When the IPad was announced a year ago, it was received by many as the ideal device for displaying magazines. The IPad was the first device capable of vibrant colour and multimedia content. It sold really well from the start. Publishers had suffered substantially during the cutbacks after the GFC and print editions were shrinking, some even closing down, especially in 2009. The IPad was called the saviour of the magazines. Publisher investigated and then invested to port publications onto the colourful glass screen.
One of the first magazine to make the news was Wired, geeky magazine that had been bought by Conde Nast. Wired had always had innovative and award winning design. It had a busy, free website, but was also known for its long-form journalism, which made print the preferred medium for part of its content. The IPad was the device that could combine both, the up to date and interactive web and immersive, high quality reading. Wired’s readership was the perfect demographic, affluent and very connected, early technology adopters with a high percentage of IPad ownership.
Wired launched on the IPad in June and was downloaded more than 100.000 times, at $3.99.
Wired was built using the Adobe Creative Suite add-on, the launch video shows the ambition of both companies. The first issue contained interactive displays, videos and, of course, many web links.
The reading experience is different, not quite as intuitive as might be expected, features of the user interface are not always working, no pich to enlarge type and navigation needs to be learned. The e-magazine basically contains two versions of the document, one low res for navigation, one high resolution with embedded media. Each issue is a download of between 500 to 900 MB, which may strain connection and download quota.
Half a year later, numbers are not that spectacular any more, sales in July to September were at around 31.000, in October and November 23.000 copies were downloaded, equalling less than 3% of the print copy circulation.
Other magazines had similar results, the IPad versions have not yet lived up to the promise of adding revenue. Numbers may increase with further IPads sold at xmas, but generally for e-magazines
“2010 was a year of high expectations but little fulfillment for those who thought 2010 might forever change the way we read magazines. We’ve seen that disappointing uses of new tools, limited audience interest, and small initial financial returns are going to result in a gradual shift, not a sudden transformation.”
“Users of iPad magazines have also criticized what they see as a lack of creativity and technological savvy in designing usable, intriguing magazine apps for the iPad. Today’s magazine apps tend to be dull, clunky replicas of print magazine pages that don’t let readers share content via social media or even email.”
says Susan Currie Sivek in Media Shift.
However, most likely this shows that it is not so easy to deal with this new medium and that publishers have to think again how to publish their content on tablets for readers, who are now used to take advantage of being connected at all times, who are even more time poor than magazine readers in the past, whose attention spans are shortening and who are constantly aware, that other attractive content is streaming to their devices. There will be few magazines that can just take the print version and place it on an IPad to take advantage of the lack of distribution costs and the new global audience available to them.
Social media integration is a requirement for most others, as are additional features, that take advantage of the medium and its connectivity. This could be providing access to up to date or personalised content, which is drawn depending on choices made when opening the magazine or it could be relevant multimedia content.
TRVL
One different approach is TRVL, a travel magazine that is available for free and whose publishers are planning to finance their magazine through ads. Each issue of TRVL coantains 30 to 40 pages with articles and photos about one destination. The excellent photography looks fantastic on the IPad screen, the texts are informative and suited to a short, enjoyable reading experience on the couch. TRVL is not trying to be a tour guide and is not packed with multimedia elements. There are slide shows and camera info, videos are linked to Vimeo.
TRVL is made using Woodwing’s publishing tools for Creative Suite.
One of the founders of TRVL says:
“Magazines on iPad are not expensive to make, what’s more, once your app is approved you have worldwide distribution. We are convinced we don’t need to charge any money for our magazine. Our biggest concern is marketing. How do we get known to the public?”
TRVL is clearly a product of enthusiasm and its simplicity, focus and quality of content make it a joy to read.
Flipboard
Another, completely different e-mag is Flipboard. Flipboard is a very personalised experience, because it is created for the reader every time the appication is opened. Flipboard searched for news according to its reader’s preferences, if you are interested in technology it will collect current articles from tech blogs and compile them in a very attractive layout. It uses the pages methaphor, so you can flip between pages like an e-book, but in addition tio just text, it includes images and video links on the pages.
Flipboard also compiles a magazine from your facebook and twitter feeds, and it goes beyond simple two line status updates, it retrieves the articles and images mentioned in posts. This makes for a very personalised, up to date reading experience which takes advantage of the IPads connectedness in compiling the mag, but also in interacting: Facebook updates can be liked, commented on and new updates posted; tweets can be posted, re-tweeted, emailed and viewed on the web. Too bad it does not link to instapaper yet, it could replace a dedicated twitter client.
Flipboard’s revenue model is not clear yet, it is a very successful app and has been downloaded millions of times since its launch in Juy 2010. It compiles information from a variety of sources and its founders promise that they will share revenues with content publishers once they start inserting ads. How successful this sharing will be, how these bits of content will be monetized through an addmitedly beautiful interface, remains to be seen.
Both TRVL and Flipboard are new ideas by non traditional publishers, both create a beautiful, enjoyable reading experience and both are quoting very high reader numbers. Both have not made any money yet, however they show how to take advantage of a the medium.
A very large billboard at Madison Square Garden, linking to a movie trailer. A massive display that invoked curiosity when QR codes were very new in the US.
The campaign for Hennessy produced more than 600.000 scans, most of them from IPhones.
A QR in Berlin, linking to a historic video that showed the area in the mid twentieth century. The video loaded quickly and the QR immediately added another dimension to the displays.
Another QR in Berlin, here the green party shows their affinity to modern technology by linking to a video of their candidate in the local elections.
A QR on the back of a book, linking to … absolutely nothing. That’s because the book is a few years old, and has been re-printed digitally as a short run. With publishers maintaining the long tail and books not going out of print anymore, references to time limited events like this code need to be taken off the artwork – or the URL has to be kept alive.
A QR in a vodka promotion, but Usher’s advice links to … a page secured by a facebook login. Much too hard to follow, most people will just not type in their login and password for a promotion, especially without clear incentive. “Scan to read more” is just not enough.
