This is a page from The Magazine, an ezine-in-an-app that’s now available on the App Store for a dollar.
By itself, it’s not much to write home about in my opinion. The presentation is amateurish and the content not terribly interesting. And there simply isn’t very much of it. Not my kind of magazine at all, frankly.
But what’s more interesting is the concept of a mag-as-an-app.
I think it’s something that we’re going to see the print magazine business adopting and embracing, because it offers them a way to boost their flagging sales without having to mess around printing expensive ink on expensive paper, and then having to cart all the printed paper around in expensive trucks.
The world of print media is in crisis. Sure, you say, the entire global economy is in crisis. Yes but print has been declining for years as sales fall and costs spiral upwards and out of sight. The current global situation is (or is going to be) the final straw for many publications that have been teetering on the edge for so many months.
Much effort has been put into ezines and webmags and emags and whatever else you want to call them, but the focus has always been on what are essentially customized web sites or big bulky PDF files. I’ve not yet seen something electronic that could really equate – even vaguely – to the concept of a magazine.
Because for me (and I think for many other people), the whole point of magazines is that they are mobile. You buy one when you’re out and about. To read in the coffee shop, or on the plane or train. Magazines are made to be pushed into handbags, briefcases and laptop carriers. They’re the right size, and the right feel, to be a portable, pleasurable reading experience.
This app serves as a useful pointer in a particular direction. The iPhone’s touch screen is the closest digital alternative to portable, pleasureable reading that I’ve seen anywhere. It offers magazines a fabulous opportunity.
What I’d like to see – what I expect to see – on the App Store over the next 12 months is branded apps that put a magazine in your pocket. I don’t know which financial model will work best (perhaps a single app that auto-updates its content, or a reader app into which you download magazines (as you can already do with Stanza), or a model where you download and pay for each issue of each magazine as and when you want it). It’s up to the publishers to experiment.
But somehow, the big name mags are going to start experimenting in this space sooner rather than later. I can’t wait to be able to download an Economist, a Monocle, maybe even a Private Eye, when I’m about to embark on a train journey.
