“The magazine publisher has sold some 95,000 digital copies of its June issue at $4.99, the same price the ink-and-paper edition commands,” Kafka reports. “So why sell the July issue at $3.99 — while also knocking down the price of the first issue to the same level?”
Kafka reports, “Conde says it will be experimenting with digital magazine pricing for months to come. But Wired editor Chris Anderson, who wants us to know that he doesn’t control his magazine’s sales price, makes the common sense argument: Digital editions should cost less than physical ones because there’s no distribution cost.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What do you think? Still too much?
Yes. STILL TOO MUCH.
Still way to much for a PDF nothing about it that justifies that price
Keep going. The price needs to be $2.99 for a sustainable demand. And only then if the quality and user experience is compelling.
Should be under $1. So even $0.99 is too high but far more realistic that $4 or $5. Publishers, record labels and movie studios STILL don’t get it…
Two words: SUBSCRIPTION PRICING!!!!
almost their but not yet need to check out the features something has got to be done with GQ that crap is horrible y dont ppl add the ability to adjust screen brightness from within the app??? and i dont know but for some reason i like the page turning effect with the sliding thing i feel like i missed something i dont know why
Sorry, but I don’t want individual apps for magazines. Apple has made a mistake by not offering mags through it’s book app. I’ll stick with Zinio.
My God but Americans can be gullible sheep. Once a paper or mag is published it’s history. Why pay more than 25c for such a short shelf-life item. A book is worth more if it has useful content with more enduring value. If an ebook novel can sell for $3 to 5 with no ads, why should a mag making a whole lot of ad revenue cost more than 25c when it’s dead on its feet the moment you’ve scanned through it?
Sheep to the Shylock Shuffle.
Just donate them your eyeballs. That’s all you’re worth to them. One of their directors implied just that. It’s the ad schlomos that matter.
Yup, still too much.
$1.99 is the highest they should go, and they’d sell a sh!tload at 99¢.
@Another Issue
Agreed. I thought Apple would take a more centralized approach to this, developing their own app with a set of APIs specifically for it. That way, there is consistency across different periodicals, but developers are still free to customize as they see fit. And, if I remember correctly, the Wired app is the one that went through some atrocious hack by Adobe to become iPad native; and from what I’ve read about it, you can tell it wasn’t built from the ground up for the device.
And they’ll lower it again when they see that too many people won’t bite at this exorbitant, unjustified price.
@left brain
Are things different elsewhere, outside of the US? In my experience, things always seemed more expensive in other countries, especially European countries. But maybe it’s different for digital products? Please, enlighten me.
Maybe $3.99 a single issue… but how about a subscription rate.
I terminated my WSJ for iPad subscription after nearly 3-months. I was not getting $18 a mo in value from it.
There needs to be some sanity in pricing for traditional media as it moves to electronic media.
That sanity needs to consider: (1) the customer is covering the bandwidth and hardware cost of receiving the media, (2) no printing costs, (3) no traditional distribution costs, and (4) I would theorize that marketing costs are less for electronic consumers than traditional dead-tree consumers.
Yes. Still too high. Bought the first issue to “see” and wasn’t impressed… Waiting for either a $24.99 yearly subscription or $1.49 per issue
No more than $1.99 per issue but I would subscribe in a sexing if it was $0.99 per issue or $10 for a yearly subscription.
Sexing = second
Hahahaha!!!!
Still too much for what wired gives you. Better electronic content and I’d say fair price, but not for their giant flash-built mess.
It costs more than just the dollar price of the issue as well. The original version I downloaded was 505 megabytes and the updated software shows the same thing. That’s ridiculous compared to the small footprint of Zinio magazines.
Zinio has the right idea imho. All I want is the magazine, delivered electronically as it would look printed. I don’t want lots of space wasting pointless video, especially when most of it is ads.
The Wired app is garbage.
$1
that is all
The cost for my annual subscription to Wired is about $12.
The digital edition could conceivably have more value if it included things the magazines cannot, eg recording of an interview or video of a product test. Some magazines already do this via their website, eg The Wire. However, I can see the value in having it embedded for use while I have the “magazine” open to that page.
$15-20 a year would be reasonable if the multimedia content were included and if the ads were not significantly more intrusive.
$6-10 for a PDF version with no enhanced content.
$1.99 or $2.49 make sense to me for a magazine. But really, who reads magazines any more? All the content is on the web… The only time I read a magazine is on the airplane, and even that is more rare.
I’ll check back in 3 months to see if it hits $.99. Then I may bite.
Yup keep going….I won’t pay more than the snail mail version….and if *publishers* don’t get their prices inline, somebody will do it for them.
way too much. – max .99¢ or give me a year for $9.99 – that’s what i’m willing to pay.