Economist Does iPad Right, Why Can't New Yorker?

On Nov. 19, 2010, the Economist released mobile apps for iPad and iPhone. I received email notification the same day and new print issue with info about the apps a few hours later. Economist charges one fee to subscribers. My print subscription provides access to online content and now to the mobile apps. That’s exactly the right approach. So why are so many other publishers doing digital wrong?

From the Economist email:

From today, the full print edition will be available to download for reading on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch by 9pm London time (4pm New York time) each Thursday. We have reformatted the newspaper to make the most of these devices while retaining the familiar feel of the Economist, with all the articles, charts, maps and images from each week’s print edition.

All articles are fully cached for reading even when you don’t have an internet connection. And we have included our audio edition so you can listen to every article, read by professional newscasters, with easy switching between reading and listening.

Full access to the Economist via the apps is included with your current subscription.

Full access “included” with my print subscription is outstanding. It’s just what I, or you, deserve for being a loyal print subscriber. By comparison, to get each week’s New Yorker on iPad, readers must pay $4.99 per issue, whether they are casual readers or subscribers. It’s a simply stupid approach: Punish loyal customers by separately charging them everywhere they read. Condé Nast editors should instead reward loyal subscribers and seek to move the readership away from print to digital, which would greatly reduce publication and distribution costs.

Wired.com, which also is owned by Condé Nast, put some perspective on the ridiculous digital pricing in September 27 post. John Abell writes:

Media executives inside and outside of Condé Nast have told wired.com that they are determined to try to charge more for digital subscriptions than they do for print—small digital dollars instead of print pennies—because they believe they are offering a much greater experience and value than possible on paper.

My New Yorker subscription expired in early summer, but I chose not to renew. I assumed that an iPad app would soon release, and it came in late September. But the $5 per-copy pricing simply stunned. There is no “greater experience” for which I would pay $4.99 a week, when a yearly print subscription is $39.95 for 47 issues. Would you? Did you? The New Yorker‘s approach is likely to hurt the magazine’s long-term economics with paying customers and to slow down digital adoption.

Early Ebook and Digital Magazine Comparisons
Some historical perspective: I read my first ebook in 1999, and I repeatedly praised the format as the logical successor to print. Among the benefits:

  • Publishers could increase margins by reducing publication costs
  • Ebooks are more convenient to carry and font-sizes are adjustable
  • Consumers could buy ebooks for less than they would pay for print
  • Digital could make publishing easier and cheaper for newer writers
  • Book publishers could make available out-of-print titles in digital formats

In March 2000, when I worked at CNET News.com, colleague Evan Hansen asked: “Is online publishing ready for prime time?” He asked the right question. Stephen King released a digital download around that time, and there were e-book investments from Barnesandnoble.com, Microsoft and Time Warner, among others. The ebook was posed to be big business. But it flopped; signature failure: Shuttering of Barnesandnoble.com’s ebook three year after its opening— RIP: 2000-2003. There are many reasons why in the early go, e-books flopped, but one stands out: Pricing. Publishers generally priced e-books the same as hard cover editions, negating all the aforementioned benefits while taking away others, such as lending.

Amazon deserves high praise for breaking the ebook pricing logjam and providing through Kindle Reader a mass-market consumption device. Amazon made e-books affordable, an approach Condé Nast should apply to digital magazines like the New Yorker. Book publishers weren’t threatened by the Internet in the early Noughties the way magazine and newspaper publishers are today. Publishers struggle to make money, in part because they give so much content away for free. So what? Their remedy is to bleed loyalists and let the rabble scoff down free content?

Changing Economics Demand New Approaches
In August 2009, I asked: “Can You Charge for News? Ask Google“. The answer is disturbing. I looked at three organizations—Advertising Age, GigOM and Wall Street Journal—using three different paywall models. But all three organizations shared one thing in common: Their content in some form or another is accessible by Google search bots. In April 2010 post “The Price You Pay Google for Paywalls“, I casestudied Reid Reviews. The site is behind a paywall, with only two pages available to Google search. The result: Reid Reviews is nearly invisible. What’s that saying? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, does it make a sound?”

Back-end publishing economics are the same today as 20 years ago. Publisher pays someone to write content, which subscribers used to pay for. But with so much stuff given away for free online, to support the Google search-driven economy, publishers give readers less incentive—in many instances none whatsoever—to pay. Content still costs to produce, but fewer people pay for it. Digital subscriptions are a new market where people can pay. The question is approach. The New Yorker chooses to treat iPad like single-copy newsstand sales. That makes sense for non-subscribers. A second—it’s included in the cost of your subscription—option would reward loyal readers, and the magazine could open a new market on iPad and other portable devices. As explained in July, iPad reading is more immersive than any other device or print. More immersive reading should exactly be the priority of a magazine like the New Yorker. Economist has the right approach.

I can’t resist taking another dig at the New Yorker, which is meant more in fun. Since September, the magazine has sent me “past due” notices, with increasingly credit collector tones. The most recent notice warned that my “credit privileges” had been suspended. Credit for what? I pay in advance by the year. My wife and I got good laughs out of the notices, which seemed simply other-universe absurd. Three days ago, after seeing how the Economist rightly treated subscribers, I called the New Yorker asking if  there might be in the future an affordable iPad subscription. Maybe. I also took advantage of the $29.95/year offer to renew my print edition—one penny more than buy six issues on iPad.

Do you have a news media that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.