“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.” – Frederick Keonig

Are iPad magazines being killed by greed?

Tablet-based magazines have a lot going for them. They’re more interactive, more portable and better for the environment than their paper-based counterparts. The problem is, when they’re priced way above the odds, who’s going to buy them?

Pete Kafka at All Things Digital reports today that publisher Conde Nast is set to increase the price of the iPad versions of its Vanity Fair and GQ titles by $1 and $2 respectively. The reason is increasedproduction costs after they switched from an in-house publishing system to an Adobe-built solution, but the result? Well, digital magazines haven’t exactly taken off so far. Who’s going to want them at an even higher price?

When GQ launched for the iPad last May, the magazine’s vice president of publishing Pete Hunsinger said, “This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage… Everything is profit, and I look forward to the time when iPad issue sales become a major component to our circulation.” Well, that’s only going to happen if that reduced production an distribution cost is fairly represented in the price consumers pay.

It’s not just the publishers being greedy, either. Since the introduction of its 30%-grabbing iPad subscription programme recently, have you heard of any publishers jumping to sign up? No – they’re all up in arms about having to either take a hit on their profits or increase their prices. It looks like between them, Apple and the publishers are killing iPad magazines with greed.

The Android Alternative

Conde Nast was showing off Android editions of Wired and The New Yorker at Mobile World Congress last month. They’re set to launch exclusively for the Motorola Xoom at first, with support fort more tablets over time. Google has taken a much lighter approach to paid content with the 10% commission on its recently launched One Pass system.

Might Android end up being the natural home for digital publishers looking to make a decent profit? That depends if Android tablets can ever compete with the iPad on the initial cost of the device. At present, we’ve yet to see an iPad equivalent Android tablet that matches it at price too.

Where do we go from here?

So, right now it appears that there’s virtually no way to make magazines appealing on tablets. They’re either on the iPad and expensive or unprofitable, or on Android with a minuscule audience. Either way, maybe they’re simply not ready for ready for the mainstream thanks to one other important factor – production costs.

At first glance, it makes no sense whatsoever that I can buy a year’s subscription to Wired’s UK magazine for £24, a price that would get me just ten issues of the iPad version. However, what’s saved on printing and trucks is more than made up for in additional development costs, it seems. Wired’s Chris Anderson said recently that developing its iPad application currently requires 20% extra resources over the print version, due to the inclusion of interactive elements and video.

In time, when production costs for ‘whizz-bang’ extra features reduce and its audience grows, maybe Android will emerge as the perfect home for tablet-based magazines. That said, maybe Apple will make iOS more publisher friendly by reducing its 30% cut or improving terms for publishers in other ways. Either way – for now tablet magazines remain an expensive luxury. I’m sticking with paper.

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No More Digital Discount: Conde Nast Raises Prices For Two iPad Magazines

by Peter Kafka

iPad magazines haven’t been huge hits. At least in part because readers say they’re too expensive.

So this one’s a bit of a head-scratcher: Conde Nast is going to raise the prices of two of its tablet titles.

GQ and Vanity Fair used to offer readers who’d already bought a single digital issue a discount on subsequent purchases. But it’s doing away with that next month.

So effectively, loyal readers of GQ on the iPad will see prices go from $2.99 to $4.99 an issue, while Vanity Fair will go from $3.99 to $4.99.

The move is part of Conde’s decision to move those two titles, along with Glamour, from a digital publishing system it had built itself last year to one from Adobe. That’s the same system Conde already uses to publish Wired magazine and other titles, and it’s the one the publisher chose after a bake-off last fall.

The shift means Conde will stop supporting the existing apps for those three titles at Apple’s iTunes store, and will ask users to download new apps over the coming weeks. Anyone who bought digital versions of the three magazines in the last year will still be able to read them, as long as they’ve downloaded and archived the issues.* And Conde is giving readers a heads up via in-app ads like the one to the left.*

Conde will try to goose sales for Glamour, the first magazine to shift platforms, by cutting the app’s price down to $0.99 for a week starting next Tuesday. Which should be a good way to help the app move to the top of iTunes’ charts – people love cheap apps.

So why push the price back up after that? And why raise prices for the other two titles?

Conde says the platform shift gives the publisher a chance to “reexamine pricing”, and that it now wants to sell all of its digital titles at the same price analog copies command at a newsstand. (Or close to it – both the New Yorker and Wired still sell for a dollar less at iTunes than their paper counterparts).

Which is really a way of saying “boy oh boy would we like to sell subscriptions, because when we do, we’ll offer monthly or yearly committments at a steep discount to individual sales, just like we do with paper copies.”

But that’s not going to be happening at iTunes anytime soon, because none of the big magazine publishers have shown any inclination to accept Apple’s subscription rules – at least for titles they’re already sellingin paper form. Meanwhile Conde has announced that it plans to sell its digital magazines for Google’s Android this spring – but has yet to mention subscriptions.

*If you have to reset your machine entirely, though, you’ll be out of luck altogether. Sometimes digital just isn’t as durable as paper and ink.

**The shift also means that anyone who has enjoyed reading Glamour, GQ or Vanity Fair on their iPhone is out of luck. Conde says for the near-term, its new magazine apps will only be formatted for the iPad.

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