Folio: The Digital Newsstand: How Magazines Will Be Sold in the Tablet Age
Monday, 3 May 2010, 16:37
"From platforms created by digital edition vendors such as Zinio and Nxtbook, to newsstands directly related to devices created by Amazon and Barnes & Noble, publishers have multiple opportunities to position themselves in this new landscape."
New York Times: With Apple Tablet, Print Media Hope for a Payday
Tuesday, 26 January 2010, 09:00
"With the new tablet, media companies could be submitting themselves to similar pricing restrictions and sacrificing their direct relationship with customers to Apple."
PaidContentUK: Why E-readers Aren’t The Magic Pill Publishers Hope They Are
Tuesday, 19 January 2010, 08:47
Stewart Kirkpatrick on e-readers: “The e-book is a beautiful, beautiful dream, that newspapers will be saved because people who weren’t prepared to pay for content on one screen will magically decide they will on another screen. Maybe the tooth fairy will drop nuggets of gold on the newspaper industry as well!” Robert Andrews: "An 'e-reader' is a mere neologism – conceived by those who seek to replicate an old, physical medium in modern, electronic form. But newspapers have spent the last 15 years divorcing their content from the physicality of their origin medium."
Newser: The Apple Tablet Won’t Save David Carr
Saturday, 9 January 2010, 11:36
Michael Wolff responds to David Carr: "[You] want the experience of print to be replicated through a new medium, exactly the thing Marshall McLuhan said doesn’t happen: Rather, a new medium relentlessly creates its own experience and message and, let me add, business model."
Dangerous Precedent: E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part One of Three
Wednesday, 6 January 2010, 13:56
Ben Hammersley on the workflow implications of tablet- or e-reader based magazines: "a real design challenge for e-books isn’t to design the user experience (which is dependent at the end of the day on the device capabilities anyway, which are pretty much unknown) but rather on designing a system that would allow existing publishers to transition their operations from ramshackle print to All Knowing Digital."
Recovering Journalist: Apple’s Tabula Rasa
Tuesday, 5 January 2010, 09:08
Mark Potts: "it's important not to look at the forthcoming tablet through the prism of individual media types. Most of those speculating about Apple's tablet aren't thinking big enough. They're concentrating on narrow possibilities—it could be a book reader! It could play movies!—without seeing the much bigger picture of what Apple may be on the verge of creating. To its users, it will be: All Of The Above. And that's huge."
Content Bridges: Nine Questions: On Tablet Dreams, Schemes and Screens of Hope
Monday, 4 January 2010, 08:52
Ken Doctor on magazines in tablet form: "While the tablet offers lots of new audience-pleasing abilities, we needn't think of them only in that old Twentieth Century way of cozying up in an armchair, timelessly enjoyed the just-delivered issue of our favorite periodical. In fact, everything that the tablet can do for a single title, it can do for an aggregated product… Are publishers planning for this multi-title tablet world, or just focusing anachronistically on title-by-title publishing? If they're not planning a twin (single title + aggregator) strategy, just think of the list of companies who may be: Google, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, for starters."
Slate: Electronic tablets can’t possibly save magazines and newspapers
Monday, 4 January 2010, 08:31
Jack Shafer on December 22: "I can't help but applaud the rush of the magazine and newspaper industry to save itself exploiting a new publishing platform. But all the hoopla reminds me of the hype that greeted previous electronic publishing technologies… That's not to say that the tablet has no future. It's just if the past is any guide, the future of the tablet won't look like the SI or Wired prototypes—any more than Pathfinder turned out to be the future of the Web."
New York Times: The Media Equation – A Savior in the Form of an Apple Tablet
Monday, 4 January 2010, 08:27
David Carr on what an Apple tablet might mean for magazines: "A simple, reliable interface for gaining access to paid content can do amazing things: Five years ago, almost no one paid for music online and now, nine billion or so songs sold later, we know that people are willing to pay if the price is right and the convenience is there. … Of course, if loads of quality content are available free elsewhere, no interface is going to make paid content attractive. A large number of publishers will have to step to the other side of the pay wall if paid digital content is going to gain any traction."
Bonnier AB: Digital Magazines: Bonnier Mag+ Prototype
Sunday, 3 January 2010, 20:33
"This conceptual video is a corporate collaborative research project initiated by Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future, presented by our design partners at BERG."
Independent on Sunday: Cambridge professors to launch revolutionary e-reader in Vegas
Sunday, 6 December 2009, 21:55
"Plastic Logic, makers of the Que, is launching the reader at the Las Vegas CES trade fair … The Que, an A4 sheet of plastic no heavier than a magazine, is powered by electronic circuitry using plastic as a base rather than traditional silicone. … The Que, which had its genesis in Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory will be sold by Barnes & Noble…"
paidContent: Magazine Consortium Will Launch With Five Partners: News Corp, Hearst, Time, Conde, Meredith
Sunday, 6 December 2009, 11:58
"News Corp joining Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and Time Inc. … Each is investing in the new company, which plans to create a new digital newsstand, and each will have two members on the board."
Wired Gadget Lab: In-App Sales and iTablet: The Killer Combo to Save Publishing?
Sunday, 18 October 2009, 10:11
"Apple on Thursday made a subtle-yet-major revision to its App Store policy, enabling extra content to be sold through free iPhone apps. It’s a move that immediately impacts the publishing industry … Picture a free magazine app that offers one sample issue and the ability to purchase future issues afterward. Or a newspaper app that only displays text articles with pictures, but paying a fee within the app unlocks an entire new digital experience packed with music and video."
Press Gazette: Rupert Murdoch: ‘News is more valuable than it has ever been’
Thursday, 17 September 2009, 19:53
"[Rupert] Murdoch also repeated his skepticism about the Amazon Kindle reader … The News Corporation chief was more positive about a new Sony mobile reading device, to be released at Christmas, hinting at a possible partnership, saying: 'we'll do everything we can to drive that one'."
