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Early days, but we are having fun playing with the cover and kicking ideas around
Ashley's take on, well, everything
Early days, but we are having fun playing with the cover and kicking ideas around
Here's a story I wrote for Wall Blog on the future of iPad magazines. For some inexplicable reason it took me ages to write. Odd
Here's what the Shiny team has been up to in the last few weeks.
There's some basic information on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Technode/153277224737017?sk=wall
It should be ready for the end of the month. More details soon.
Well done then to Ollie and the team who in a year have taken Pies from 250k unique monthly users to over 800k.
And Pies is much more that a blog these days too. The First Pies magazine (for print and iPad) is merely weeks away and it will be amazing http://ashleynorris.posterous.com/who-ate-all-the-pies-to-launch-ipad-and-print
Massively excited about this. The UK's best football website, Whoateallthepies.tv, is to launch a magazine. Available in early December the magazine will be available as a free download for the iPad and as a printed version.
Some of the content for the magazine will be crowdsourced from Pies huge (over 800,000 readers each month) and passionate community.
There's more information about the project here http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/competitions/52222/contribute-to-the-who-ate-a...
We (Anorak Publishing) are looking for sponsors for the project - especially sports and photography brands - contact ashleyatanorakdotcodotuk
Saying that David Hepworth is a man with a bit of a track record in publishing is a bit like calling Einstein something of an egghead. He played a major role in re-inventing publishing in the 80s and 90s and today is behind an excellent niche magazine company. So when he talks the industry listens. And today he has been mulling over iPad magazines.
http://whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.com/2010/10/magazines-and-ipad-on-second-th...
We have now reached a fascinating point in the genesis of iPad mags. The innovators who have swallowed the 'this is the future of magazines' mantra wholesale (like Conde Naste) are already out the blocks. And now companies with print titles in the tech space, like Future Publishing and Haymarket, are readying their iPad versions of existing titles.
So with Apple expected to have sold five mllion iPads by the end of the year and Android tablets likely to be one of the big tech stories of 2011 publishers can smell a critical mass.
The big question, and one that is perplexing David Hepworth, is do you invest in an iPad mag now or wait and see what happens. Or as he puts it
If you listen to the futurists you have no choice. If you're adventurous you go for one of those all bells and whistles remakes such as Wired.
he then adds
Problem is things like this are insanely expensive to produce, aimed at a user base which is a fraction of the magazine's universe and by the time it's proven (or not) as a medium the publishers will be thousands of pounds in the hole. The only people guaranteed to make money are the developers. The only people to make money out of the Gold Rush were the people who sold the shovels. It's an old joke but it still holds good.
He may be looking at a different set of figures to me but I am not sure that iPad mags are insanely expensive to produce any more. Surely if you have the content in the mag, you only need to add a little video and few clever graphics (which shouldn't break anyone's bank) pay the developer and then you are off.
The price of producing iPad mags is falling so quickly that very soon a whole slew of indie publishers will have iPad mags ready to roll and once again the mainstream publishers will have missed the boat.
The nightmare scenario for publishers with big media brands is if a new wave of indie publishers emerges who offer their iPad magazines for free. Dennis Publishing already offers its iGizmo iPad magazine for nothing (and it has been very successful), which makes it less likely that mainstream publishers will be able to charge £4-5 for users to download them.
We are almost a tipping point too. Glam Media, which monetises blogs, already have a division for monetising iPad magazine content. They may even offer a complete service and repurpose the most popular blogs as magazines. Glam gets a load more ad inventory which they can then sell as a network offering brands huge reach on the format. It will not only work but will also mean that the rates that existing publishers are charging for their iPad mags will be squeezed too.
Indie publishers have another big advantage too. They don't have the massive overheads (or shareholder expectations) of mainstream publishers. They will be able to produce this content cheaply.
Hepworth also points out
I don't feel in my water that people will inevitably use their iPads to read complete magazines on. At the moment they're using magazines to try out their iPads with, which is not the same thing at all.
I do think he has a point and that there is a novelty value at the moment which is obviously spurring the early adopters on, but that hasn't stopped huge sales of books on the iPad and the Kindle. I don't think people will be paying for iPad magazines in two years time, so like the web ad revenue will become crucial. That means magazine publishers have a shortish window of time to establish themselves as iPad magazine brands.
If I were David Hepworth, looking at rising paper costs, dwindling print sales and websites that are tricky to monetise, I'd be all over the iPad.
So you are Mike McCue of Flipboard. Even though server failure put the dampeners on your launch a little, you have still created the most swooned over iPad app so far. From nothing you have loads of users who love your swish technology. The question remains though. How are you going to make money from your app?
An obvious route would be to integrate full page magazine style ads between the pages. Brands are going to love that and I bet readers won't care too much when they see them.
Another option (a complimentary one) might be to develop Flipboard as a publishing platform. Almost like a WordPress for the iPad.
It might sound bonkers but there is a very real opportunity for Flipboard to do this and I think it could make them a lot of money.
The theory goes like this
Almost all bloggers and indie publishers would love to have a magazine type product for the iPad. At the moment they can't do this as HTML5 developers are pricey and thin on the ground. Also indie publishers are not going to struggle to monetise the iPad magazine as they won't be able to charge a subscription for the content and finding ads could be tricky.
Enter Flipboard. It already has the platform. It already has thousands of users. It already has loads of love from those bloggers. Imagine if it offered a Content Management System and free hosting too? At a basic level Flipboard could just take a site's RSS (or even its Twitter feed) and automate the process. In some ways it offers this already. You could curate a Flipboard magazine quite easily provided you give a great deal of thought as to what to feed it via Twitter.
The difference would be some degree of customisation for the publisher. The ability to choose the cover, make basic amendments to the design etc. Publishers could even offer weekly, monthly or even daily versions a bit like print publishing. I am guessing it will be iPhone compatible soon too.
Flipboard could create a community to display the 'new magazines' and in theory not have to bother with promoting them via iTunes, as other mags/apps will have to. It could also work with an advertising partner, Glam would be an obvious choice, to monetise the content with Flipboard splitting the cash with the publisher.
The major benefit for Flipboard would be that thousands of small publishers would get their dream of an iPad magazine (plus a little cash too) and just think how evangelical they would be about promoting their content and Flipboard.
I guess that many companies are already working on a free publishing system for the iPad, but Flipboard already has a massive head start.
On the downside the creation of this type of publishing system would be disastrous for mainstream media. If they think they can get punters to pay for subscriptions for iPad magazine apps when masses of similar free content is available via a service like Flipboard, they are seriously deluded.
So how about it Flipboard?
