Apple Publishing Inc. (2)

Book publishers in general are happy with Apple’s iPad. The 30/70 revenue share was gladly accepted and seen as a way to break the Amazon dominance on the e-Reader market.

So much for the book publishers. One-off (book) revenue deals sound fair, but what about the newspapers and magazine market in the US? Recurring sales on newsstand is one, but just think about the subscriptions! These reader relations are dating back for years and will now be consumed by Apple.

Another issue is the ownership of subscriber data. Publishers have spent millions of the years to collect data about their readers. That knowledge not only influenced their marketing plans, but also sometimes the editorial directions a publication took. By getting separated from these data (Apple doesn’t have a habit of sharing consumer data with partners) publishers claim not to be able to make a good publication in future. Other like Conde Nast are more positive and consider the iPad as a ‘digital newsstand’.  Listen to Sarah Chubb, president of Condé Nast Digital: “We also don’t get the consumer information in a typical newsstand sale, so part of why I’ve been thinking conceptually about this is, out of the gate, we think of it as a newsstand buyer.”

The companies will also pull in revenue from advertisers through the iPad. Condé Nast has gotten its GQ iPhone app approved by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That means each copy sold digitally counts in the same way as a newsstand copy, and is included in its guaranteed circulation. It plans to do the same with iPad copies. That means if the iPad and iPhone apps take off, Condé Nast could charge advertisers more for each ad page. Smart!

Another interesting thought I read goes like this: media is segmented by format, vehicle and purpose. Books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television and movies stand alone as distinct entities. However, the iPad presents new possibilities for blurring the lines between these various media types. Unlike the iPhone, the iPad mimics the size and portability of traditional printed material such as books and magazines. In the example of the New York Times, the design of the page is easy on the eyes and demonstrates how typography and page design can be preserved in digital media.

And this one:  good news for advertisers, too. The creative ads we are accustomed to seeing in printed publications can be incorporated into page layouts for the iPad app, eliminating ineffective and irritating banner and pop-up ads that plague browser-based versions.

Finally this reassuring one: it is once the dust settles and a preferred tablet OS is established or two (next blog), competing for that space, that we should begin to get nervous about a possible dominant role of Apple in publishing land. For now, I think they deserve a big hug and thumbs up!

“There’s no iMagazines and there’s no iNews,” said Sara Ohrvall, senior vice president, of research and development for Swedish media company Bonnier. “Either we have to package our products much differently, or we just lost the paid content game.” The simple answer is that magazines should offer their own apps to control the distribution.