Ever wondered what owning a magazine shop would be like - having the full breadth of magazines to browse and freedom to just read the 2-3 articles with catchy headlines?
Now you can have this on the Ipad with the launch of Next Issue. For USD$9.99 per month, the app allows you to access the latest from 39 different magazines - including back issues up to Jan 2012. The partnership of 5 publishing giants - News Corp, Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith and Time Inc. provide a great spread of quality magazines, including Time, Wired, Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, GQ and Conde Nast Traveller.
The app - meets the barThe app itself is pretty good - but not exceptional. Basically it provides digitized versions of the physical magazines, although some have good interactive elements like video and mini-games. The major shortfall for me is that the text are images rather than vectors, so on the Ipad3, the text isn't as sharp as it could be. It also means that you can't adjust font sizes. It does adjust layout dynamically for portrait or landscape use though.
Pricing model - a winner, particularly for readers in Asia
What's really great is the all-you-can-eat pricing. For USD$9.99 a month, you get access to most of the magazines. For USD$14.99 you get additional premium weeklies like Time, Entertainment Weekly and New Yorker. This means USD$120 - 180 per year, which is steep if you're living in the US where subscriptions are in the USD$20-40 range annually and you usually get both physical and digital versions for that price.
However, for readers in Asia, this pricing is fantastic. A single physical issue at the magazine store in Singapore could cost up to USD$8 due to shipping overheads, while subscriptions cost USD$140/year for Time Magazine and USD$110/year for Fortune. Readers of just these two titles alone would save money and reduce environmental damage with this app.The app is only for US ITunes accounts at this point. If you don't already have a US account, I'd switch to one just for this.
The business strategy - traditional media finally gets it
Overall, this is a great strategy for the magazine publishers. If they get the pricing right, the incremental revenues from volume uptick should easily offset the lower prices, even accounting for leakages in international sales. But that's not all. The real kicker for the publishers is that they now have full access to consumer behaviour - which magazines get read, how long, which ads get clicked, etc. As the the WSJ puts it. your e-book reads you! While all the ads are now the same static ones as in the magazines, it won't be long before the ads are customized based on reader profiles.
