MacDailyNews Note: 24,000*$4.99=$119.760.
Abell reports, “Wired magazine sells about 82,000 single copies on newsstands every month and has about 672,000 subscribers.”
Abell reports, “The real test for Wired magazine (and everyone else) will be to continue to meet high reader expectations once any novelty aspect wears off, and to come up with a subscription model as quickly as possible.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As long as they understand that it’s unsustainable at that price (try $2.99 per issue, at the very most, and also a reasonable annual subscription rate), congrats to Wired!
I agree with the MDN take.
I heard at a user group meeting last night that Wired is using 3rd party extensions in InDesign that allow it to kick out a version that works on the iPad. Don’t know how, but maybe someone else does.
i’m all looking at this wrong, but wouldn’t digital media be more cost efficient? you avoid paying for paper, real estate, gas, trucks, staff, et al. i think they are just gouging us to see how far they can push.
At $2.99 per month or 25$ per year, I’m all over this.
Just got to get my iPad first.
I bought it out of curiousity. Won’t buy it on a regular basis, esp at a $4.99 price. Just my opinion.
If they are generating the digital app from the print production work product, they ought to be able to easily provide a subscription price in line with their print edition. And earn higher margins in the process. The app contains all the advertising in the print version. No print, no mailing. Being able to deliver content to multiple channels (print/iOS apps/other platform apps) from a single work flow will be the killer app in publishing. Can it be that Adobe is the company to make this happen. Seems so.
@Spark,
Certainly much of the content comes from the print content, but you’re really missing out on the whole experience of what the iPad app does. It has all kinds of stuff not possible in print. The production value is pretty incredible.
I would easily pay *more* for the iPad version of Wired than the print version because it’s far more engaging and convenient for me. I was one who purchased as soon as it was available.
@MDN,
Thanks for doing the math and letting us know what $4.99 times 24,000 is… I ran out of fingers, even after cutting them off my wife and those formerly of the …
@ Spark
I’m curious to see if magazine advertisers will capture more customers from digital editions, since the reader can just click on a link to go directly to the product. I know that sometimes I’ll see an ad for something interesting just to forget about it later.
I bet they would have sold over 100,000 apps in the first 24 hours if the price was reasonable. $4.99 per issue is plain ridiculous.
You can get the print edition for $0.88 an issue with a 3 year subscription. The iPad app is basically $5 an issue! Are you kidding Wired?!!! I love Wired, but I’m not paying $5 per issue.
I emailed Wired the day their app was announced and told them my feelings. Think about it, would you rather sell 24,000 apps at $4.99? Or sell 100,000 apps at $1.99 or $2.99? I guarantee they would sell many times more apps at a lower price point and make much more money overall. Plus get their digital magazine (and the included advertising) in front of WAY more people.
Pretty stupid pricing.
Too much $$$
take a look on this:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/207321-is-apple-really-worth-more-than-microsoft?source=yahoo
@ flirtsquirt
The price has little to do with how cost-effective one medium is versus another. The print price is what it is because that’s what the market will support. Wired will try find a balance between profit per magazine sold and total revenue to maximize overall profit, and that’s the price per issue. The same thing will happen to the e-version.
They used $4.99 initially to take advantage of the novelty aspect. If they want to sell more going forward and make less per unit because that will provide greater overall profit through increased sales, they will lower the price. But at some point, lowering the price will generate less overall profit. They will then know the “optimal” price per issue for the e-version.
@ Chris,
I bet you’re not the only one either. We’ll see about the next issue.
Honestly I don’t care if they charge $100 an issue, good for them, someone’s probably dumb enough to pay that much. I just think that they would be smart to learn a lesson from the app store and price it at $.99 and if they did I think they’d make a mint.
At $.99, they also have a chance (that doesn’t come along very often anymore) to introduce Wired to a whole new audience that maybe never even picked up their print edition. How much is that worth??
And let’s also not forget that even at $2.99 or $.99 there are still ads in the mag.
“And let’s also not forget that even at $2.99 or $.99 there are still ads in the mag.”
And Wired can charge the advertisers more depending on the readership. The cheaper the app is the more it will sell. The more it sells the more Wired can charge for advertising. Seems like pretty simple logic to me.
Hopefully Wired will reduce the price soon, and I will pay as soon as they do.
I can tell you the amount of work in producing the iPad edition cost a lot more than 119,000 (minus Apple’s cut). The digital edition had all sorts of programming as well as dual designs for everything (portrait and landscape).
Buy it individually until they offer a subscription service.
@ ChrissyOne
Another very good point. How much are those clickable ads worth? Put this mag in the hand of a few hundred thousand people (or more?), and at $.99 or even free, they’d likely much make more money than they ever will off the magazine purchase itself.
@ Vatdoro
Great minds think alike.
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@ Heroin
You’re absolutely right. There is a TON of development cost Wired put into the iPad edition. They need to recoup that cost. But, $5 an issue isn’t the way to do it. That’s over 5X the price of the dead tree edition. If Wired charged $2.99 for the iPad edition, that would still be more than 3X the price of the print edition. Still pricey, but much more bearable to the customer.
Wired definitely needs to charge more than the print edition to recoup all that development cost, but they would make much more money overall if it were prices around $2 to $3.
the app should be free, and allow you to view the cover and table of contents before making a buy decision on the whole magazine.
I bought it just to have the experience of a digital magazine. but I won’t pay 4.99 again. Like MDN said, Maybe 2.99 or even better 1.99 would make me buy more
I will not pay more for a magazine on the iPad than the newsstand. I will not pay only slightly less or the same. I don’t care how compelling the information, delivery, or experience is. I’m having a hard enough time coming to terms paying 9.99 or 14.99 for an ebook that I really have no control over, no resale, nothing. It’s like I don’t even own it yet I paid for it. This all seems like a step back, not a step forward. This is a shame because I really did buy into Steve Jobs’ assertion of how this was going to breath life into old media and bring it into the 21st century. It just seems to me that all these publishers are just greedy whores looking grab as much money as they can while grinding this second chance at life, that Apple has offered right into the ground.
I hope these publishers realize that any great inroads or high sales volumes they make in these initial months are temporary at best if they do not modify their pricing structures. I may pay for the novelty once, but the novelty wears thin pretty quick, especially at 4.99 an issue.
And nothing annoys me more than reading about you stupid gits who would gladly pay more than what the single issue or annual subscription rates are. To you I say STFU!
Thank you and good night.
what a joke these co.’s are. sell the app one time for $5 then every issue for .99 then they’ll sell 10 million copies instead of 24K. what’s wrong with these idiots? Of course Steve’o is trying to help these jerks but they just don’t get it. He’ll get fed up soon.
I can’t believe no one caught it. Apple takes a 30% cut so the real math should be: 24,000 x $3.49 = 83,760.
Oh, as far as pricing. $4.99 for the app. $2.99 for each individual issue but $.99 per issue if you buy a year subscription.
Too expensive