the iPad, “the most common reason that people give an app a low rating is that it lacks a subscription option. Magazine publishers argue in particular that limiting magazine sales on the iPad to single issues (except in a handful of cases) has hamstrung publishers from fully capitalizing on a new and lucrative business model. Since Apple introduced the iPad last year, publishers have poured millions of dollars into apps in the hopes that the device could revolutionize the industry by changing the way magazines are read and sold to consumers.īut at the same time, the industry is discovering a lesson already learned by music labels and Hollywood studios: Apple may offer new opportunities with its devices, but it exacts a heavy toll. The frustration that the country’s magazine and newspaper publishers feel toward Apple can sound a lot like a variation on the old relationship gripe, “can’t live with ’em, may get left behind without ’em.”
