iPad Kills Paper

The iPad’s killer feature may be its ability to save the magazine industry. An example? Wired.

In a tweet from Wired’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson, Anderson indicates that sales of the iPad app will surpass those of the newsstand version of the magazine.

“73,000 purchases of Wired iPad app in first nine days. Should beat newsstand sales of print mag (ave. mid 80s) this month.”

The first issue of Wired’s $4.99 iPad app (each monthly issue requires a $4.99 download) spent a total of 9 days as the number 1 paid app following its launch, selling 24,000 copies in the first day alone.

Is the success of Wired’s iPad app a glimpse into the future of magazines? It certainly could be.

As one who follows various RSS feeds for Wired, their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, Wired is a great source for technology news, automotive news, and much more. Because of the free methods to consume content from Wired, I was not a subscriber to their magazine prior to the release of the digital version for the iPad. Now, the Wired iPad app is one of my favorites and I will continue to purchase each version of the digital publication the day it hits the App Store.

The iPad version of Wired is grand to say the least. Every page is optimized for the iPad, navigation is easy, video and animated content run smoothly and looks fantastic. The one feature lacking is social network integration (posting favorite stories to Twitter or Facebook), but that is forthcoming according to Anderson.

Wired has done a fine job in leading the way in digital magazine publication and should push other publishers to adopt a similar model for the iPad if they opt to develop digital versions of their own magazines. The Audit Bureau of Circulations has changed the definition of a “digital magazine” to include magazines sold on the iPad, meaning when a reader purchases a magazine on the iPad, the purchase is now included in the magazine’s circulation numbers. As such, publishers can sell advertisers on new, interactive, methods of advertising their product/service increasing revenues to levels previously unrealized.

Have you purchased the Wired app? Do you think its model of $4.99 per month for each issue is a value or will it hinder its long term success? Will digital content become the standard with publishers moving away from paper publications altogether?

The author of this post is Jeff Cormier

Creator of Digital Deconstruction, write for The Next Web, iPadFan, and more. Animal, music, literature, history lover, law school graduate. http://about.me/jffcrmr

Visit Jeff Cormier's website

Piecrust

The app is fine but if your system crashes you lose all your back issues and are expected to buy them again. That just doesn’t work for me so until an improved solution is arrived at I am refusing to redownload the app and re-pay for content I’ve already bought! The app is brilliant as is the content, it’s such a pity to see it so badly let down by the absence of such a basic piece of functionality.
morphos

As more and more magazines adopt its ipad factor form the prices should go down: “competition obliges”. Steve Jobs has said it! You (newspapers and magazines) can't expect to recover all the losses of the past years by increasing artificially a price that has not embeded in it the costs of distribution. Quality magazines will pervail, but the share of wallet among its clients isn't unlimited. So, don't stretch the rope too much.