Why Digital Newsstands Stink

An anonymous reader writes "As Google prepares to compete with Apple in the digital newsstand business, both companies seem to be glossing over the fact that consumer demand for digital magazines is dropping. 'Wired's collapse from 100,000 iPad copies in June to 23,000 in November was most dramatic, but the story is not much different at Glamour, Vanity Fair, GQ or Men's Health.' Meanwhile, issues of subscriber privacy continue to crop up — Google has reportedly told publishers it will supply certain information about subscribers, and it's not clear whether users will have the ability to opt-out. And according to the Wall Street Journal, 'Apple is planning to share more data about who downloads a publisher's app, information publishers can use for marketing purposes.'"

Comments

Re:I'ts not 'cheapness'

[Dynedain]

But that's not how it works in the print world, except for a small set of free papers. The vast majority of print periodicals require you to pay (either subscription or newsstand) AND have much of the cost subsidized by advertisers.

The business model for magazine publishes is to collect a certain demographic of readers (which they verify using subscription data) that they can then market as a audience block to advertisers. They have a lot of data about this audience block, including demographics, income levels, and purchasing trends and more.

Its the cost.

[MrQuacker]

My subscription to Esquire is something silly, like $12 a year. Not taking into account the cost of the iPad, buying the iPad version of the magazine costs $5 an issue. That's $12 vs $60 a year.

So, why should I buy the digital version when the print version is not just better, but cheaper? And I dont need a specialized tool to read it.

Re:Predicted future news:

[golden age villain]

I am reading on the iPad quite often. The problem with the Wired app is that you have to pay extra dollars, even as a subscriber for the print issue, for what is basically a few videos and some cheesy animations. The really interesting content, a.k.a. the in-depth articles are not in the iPad issue. Honestly I don't see how that model could work. On the contrary, The Economist gives subscribers of the print issue the entire content at no extra cost and the app is free. You can even download the entire issue as audio files and you don't need to download an updated app every month and 300 MB of data for every single issue. Comics also make a good read. Actually reading is the only really useful feature of the iPad I found so far.