As for me, I just prefer printed versions of my favourite magazines. And also I sometimes read for free the materials from their websites. And so do many people. Maybe the situation will change in future in favour of the iPad, but I don’t think it’ll happen too soon.

How about the Zinio app? Using the App you can buy and subscribe to over 100 titles and get annual subscriptions. And there are other similar apps as well.

$4.5 billion? Is that gross or net?

Every day there are news items, blog posts, etc, by printing and publishing companies stating that print is still highly relevant or more annoyingly put “More relevant today then it ever was…” Because the iPad this and the iPad that.

The iPad is the first (or the proper first) of its kind and it was released less then half a year ago. Seems kinda logical that people are still sceptical, that not everyone in the world owns an iPad yet, and that people still prefer paper. People are ALWAYS sceptical when new things come out. Those 3 million are the early adpoters, and I think it only shows the beginning of something big (3 million is quite a number for early adopters)… other companies will soon create similar products; Dell, Microsoft, HP, and many more, are all working on something like it. It seems short sighted to start asking people whether they prefer paper or digital when paper has been around for ages and the iPad a few months… people are stupid.

We shouldn’t focus on right now, we should focus on what the effect will be in 5 or 10 years… let’s say the iPad will keep selling 3-5 million of them each year… and let’s say 6 million competing products by dell, HP and the rest of them, will be sold each year… and the most important thing: let’s say that computers/laptops will also go through some development, making them also an even better medium for magazines and other types of print. Where will that position print?

Things will change. Print won’t dissapear, it will just re-position itself. Print will become a specialty product, a premium communication medium. Some magazines will remain in print, others will move to a digital version… it is just changing. We need to focus on this; where will it go and how should printers re-position themselves.

Because printers all have that ache in the back of our heads that makes them sure things will change… they’re just using all these types of consumer research to re-assure themselves.

There are MANY subscriptions available through Zinio. Do your research.

I’m wondering is it better to keep things things separate or does it make more sense buying a subscription and getting the issue in either or both forms? I mean sometimes I want to read the magazine since I like actually holding a real magazine from time to time. On the otherhand, if I just read an article and I want to remember a fact I just read or share this fact with a friend then the digital version works much better. Also, how great would it be to do a search in the mag app and find only articles focused on my interests like “Acoustic Guitars” or whatever. This would be awesome and save a ton of time. So I say raise the price of subscriptions and just give me both options and allow me to cancel one format if it gets to overwhelming. How great would the digital versions be if they included SEO, Keywords and Anchor Text from a marketing perspective.

Yet print media (not all but majority) did not embrace the web (and its ugly little sisters) for what they are. This is easily understood as one can compare subscriptions like done here because publication equals in amount and content. What is the point? Paper version does not require a $500 reader and the battery never dies. If I buy an app for iPad, I would expect features only available there, only possible there, something unique; else why not go to the web site and – if so – pay for my user account.

And why is it not possible to subscribe to all editorial content no matter where it is published and then decide if I need a paper copy (and only pay the copy, not twice the content). Sadly, only very few of the publishers offer that.

And as for the poor trees: I do not have data for the US, but in the EU more than 90% of all newspapers and magazines are printed on all recycled paper, in Germany, the Netherlands (and perhaps others) 100%. And even if US magazines were all made of fresh cut trees, I am pretty confident, the environmental impact of building a handheld like iPad would bust that by far.

You made a good point there. I made an investigation on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. Any way I’ll subscribe to your feed and I hope you post again soon.

It is rare for me to find something on the web that’s as
entertaining and fascinating as what you have got here. Your page is sweet,
your graphics are great, and what’s more, you use references that are relevant
to what you are talking about. You’re definitely one in a million, well done!

We still get a massive amount of people coming to our site to buying digital magazines on a whole host of different devices, so we can certainly say that iPad magazines are winning right now!