Magazine Bitch

Apr 14

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Here’s my prediction: Within two years, we won’t call newsstands like Next Issue’s “a Netflix for magazines” because it’s one price for a big catalog of content. We’ll call it “a Netflix for magazines” because instead of mail delivery or bulky downloads, the primary delivery mechanism will be streaming high-definition, through-designed magazines over the web.

Then we get into the stuff that’s really fun for Guenther. How do I do search? What about individual article discovery? Where are the recommendations? What does personalization look like in magazines? How do we interact with social media and the open graph? You don’t need to go to HTML web magazines to add these elements, but they all point in that same web-native direction.

They also all point to bringing magazines back to the center of public attention, social conversation and private enjoyment.

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“Anthology was conceived for print, and our idea from day one was to create something physical, not digital,” Le adds. 


The century-old tradition of domestic publications meant to make home life a little more creative, comfortable and empowering is, in many ways, still just that. The new magazines espouse a determined mission to reject high-tech frills and distractions. 


Williams opens the second issue of Kinfolk with instructions on how to read it. “The images, stories, and ideas are simply not conducive to a quick peruse,” he writes. “Set aside some quiet time in the evening to read this volume, to curl up with a blanket and soak it all in.”

52 Magazines Launched in Early 2012

‘Netflix for Magazines’: Pros/Cons

By now, we’ve all heard about the new “Netflix for magazines” concept from Next Issue Media, a joint venture between publishers Conde Nast, Hearst, Time Inc., Meredith, and News Corp. For a monthly fee, consumers can have access to multiple magazine titles in digital form. The idea sounds intriguing, and I commend NIM for trying to innovate, but I also have some doubts about the product’s future success. I’m definitely filing NIM under the wait-and-see category, and here’s why:

Pros:

• As a magazine lover, I love the physical act of browsing a newsstand, reading all the cover lines, and casually flipping through a magazine’s pages to see if it’s worth the investment. But with book stores and newsstands shuttering every day, that experience is harder to find. If NIM can replicate even part of this, I’d be happy. NIM CEO Morgan Guenther on the newsstand experience:

“It’s like if I walked into Barnes & Noble and wanted to browse magazines, and I was led into a room with you windows where I can read Fortune.” Guenther says. “And then I say, ‘Okay, I want to read Wired,’ and they send me to another room. When I walk in, there’s a big sign on the front door saying, ‘Here are your instructions for reading the magazine.’” (via TechCrunch)

• The functionality of digital magazines vary depending on the vendor. Navigation and usability are the same across all NIM titles, so users won’t have to learn how to interact with each publication.
  
  
• Unlike print, readers can try out different publications without having to commit to just one.

Cons:

• Subscriptions to Netflix ($7.99 a month for streaming only) and Hulu ($7.99 a month for a PLUS account) grant you access to thousands of movies and TV shows. At launch, NIM is only offering access to 32 publications, with more coming at the end of the year. Some have viewed the pricing structure as a bargain, but personally, I’d want access to more titles to make the $9.99 (monthly and biweekly titles) and $14.99 (includes weekly titles) price tags worth it. I’m also not sure I’d consume enough to justify paying $180 a year, and I’m a huge magazine lover. If the average print subscription is, say, $9.99 a year, you’d need to consume 18 titles a month to make up for the annual price tag.
  
  
• For now, NIM is only available on Android tablets running Honeycomb.
  
  
• Do readers want exact replicas of print magazines in digital form? According to Ad Age, while digital magazine subscriptions increased by 125 percent in the last year, they only account for 1 percent of total paid and verified circulation. These PDF-looking digital editions with “flippy” pages are too easy. Instead of discovering how users interact with tablet/mobile devices, magazine publishers keep trying to fit an exact print experience into a digital devices. Although somewhat old, this video from Bonnier’s R&D team is a good example of how magazine’s should be approaching digital: by thinking through user experience first. 

Apr 03

Cosmopolitan Says It Has 100,000 Paid Digital Subscriptions -

Wondering how Cosmo’s strategy for negatively impacting women differs on the iPad.