Leading Resource for Magazine Publishing Professionals
Media Vent
By Bob Sacks
About Bob
Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.
Pub Talk
Don't Let Your Advertisers Put You Out of Business
Mar 8, 2010Perhaps publishers are becoming the 85-year-old widowed grandmother who gets taken by the nice guy on the phone offering to...
The iPad: A Natural Fit for Digital Magazines
As you all know, I have been tracking the iPad very closely. It is my belief that it is an important device. But why? The answer is that it isn't so much a device as a universal translator platform, much the same way that an iPhone is not just a phone. It's also an ever-evolving platform for the new Web 3.0 concept called apps. Apps are nothing but applications, much like we all have on any of our computers. They perform specific functions and are sold by the hundreds of thousands. On an iPhone, or now on an iPad, they transform the device/platform into damn near anything. That is the beauty and the innate power of the concept.
This terrific power is being offered to publishers, but at a terrible price. The price is the total revision of our age-old business model. If we sell products through the Apple iStore, we don't get to capture the customers' data. And that is a relationship-breaker rather than a relationship-developer. Our publishing model used to be about developing relationships and up-selling our products over an extended period of time. I will speak more on that subject in another blog post.
That said, it is my belief that the iPad is more powerful than most people realize, because the product is a constantly morphing, magical, anything-you-want-it-to-be thingamajig. Only your imagination—or lack thereof—can prevent it from becoming, well, almost anything. There are 140,000 apps right now for the iPhone. They all work on the iPad, too, and we are just getting started. Apple announced the iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007—a mere three years ago. Can you imagine what is in store for a device like this three years from now?
For publishers, it is a special moment in time—a chance to gain a new set of readers without abandoning the very special realm of paginated media. Above all else, we need to take the concept of the page where perhaps it was intended to go all along. Keeping the page format empowers us to do what we have done for 100 years—sell advertisers our very valuable real estate. The iPad is a natural digital magazine apparatus that just might bring the luster and the profitability of the Internet age to the publishing houses of the world. This, of course, doesn't at all mean that we have to abandon the printed page, but rather that we now have an additional pathway to monetize our franchise of content.
This terrific power is being offered to publishers, but at a terrible price. The price is the total revision of our age-old business model. If we sell products through the Apple iStore, we don't get to capture the customers' data. And that is a relationship-breaker rather than a relationship-developer. Our publishing model used to be about developing relationships and up-selling our products over an extended period of time. I will speak more on that subject in another blog post.
That said, it is my belief that the iPad is more powerful than most people realize, because the product is a constantly morphing, magical, anything-you-want-it-to-be thingamajig. Only your imagination—or lack thereof—can prevent it from becoming, well, almost anything. There are 140,000 apps right now for the iPhone. They all work on the iPad, too, and we are just getting started. Apple announced the iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007—a mere three years ago. Can you imagine what is in store for a device like this three years from now?
For publishers, it is a special moment in time—a chance to gain a new set of readers without abandoning the very special realm of paginated media. Above all else, we need to take the concept of the page where perhaps it was intended to go all along. Keeping the page format empowers us to do what we have done for 100 years—sell advertisers our very valuable real estate. The iPad is a natural digital magazine apparatus that just might bring the luster and the profitability of the Internet age to the publishing houses of the world. This, of course, doesn't at all mean that we have to abandon the printed page, but rather that we now have an additional pathway to monetize our franchise of content.
Companies Mentioned:
 |
To "I don't think so"
Worst analogy ever with Oprah. People that validate Oprah as TV show are sheep anyway. Please don't buy an IPad. Keep spending your money on make believe TV shows about fake serial killers. Your exactly the demographic advertisers drool over.
Bob,
With all this interest in the Apple iPad do you know who we contact at Apple to receive information about making our publication available through the Apple iBook store?
Thanks
Michael
Bob,
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "We can no longer capture the "customers' data".
If you want to capture something from a reader all you need to do is ask. By creating a controlled storefront for magazines Apple has created something that can only mean success for the publishing industry at a time when anyone can steal and reproduce anything.
I believe that by creating an online publishing industry publishers have the opportunity to listen to their customers like never before.
Quick Question. Do you know if you can download photos from your camera directly into the IPad? If so, will you also be able to delete photos? That alone would be a good reason to buy one. You can leave the laptop at home as you will be able to see everything you've shot on your IPad.
What no one seems to be talking about is the fact that nearly every digital magazine in existence is Flash-based, and the (much more limited than you seem to realize) iPad does not support Flash.
The iPad doesn't excite me like my iPhone. Apps remind me of the dotcom bubble...lots of ideas and investors but no real revenue plan. Aside from that, read about app useage statistics in the link accompanying this comment. With regards to publishing magazines on the iPad and using the example of MotorTrend, I'd rather watch BBC's Top Gear on TV than read MotorTrend magazine on the iPad in a "magazine format." Why read the digital version of O Magazine when you can just watch Oprah on TV (at least until she retires). Magazines will either survive in print or die all together but there is no digital magazine in the future. Furthermore, any website in existance that isn't selling a product has no future once the investment money dies. The best thing the iPad can do is hook up with some Cox, Time Warner, ATT or some other television programming provider and offer TV viewing. That would make me buy one. Or, Showtime and iPad partner to provide Dexter.