Within weeks of the release of Apple’s first iPad in 2010, business and technology pundits alike were already making lofty predictions about the miracle device’s curative prowess. In this way, the kid working at the Apple Store became an anachronistic medicine man; a quasi-hip tinker who had traded in his traveling cart of nostrums for the wonders of a mystical, all-healing tablet.
“Is your cherished institution trapped in the middle of a liminal minefield,” he’d ask from behind the buffer of his black, thick-rimmed glasses. “Well no worries, friend. We’ve got an app for that.” The fact that a good measure of this spiel was immediately and continuously pitched towards the magazine industry made (and makes) a lot of sense.
The publishing business had been ailing for the better part of two decades by the time the first iPad hit the shelves. According to a study completed by the Association of Magazine Media, more than 550 consumer magazines went under between 1990-2000. The span between 2000-2008 saw at least 850 additional closures. When heavy-hitters like Gourmet and US News & World Report began to cancel their print publications in favor of a more active online presence, the subsequent internet chatter invoked images of melting icecaps and drowning polar bears as contrarians around the world speculated the moribund prospects of long-form journalism.
Then came Apple’s shiny, magazine-sized slate. It sold 14.8 million units in its first eight months, and the whole internet went a twitter as the first digital edition of Wired Magazine sold over 100,000 copies through its online storefront. Suddenly, some of the very same doom-saying pundits were ready to announce the arrival of the magazine industry’s benevolent savior, a forward-thinking device that would forever change the way we read and digest the written word.
Having had a year and a half to wade through the initial hyperbole, the argument that these devices can augment a publisher’s print products seems to be without any real detractors. But can the iPad and its wave of imitators really save the magazine business altogether?
When I asked this question to Jay Lauf, vice-president and publisher of The Atlantic Magazine, he took the opportunity to wax a bit existential. “How do you define a magazine?” he retorted. “Ten years from now it might be something completely different from what we have right now.”
As to what the magazine business will look like in the future, Lauf did not care to speculate. He went on to say that anyone who sounds too definitive about where the industry is headed might be guilty of false bravado.
“I don’t think it’s wrong for anyone to be excited about iPads and tablets and the promise that they hold,” he said. “But if you are putting all of your eggs in that basket, or if you’re claiming that they alone will save print magazines, I think you’re being a little irrationally exuberant.”
Sentiments like these make speaking with magazine executives in 2011 akin to channeling a pragmatic Jack Benny circa 1951.
“We’re in the middle of a revolution, and revolutions are gut-wrenching and scary,” Lauf relented. “But I don’t think you would be in this business if you weren’t an optimist.”
Even to a staunch technophile, the Pollyanna-ish idea that any single device could drop out of the ethers and change an age-old business model overnight should prove at least mildly presumptuous. For Lauf and other publishers there are certain rules in place and complicated relationships in order. Before the print medium itself can be abandoned, its replacement will need to be thoroughly vetted, a process that could take years to accomplish.
That said, publishers seem to have come to a consensus that from a technical standpoint, tablets and magazines have all the makings of a perfect marriage. A print magazine has to be printed, shipped, and delivered. This requires paper and glue and ink. Digital distribution opens entire new worlds of cheaper options, while also allowing for the sort of aesthetic enhancements and interactive features that can actively engage readers in a brand new way.
Without exception, every publisher I spoke with reveled at the technological opportunities presented by tablets. This was especially true with Declan Moore, president of National Geographic Publishing, who, like Lauf, isn’t quite ready to declare a new world order in terms of revenue and profit models, but remains excited about how his brand in particular can benefit from the devices.
“The tablet is the intersection between the page and the web,” he said. “What is very exciting is the rich experiences that you can create on the tablet, because the photos looks so beautiful, and because you are consuming the intellectual property in a new way. You aren’t hunting and gathering the way you do on the web.”
Perhaps more than any other magazine, National Geographic’s strengths play right into the brawn of the tablet computer’s unique capabilities. Citing his magazine’s diminutive size and iconic yellow border—both of which have been in place since the late 19th century and are in about as much danger of being replaced as Harlem’s Charlie Rangel—Moore believes the iPad in particular allows the company to dramatically improve the presentation of one of its greatest boons: award-winning photography.
“The original size [of the magazine] has to do with the fact that it used to be a geographic journal,” he said. “What is exciting for our designers is that [with the tablet] you lose the border and the gutter on the page.”
Moore went on to describe a picture of a majestic redwood tree, free from borders, able to be fully explored by scrolling downward on an iPad’s screen.
He believes this tactile approach to the magazine heightens the reader’s senses. The colors in the application pop. The captions are clear and legible. Items such as maps and diagrams are interactive and videos and popup boxes a mere touch away. In many ways, the publication has never looked better.
Seeing how National Geographic’s iPad app might just serve as the paragon for the interactive 21st century magazine, it isn’t hard to imagine how such a prescient product might send the Apple iTunes store into a tizzy. Yet despite praise of the application’s quality, sales have proven more or less humbling. According to Moore, monthly download numbers have resided “in the modest single digits of thousands.” And other magazines are seeing similar results. After Wired’s initial surge on the iPad, the application’s monthly sales dropped from 100,000 in July of 2010 to between 20,000 and 30,000 in the early months of 2011.
The reason for this is summed up by the following complaint, posted on the iTunes review section under the National Geographic storefront sometime in May. Note that this example is considerably kinder than most:
“As a subscriber to the print magazine, I cannot view the current iPad issue for free. I love how they have made features iPad-specific, but to have to pay more than my print subscription is stupid.”—Matt2g
This complaint, of course, isn’t unique to National Geographic. Similar messages can be found under just about every other magazine offered on iTunes as well. And while every publisher I spoke with insisted that a subscription model for the iPad was imminent, the issue has been perhaps the one major roadblock from the consumer adoption end. As of early July, applications such as National Geographic’s iPad edition serve essentially as individualized storefronts, where magazines are sold for around $5 per issue regardless of whether or not a person already holds a print subscription. To this day, the majority of magazines available on iTunes have yet to synthesize their print subscriber data with their digital editions, ostensibly forcing their customers to double-dip.
To be fair, until recently, this set up wasn’t entirely the magazine publishers’ fault. The subscriber quoted above, respectful as he was, had no way of knowing that Apple only launched their in-app subscription service this February. Or that Moore and other publishers have been calling for this capability since the inception of the iPad. Even after it finally became a viable option, it still took a few months for publications to crunch the numbers and send their respective techies to work.
Either way, as the initial subscription numbers begin to trickle in from those who have already made the jump, it seems that publishers believe in the new system. According to Lauf, print subscribers of The Atlantic should soon be able to access their copy of the magazine through their iPad—something he’d intended to implement from the start, had it been allowed. Likewise, Moore implied that the subscription complaints were more than valid, and insisted that a subscription model for National Geographic would be in place “any day now.”
Tomorrow: Even if the iPad’s in-app subscription function successfully addresses the one major roadblock hindering hesitant consumers, it still does little to attenuate the real root cause of the magazine industry’s continued struggles: advertisement sales. Read Part 2.