iPad & digital distribution will be the future of magazine journalism

I always liked the form of journalism, where the stories are longer, have a narrative style & go in-depth yet not as much as a book. It need not be instant. For that we have TV news anyway, right? So, I was always a magazine junkie. No surprises, I’m also the CEO, Publisher of Southscope, which marries my two interests – movies & magazines.

I love the magazines America has, almost on every wide topic & niche. Wired, Fast Company, GQ,  Entertainment Weekly, INC & T3 are amongst my favorites. I always end up buying the imported versions of these magazine at Rs 500-700 a piece, that too a month or so after they hit the stands elsewhere.

The first thing that got me excited about the iPad, was that it was touted as the future of media consumption, especially magazines. In the last one month, I bought an iPad, paid for magazines, downloaded them & read them when I usually read magazines – while lounging at home or on-flight when all other devices dont work.

I can safely conclude that the iPad & other tablet devices which are going to hit the market are the future of magazine publishing. But, its not quite there yet.

Not Quite there Yet.

I have downloaded the “apps” (applications) of GQ, Wired & Time. Wired, a technology magazine was the first to jump onto the iPad bandwagon. Each magazine is sized at 500MB. My iPad only has 32GB of space, so thats a bummer. For each page, there are two version – the vertical layout & the horizontal layout (See image). Wired’s idea was to keep the magazine as close to the print edition as possible. I couldn’t change the text size.Wired’s e-magazine is a compilation of 100s of jpeg put together.  For US readers, there is no savings in price too as the newsstand version & the iPad version costs the same – $4.99.

Next up was TIME. The layout had the ‘theme’ of the print version, but was dynamic. The text could be enlarged. The navigation was easy to use. It also had a ‘live feed’ where latest articles from the website would show up in the app. It made a decent read. The last was my favorite magazines – GQ, but the biggest disppointment. It was one giant PDF file with copy protection!

The good part about all the three magazines I downloaded is that they had an easy to use navigation system. It was easy to find the articles of my interest. Attached are screencaps, which show navigation menu on the iPad which is better than print.

No interactivity, No social.

The only thing I found interactive were the ads! They look like print ads, but when you click can play videos! One of the simple things one expect in an e-mag is text search which a PDS lets you do. It isnt available on either of the magazines. Offline, for magazine I could atleast cut clips I like & file them or scan. Here, nothing of that sort was possible. Just read & save. I understand some of the content is exclusive for ‘paying customers’ hence sharing would be restricted, but a lot of the stories are readily available on their website. They could have atleast let us share those few articles. Also, “sharing” could work as sampling and help a lot of non-users convert into users.

Better images, no size restriction.

I still love holding a printed magazine & read but one thing the iPad beats the printed version hands-down is images. The images, be it editorial or advertising looks crisp on the iPad’s pristine display. In print, we’re restricted by space limitation. Articles are limited by number of words. We can only use a few images. On the digital front, publishers dont have size restrictions and we could use more images to make the story telling effective.

Limitation of Physical distribution.

This is the single largest motivation for all magazine publishers to embrace the iPad & other tablet devices. The print product costs a lot to produce. Most magazines lose money on each sale. For ex : Your average daily newspaper in India costs Rs 12-16 to produce, but is sold at Rs 2. The remaining cost is absorbed by advertising. Likewise, one copy of Southscope costs way more than the Rs 50 we sell it for. Other magazines too cost more to produce than what they’re sold for. From the newsstand price, we have to pay stores & distributors their cut. The actuals that come to us are only a fraction. So its obvious we lose money on each copy sold. The cost for producing a digital version of the magazine, would be fraction of that of the physical copy. Which means the publisher can actually make money selling magazines rather than losing on them. Publishers instead of incentivizing readers to move to the digital version by keeping it a tad lower than the print edition, have kept the prices the same. I can understand for Indian magazines wish cost Rs 25-50 ($.5 to $1) which is too low a price to sell an e-magazine. But American magazines vary between $3.99 to & $7.99 and definitely can sell their digital version at a lower cost.

Since the each print copy costs a lot to produce, we have to estimate the ‘demand’ correctly. If we print a lot & they dont sell, we bleed heavily. The digital version is only ‘produced’ only when there is a sale, so there is no wastage. You also help the planet by eliminating paper, but nobody cares about it which is another issue! We have demand for the magazine from even the remote areas of Karnataka, Orissa, metros outside South India & overseas audience. But its very hard to reach these readers through physical distribution. For ex : There might be 25 people in New York City who is interested in buying a copy of Southscope. But, imagine the effort it takes to print, ship the copy & make it available there. Imagine the the cost involved. Also, which stores do we stock them at? These 25 people could be spread across New York. We dont expect them to travel to the same store to buy our copy, nor can we stock it in all major news stands in the city, for just those 25 readers. So,we’re forced to let go off them. Even if they ordered the physical copy online, the cost is still the same. We have a small but sizeable audience in abroad and cities like Pune, Kolkata, Delhi & Mumbai. Digitial distribution would enable us to reach them better. Also, the futher the distance from Hyderabad, the longer it takes to reach the stands as we print it at Kalajyothy press & dispatch it from our office. Where as the digital version, the distance doesn’t matter.

Amazon Kindle, Zinio & others

There are other avenues of digital distribution. One of them is the Amazon Kindle. Last heard that Amazon & Sony are are trying to bring out dedicated color book readers without all the high-end jazz the iPad has like games, movies & browsing. Another great medium to reach our non-Apple audience is Zinio. Its a popular site that lets you buy the digital version of print magazines, by downloading their proprietary Zinio Reader. The best part about Zinio is it allows “portability”. You can buy a copy, read it either on your PC or your iPad. Also, the file-size of a Zinio magazine is a fraction of an iPad app, but the experience is better. I downloaded a copy of Esquire magazine and its just26mb. You can read all your magazines from the same app & lets you copy some of the text & send it to yourself or others over email.

Publishers catching up, making changes.

The publishers are realizing the short coming of their iPad apps & digital distribution front.GQ, Time made minor tweaks to their apps already and requested users to update their software. Since its an evolving medium, changed are bound to happen. Interactivity will slowly come. For ex : A celebrity tabloid could have a pic of a star & ask your to rate their style. Or have a contest embedded with the app, where your reply will be sent to them directly instead of you manually couriering it & or through email. The big names in print are watching this space closely & betting big on it. So are we.  As publishers, we’re looking to develop an iPad & iPhone/iTouch application. We’re indentifying the right tech-enabler to partner with us on this iniative. Slowly we would like to reach out all our audiences spread across geographies through the digital medium, be it through iPad, Blackberry or any other device that allows content delivery & monetization. Fow now, as a magazine junkie I am enjoying my monthly dose of GQ & Wired on the iPad.