Exact Editions Blog

This being the time of year when we look back with nostalgia, and peer into the future with a degree of hope, we think it may be useful to give some guidance as to our reasons for thinking that digital magazines are in for a very exciting and rewarding year in 2012. The business of digital magazines is clearly going mainstream. Here are some predictions:

1. Apple will introduce iPad 3 in the second quarter and it will be a ‘retina

Justin Williams who blogs at Carpeaqua has some fairly trenchant views on the current state of magazine apps for iPad:

Reading magazines on the iPad is an exercise in frustration. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. As great a device and, more importantly, platform as Apple has created, magazine publishers have done nothing short of fumble the snap in their own end zone.

I read a lot of magazines. They are great for people with short attention spans like myself,

Reuters reports some trenchant and surprising views from David Carey, President of Hearst
Magazines.

Hearst’s digital strategy differs from its competitors in that it charges for digital subscriptions whether or not a person is a print subscriber to one of its magazines…………

Carey argued that the cost to subscribe to a monthly magazine, which ranges from $12 to $15 on average, is low enough to charge more for other products.

“We feel if people want the content in multiple formats

There seems to be a good chance that the Kindle Fire will be an effective, low end, competitor for the iPad as a platform for digital magazines. How effective do we think it will be?

We might start by looking at some numbers. The problem is that while Apple gives us precise totals for iPad device sales, on a quarter by quarter basis. Amazon has historically given very little information about Kindle sales, either about the device or about the … Keep Reading