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

Predicted future news:

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

People continue to prefer not paying for things. Also, most people like having privacy in their lives.

Re:Predicted future news:

[mcgrew]

I don't thionk it's a matter of "People continue to prefer not paying for things", rather people continue to prefer not paying for things that are usually free -- like books, magazines, and music, which is at your local library for free.

When you buy a print newspaper, you're buying ink and paper, and the ads pay for the content. Now they've not only done away with the cost of the ink and paper, they're charging you as much as when they had to buy paper and ink, plus selling your private information!

People prefer free water out of the fountain, yet plenty still buy bottles of it. These "magazines" are like someone trying to sell bottled water that that tastes like urine -- inferior to the free version.

Re:Predicted future news:

[jedidiah]

"so many" haven't.

A small number have. This small number tends to be overhyped and overinflated by fanboys that seem to desperately want to replace the old MS-DOS hegemony with a new PhoneOS hegemony.

There are still many more eyeballs for non-proprietary content of all sorts (not just magazines).

Re:Predicted future news:

[ColdWetDog]

Get a better monitor and / or turn down the brightness a tad? Really. I look at LCD monitors ALL DAY sometimes. No eyestrain until I go outside and see the bright shiny thing.

This seems to be some sort of urban myth. It's quoted forever but people's experience varies so widely that I don't think it is really true. Of course, I've seen many, many computers with LCD displays that are set up so poorly with terrible fonts, colors, resolutions and brightness settings that I start getting nauseated after 5 minutes, but I don't think it's an LCD issue per se.

Re:Predicted future news:

[vlm]

I take it you don't read for long periods of time. ... it's that trying to read for long periods of time on a monitor sucks....

Get your eyes checked. Seriously, not being a jerk, just some advice at the human level. Its like heart problems where if the doc catches it early, its no problemo vs you wait for it to start working. Being blind would kind of suck, especially if it could have been easily prevented. My grandmother has taken eyedrops for most of her life, something about an iris problem or whatever, but a lifetime of eyedrops beats the heck out of getting diagnosed after going blind. Maybe all you need is eyeglasses.

Normal healthy people can gaze into their LCD monitor or LCD TV for, frankly, the majority of their waking time, with no pain or discomfort at all. A world full of office workers gaze into their laptop LCD all day, then watch their LCD TV all night, no problemo.

"no pain no gain" is for a (inaccurate) motto for weightlifters, not readers. If reading hurts, you're totally doing it wrong.

I'ts not 'cheapness'

[gurps_npc]

I, and many others, are perfectly willing to PAY good money for things that would otherwise be free.

But we don't want to watch advertisements while we do it.

Expecting people to pay for online content and ALSO see any advertisement (I mean ANYTHING, even simple words), is kind of like saying HBO wants to continue to charge their premium price for premium services but it is now going to show advertisements.

NO. You can't have it both ways,

You want ads? You can't charge. Period.

You want to charge? You can't have ads. Also, NO tracking. No ads means you don't have to tracks us (You can still track how many people read which article, but not which article any individual reads.)

As long as the greedy morons try to charge HBO prices for TBS content, surprise surprise, no one will pay.

Re:I'ts not 'cheapness'

[gurps_npc]

What is this 'print world' you talk of it? It sounds like some ancient business that is failing.

The print world had far better advertisement rules - nothing in the middle of an article breaking it up, no video, no sound, no "ROLLOVER CRAP", most of it on entirely separate pages that people could skip over.

This is NOT the print world, and attempting to use the oldest of the systems as a model is why they fail

It was a dumb idea

[sayfawa]

Even if I wanted to pay for news and magazine articles (which I don't) why would I want to go through the extra complication of a separate app for every newspaper, and downloading each magazine? The web already covers this. Am I missing something?

Amazon Kindle Store - Periodicals

[Fantom42]

Go look at the comments for some of the "top sellers" of periodicals on the Kindle. Things like New Yorker, or Economist. You find that there are a ton of people that want to pay for this stuff on their device, but right now the deal is no good. Here are a few examples of what people justly complain about:

- When you buy a digital subscription, you don't get website access that you do get with a print subscription.
- Missing editorial cartoons, and even articles (reported from the Kindle version of the New Yorker)
- They delete access to anything more than 2 months old. Meaning if your device crashes or you have to replace it, you lose those articles.
- Pagination and sections are done in an inconvenient way.
- The cost is no cheaper than a print subscription.

I'm sure there are others. But as a person who recently found himself with an e-book reader and would love to have magazines and newspapers on there, much of this stuff is just a showstopper. Too bad, really.

This isn't a hard problem.

[xtal]

Put issues in the iBookstore for $0.99.

Add a subscribe option.

Profit.

Nobody is going to pay full retail for an electronic version, it ain't happening. Alternatively come up with a global pass system ala hulu that allows you to read lots of magazines for a flat fee.

Otherwise, $6.99 buys a lot of 3G time to look at your website. For free.

Re:Well

[TooMuchToDo]

Reading books in digital is great because it is a linear process. But how many people read magazines in a start to finish fashion?

*Raises hand* Scientific American, Wired, The Economist, and MAKE.

Re:Censorship

[Daniel Dvorkin]

To be fair, as traditional media has become more and more consolidated, the companies that own the magazines, newspapers, and networks exert this kind of control too. I'm not saying I approve of this situation, you understand, just pointing out that singling out e-publication as uniquely vulnerable doesn't make a whole lot of sense.