Why Tablet Based Newspapers and Magazines will Succeed

The following ad from Newsday illustrates why ipad and other applications will succeed.  Watch it once to get the joke.   Watch it a second time to see how thr reader is holding the iPad.   It looks like the iPad can be physically handled not much differently than a newspaper. 




The only problem is bright light that might favor the less expensive Kindle and Nook for books and other text only applications.  This is illustrated in the following ad for Kindle that competes nicely with a printed book.

Leaving the Mailstream - Consumer Periodicals

The iPad, and other devices coming to market in the next 12 months are about to revolutionize how consumer magazines are designed, printed, and sold.

The Associated Press has reported that "the Audit Bureau of Circulations said Tuesday that it has changed its definition of a digital magazine to accommodate the new class of tablet-style devices. The new rules allow publishers to count paid digital subscriptions as part of a magazine's overall circulation as long as all the same editorial and advertising material is included.  That means publishers can custom design their articles and photo spreads for Apple Inc.'s iPad, which goes on sale April 3. Without the rule change, they could only count digital editions that appear exactly the way they do in print."

Initially, publications sold to tech-savvy consumers like Conde Nast's Wired magazine will become available.  Conde Nast will follow the June launch of Wired with launches of its titles directed toward a more general set of readers including GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Glamour. 

The action of Conde Nast and other magazine publishers to fully develop tablet versions of their titles in the consumer market reflect an understanding that the new technology may attract both newsstand and subscription buyers at prices that generate real revenue and more importantly auditable circulation.

If Conde Nast is successful, it will be able to retain much of its business model.  This compares to business-to business or trade publications that are rapidly shifting to an all digital model as declining print advertising made publishing a mailed journal unprofitable.   Now trade publications look mostly like a collection of blogs posts with advertising. (Direct, dmNews, Trailer/Body Builders) The alternative is what Document has done and provides a glimpse of what consumers may see on digital versions of consumer publications.  (I hope the consumer magazines do not have the annoying page turning sound.)

 Now the question is when will the new technology have market impact?  It could not come too soon for publishers who are seeing print sales dropping at double digit rates.  For the Postal Service the new technology could increase the already rapid decline in Periodical mail so that it is possible that by 2020 Periodicals could be as common in the mail stream as parcels are today.

The Future of Print - Is it on an iPad?

Business Week just reported that the number of e-book applications in the Apple app store now exceed the number of game applications.   The growth in digital books as a means of gaining access to text-based documents can be seen in the rapid growth in the interest in consumers in just six months.   According Mobclix, a company that tracks iPhone application use, in October of 2009 six times as many games were sold as e-books.   By February of 2010, the ratio dropped to 4 games to every e-book.  This shift occurred even before the more text friendly iPad device even hits the market.  More importantly, a higher share of the e-book applications are purchased creating a profit opportunity for book and magazine publishers that may not exist for game publishers.

What is clear from early adopters of e-books is that they like the new format.  As Kelly Gallagher, a vice-president at R.R. Bowker, which provides analysis of the publishing industry tells Business Week, "once a person buys an e-book, there's a 50% chance that they will buy most of their books in electronic form."

While e-books may not be advertising friendly, publishers of magazines and newspaper will have subscription and free iPad designed apps out when it hits the market in the next few weeks.  More than likely the competitive tablet devices sold by HP, Dell and other computer manufacturers will handle these or similar applications as well.   Amazon will eventually have to update its Kindle device to handle the broader range of content that readers want or switch its business model to strictly a distributor of books and other content on iPads and other tablets. 

How soon will the iPad, dedicated e-book readers and other tablets make a difference in the print market?   Clearly, not everyone will have electronic readers for quite a while.  In 2009, only 2.5 million were sold.  While this is expected to double in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad, the growth rate is expected to slow down once the market settles out in 2011.  For publishers of books and magazines, the question is not how many e-readers there are but how many are owned by heavy buyers of books and magazines.  It is these consumers that will drive the shift of publishers to e-formats and not those members of the public that rarely buy books and magazines and these customers are clearly moving to digital.

Leaving the Mailstream - Mail Systems Technology

There is no better example of the impact of digital documents than what is happening to trade publications. This shift is particularly hard on the Postal Service as it removes from the delivery network mail going to high density business addresses.   Now the trade publication for the mailing industry is now shifting from print to digital publication.   If a journal targeted to companies that produce mail no longer use the mail, then which ones will in the future?


Check out the digital edition of Mail Systems Technology.  When you flip through the pages on your computer think about how this would look on an iPad, Kindle or other tablet computer.  Looks like a good fit.

Note:   You can see how blogs like this one are changing trade journalism.   The November 24th post The Future of the Document is the Future of Mail, is reprinted on page 24 in the issue linked above.   Those who read this blog learned about the link between types of documents and mail over two months before subscribers to the magazine.