All Posts Tagged With: "magazines"

There. I’ve said it. Now that I have an iPad (and love it as a device for media consumption), I really don’t ever want to see a print magazine again. If I could, I’d happily convert all my remaining print magazine subscriptions to iPad subscriptions, and be a happy guy. (And yes, I’m willing to pay, of course.)

For now, I still have a handful of print-magazine subscriptions, though most of my reading is done online on my laptop, on the iPad, or on my iPhone. What’s left of print for me: Wired, Columbia Journalism Review, and some cycling magazines (Bike, Bicycling, Mountain Biking). I also receive a few unasked-for print magazine subscriptions. That’s it. I receive no print newspapers and haven’t for some time.

Wired for the iPad: For now, that’ll be $3.99 per iPad edition, or else go to print

My reasoning is simple enough:

1. I dislike the waste of trees and energy for physical delivery of my magazines; a digital edition delivered to my iPad is preferable environmentally.
2. Print magazines pile up in various places around my house and office, and often don’t get read. Having them all in my iPad would be so much more convenient, and I’m pretty sure that they’d get read more (vs. now, when many of them get tossed in piles for later reading, and then I find them again when they’re months old, at which point they often get tossed in the recycling bin unread).
3. Many digital editions are better, since they can include video, multimedia, interactive forms, etc.

Alas, the current state of iPad magazines is maddening. Apple, as has been reported recently, isn’t letting magazine publishers use iPad apps to sell subscriptions. Instead, we have the situation where Wired in print is $8 for an annual subscription (I just got my renewal notice). The Wired app on my iPad (free download) allows me to buy individual issues at $3.99; no subscription discount, courtesy of Apple’s resistance to permitting publishers to offer subscriptions. No thanks.

Ditto for Newsweek, but it’s even worse. The weekly per-digital-issue price on the iPad is $2.99 (no subscription offered), while a print subscription can be had for as little as $21 a year (54 issues) via magazine-subscription discounters.

Zinio offers a digital, save-trees alternative for many magazines. Via the Zinio app on my iPad, I can buy digital subscriptions for many magazines. Alas, the only one from my list of remaining print subscriptions is Bike, for $9. For the rest of my list: no option other than print. Wired, Newsweek? Not offered on Zinio.

I hope this is a temporary situation. It’s absurd for digital editions to cost more than print, considering the high costs of delivering print magazines to subscribers: printing, trucking, postage, direct-mail renewal reminders, etc. I’ll settle for the same price I pay now for iPad editions.

Here’s a tip for magazine publishers, once Apple relents on permitting subscriptions from within iPad apps:

• Low-cost digital magazine subscription for what is essentially a replica edition of the print magazine.
• Higher subscription rate for enhanced iPad edition with video and multimedia bells and whistles.

Oh, and those unasked-for magazines that show up in my mailbox? Sometimes they are publications that I’m interested in (such as our local city magazine), but please, offer me a free iPad or Zinio subscription; I don’t want print!

When is this going to get fixed?

I have a new, complimentary subscription to Field & Stream magazine (print edition). Why is that? Since I don’t fish or hunt, or have any interest whatsoever in reading about either, publisher Bonnier is wasting money by granting me an unasked-for 1-year subscription.

I’m thinking this started with my paid subscriptions to a couple printed cycling and mountain biking magazines, which apparently generated an unasked-for complimentary subscription to Outside magazine. I was fine with that, since I enjoy Outside, though I won’t pay to renew when my 1-year free trial ends (assuming it does). So my guess is that as an Outside “subscriber,” it was assumed I must also be into fishing and hunting.

This must signal signs of desperation among magazine publishers. But receiving my “free gift” annoyed me, thinking about the wasted paper and downed trees represented by a print product I don’t want. At least when I get an unasked-for online subscription (which happens occasionally), I can easily unsubscribe with a click or two and no birds lose their homes.

Now I’m curious what magazine will turn up in my mailbox unannounced next. If mountain biking leads to assumption that I like the outdoors, and that leads to another assumption that I must enjoy fishing and hunting, then what’s coming next? Perhaps Soldier of Fortune?