http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/03/12/steve-jobs-ghost-hi-res-ipad-will-undermine-the-magazine-model/
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One of the design decisions that Steve Jobs made about iTunes—and for
better or worse, one that has been responsible for its tremendous
success—was to make the primary unit of sale the song as opposed to the
album. Jobs was a classic rock, album-oriented guy as much as any
boomer, but he saw what was going on in the world of illicit file
sharing and realized that the kids were trading in songs already.
But when it comes to the world of magazine publishing, that lesson has not yet been learned.
With the entry of the “New iPad” with it’s high-resolution retina display, the traditional magazine model will come under increased pressure. Here’s why:
When magazines entered the digital space, they brought their “album-oriented” approach with them. Publishers call them “issues” or sometimes “editions,” but readers have called them loosely associated bundles of content, only a fraction of which they will actually read.
Files sizes of existing digital magazines are already high and have become a pain point for users. As Steve Smith asks in MINonline, “For magazine publishers the next-gen iPad’s “Retina Display” raises an interesting math problem. The doubling of resolution and pixel density opens up worlds of opportunity for crafting even more luscious visual experiences. But at what cost to consumers already frustrated with the massive files size of many digital editions?”
As David Sleight points out in his Stuntbox blog, “The iOS apps created by systems from Adobe, Woodwing, Mag+, and others—the platforms used by the bulk of traditional publishers to crank out their iPad magazines right now—are essentially collections of PDFs or JPGs exported out of programs like InDesign and bound inside a wrapper application. Basically, they boil down to pictures of layouts, photos, and text.”
Condé Nast and other major publishers are well aware of the problem. Pamela McCarthy, deputy editor for The New Yorker, said in a recent New York Times Bits blog past, “Reducing file size is something that we’ve been working on since the start.” And Howard Mittman, the publisher of Wired told Steve Smith, “You can safely assume that those of us in a leadership position haven’t been waiting around for this article to formulate our strategies. We’ve known about these changes for quite some time.”
Sleight lays out three options for publishers, “1) Do nothing; 2) Start building dynamic layout and text rendering engines; or 3) Begin basing their platforms on Web technologies.” The first one is obviously not an option, and the second and third are good ideas, but don’t address the biggest part of the equation which is all of the high-resolution photographs that will make the magazine experience on the new iPad so compelling.
I would like to suggest an obvious fourth option: unbundle the content.
Although readers do enjoy the serendipity of the way magazines are put together, I don’t think this is the rising line of media consumption. People have been trained by Google to expect to get the best version of what they are looking for, quickly.
Anthony Wing
Kosner, Contributor
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But when it comes to the world of magazine publishing, that lesson has not yet been learned.
With the entry of the “New iPad” with it’s high-resolution retina display, the traditional magazine model will come under increased pressure. Here’s why:
When magazines entered the digital space, they brought their “album-oriented” approach with them. Publishers call them “issues” or sometimes “editions,” but readers have called them loosely associated bundles of content, only a fraction of which they will actually read.
Files sizes of existing digital magazines are already high and have become a pain point for users. As Steve Smith asks in MINonline, “For magazine publishers the next-gen iPad’s “Retina Display” raises an interesting math problem. The doubling of resolution and pixel density opens up worlds of opportunity for crafting even more luscious visual experiences. But at what cost to consumers already frustrated with the massive files size of many digital editions?”
As David Sleight points out in his Stuntbox blog, “The iOS apps created by systems from Adobe, Woodwing, Mag+, and others—the platforms used by the bulk of traditional publishers to crank out their iPad magazines right now—are essentially collections of PDFs or JPGs exported out of programs like InDesign and bound inside a wrapper application. Basically, they boil down to pictures of layouts, photos, and text.”
Condé Nast and other major publishers are well aware of the problem. Pamela McCarthy, deputy editor for The New Yorker, said in a recent New York Times Bits blog past, “Reducing file size is something that we’ve been working on since the start.” And Howard Mittman, the publisher of Wired told Steve Smith, “You can safely assume that those of us in a leadership position haven’t been waiting around for this article to formulate our strategies. We’ve known about these changes for quite some time.”
Sleight lays out three options for publishers, “1) Do nothing; 2) Start building dynamic layout and text rendering engines; or 3) Begin basing their platforms on Web technologies.” The first one is obviously not an option, and the second and third are good ideas, but don’t address the biggest part of the equation which is all of the high-resolution photographs that will make the magazine experience on the new iPad so compelling.
I would like to suggest an obvious fourth option: unbundle the content.
Although readers do enjoy the serendipity of the way magazines are put together, I don’t think this is the rising line of media consumption. People have been trained by Google to expect to get the best version of what they are looking for, quickly.
For magazine publishers, this
means learning the lessons that successful online publications,
Forbes.com being a leader among them, have baked into their business
models. Know what your audience cares about and, in the words of Chief
Product Officer Lewis DVorkin, give them, “The quality, quantity
and variety” of content that they desire. This may mean selling them
digital magazine stories, complete with gorgeous photos and glossy-style
advertising, a la carte. Highly popular stories could be completely ad
supported, perhaps for a limited time or number of downloads.
Entire issues will still exist in print and in their HTML5 web and mobile web incarnations, but at lower resolutions. Responsive image delivery schemes and Akami-style performance boosting will help with this as well.
But if consumers do indeed buy the stories they want like they cherry pick songs on iTunes, it will change the publishing model for magazines from issue based to platform based, just like it is on the rest of the web.
Entire issues will still exist in print and in their HTML5 web and mobile web incarnations, but at lower resolutions. Responsive image delivery schemes and Akami-style performance boosting will help with this as well.
But if consumers do indeed buy the stories they want like they cherry pick songs on iTunes, it will change the publishing model for magazines from issue based to platform based, just like it is on the rest of the web.
