“Although Wired managed to achieve 24,000 downloads in the iPad app’s first day, and over 100,000 downloads in June, digital sales of the publication have since dropped substantially. The company averaged just 31,000 downloads each month between July and September, and October and November saw only 22,000 and 23,000 in sales, respectively,” Electronista reports. “Vanity Fair sold 8,700 downloads of its November issue, down from an August-October average of 10,500. Glamour is noted to have slipped about 20 percent a month in the distance from September to November.”
Electronista reports, “The magazine industry is currently hampered, however, by an absence of subscription support at the App Store, which forces people to buy issues individually unless downloads are tied to an outside paper subscription. Apple is believed to be working on native support…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: After sampling their wares, we’re waiting for a more seamless subscription model and more realistic pricing to appear before moving from our old-fashioned paper magazine subscriptions to iPad. How about you?
been mentioned a few times above but let me say it again…
if it’s free on the internet, i damn sure am not going to pay for an ipad app version of it. if the internet version required a subscription, i might consider buying an ipad optimized form of delivery.
Zinio has worked flawlessly on the iPad and with prices generally less than the paper versions of magazines. It’s almost easier to read the Zinio version than the dead tree version, with no clutter to aggravate my wife. Zinio in fact works better on the iPad than on my Macbook Pro because of the “swipe” functions on the iPad. The only paper magazines I still read are ones that don’t have a reasonable digital equivalent.
@TornJeans:
Right! ebooks, like emags, cost less to produce and distribute yet cost as much or more than their paper counterparts. In some circles, that’s called highway robbery. Content publishers deserve to suffer until they stop gouging their customers.
I keep waiting for a reasonably priced subscription model. Wired, I’m looking at you. If I could order a Wired subscription, digital only, for a reasonable price (.99 to $2.00 maximum) an issue, I’d jump on a multiyear subscription in a heartbeat. $4.00 an issue is absurd. Right now, Zinio offers a few mags at a reasonable price but they’re hobbled by the interface. If a magazine is going to be an app and sell well, it has to attract meaningful numbers, and the price point is what’s going to change that.