Will print magazine readers, who can currently access most if not all of an issue's content for free on the Web, pay for a portable touchscreen multimedia version of each issue on Apple's soon-to-arrive iPad tablet?Conde Nast has already experimented with GQ on the iPhone (pictured), where it sold 7,000 Dec. '09 issues and 15,000 Jan. '10 issues. These are not numbers likely to wow the beancounters, but it's a start.
Now the publisher is set to announce that it's planning to publish iPad versions of five of its top titles: GQ, Wired, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Glamour.
According to the New York Times, "GQ will have a tablet version of its April issue ready. Vanity Fair and Wired will follow with their June issues, and The New Yorker and Glamour will have issues in the summer."
That's a good diversity of upscale material with which to test the waters -- a men's magazine, a women's magazine, a general interest magazine, and a techie magazine. Plus one that is weekly and notoriously text-heavy.
We salute the staffs for their pioneering spirit... and can't wait to see what they will do with multimedia and video.
Which titles will you download on iTunes?
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1 comment:
To me it depends on whether I can search back-issues and whether I can save articles to my computer. I can do that with a pdf, with a web page's html, and by scanning a real magazine.
If I can, then I'd pick up the NYer, Vanity Fair and WIRED.
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