“Time Inc. likes to show off its iPad apps as a symbol of the company’s future. But inside the publisher, the digital editions have become a source of hair-pulling frustration,” Peter Kafka reports for AllThingsD. “That’s because the magazine giant has been unable to get Apple to let it sell and manage subscriptions for its iPad apps — much to Time Inc.’s surprise.”
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“Last month, the publisher was set to launch a subscription version of its Sports Illustrated iPad app, where consumers would download the magazines via Apple’s iTunes, but would pay Time Inc. directly,” Kafka reports. “But Apple rejected the app at the last minute, forcing the Time Warner unit to sell single copies, using iTunes as a middleman, multiple sources tell me.”
Kafka reports, “Since then, Time Inc. executives ‘have been going nuts,’ trying to figure out how to get Apple to approve a subscription plan.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Isn’t this what In-App Purchase is for? Just add the new issues and let the users buy them using that process. What are we missing? Is it just that the magazine publishers don’t want to give Apple their 30% cut even though they’re distributing through Apple’s App Store to devices running Apple’s iOS platform?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
What becomes really evident here, is the difference in attitude between Apple and publishers.
Apple is a consumer-oriented company. Publishers are not; they’re advertiser oriented. That’s where they get their money from, not from the money the subscribers are forking over. How else do you explain all those ‘very special deals’ with ’60..70..80% off the subscription’? Publishers don’t really care how much one pays for subscription; they care more about their subscriber’s list, with infos about household income, interests, professions etc., that they can use to tailor advertisers to special interest magazines.
The problem is that by now publishers do not care much anymore about what they publish (except the ads). That’s why subscription are going down; they don’t care about their actual content, just who they can it sell it to. By transferring the same doomed model to electronic publication, they just postpone their own collapse. What they should do is wake up, and actually publish articles worth reading.
Maybe then I would subscribe to (electronic) magazines again.
1. Simple really: Apple would want 30% of the subscription price – obviously. The publishers only want to give them 30% of the initial app sale. Also obviously.
We know who’s going to win this one. Apple.
2. Ever tried to cancel a subscription from one of these companies? Do you know how to dance like a trained monkey?
Leave that to the professionals- like me. (Hint- dance like no one is watching.)
No, Apple will not subject their customers to that. And they sure as hell won’t give these people access to your payment info.
Impasse. For now.
I have watched Apple rise from its ashes and it has become a tour de force in the tech industry. Apple might be wise to allow this new venture some leeway for publishers and secure some form of subscription termination for subscriber who buys the app and let it go at that. Sometimes, you have t spend money, 30% of the the initial app fee, to make money, more publishers using the Apple iPad for their magazines.
I think magazines should be through iBooks rather than Apps
Sports Illustrated jumped the shark years ago.
Sporting News Today through Zinio is where
it’s at. Check it out!
We need a subscription model 5 dollars per issue is crazy! When I can get most print versions for 20 and under for 24 issue. And come on there is way less over head
Note to magazines, I would like to subscribe, but your prices are to high. I believe you can deliver a product that will work for me, it actually needs to work. Fire all the old guys and get some young guns in there to show you how it’s done.