It’s no secret that as the publishing world licks its wounds it casts about for anything — be it a business plan or a device — that can shake it from its economic funk.
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Magazine publisher Bonnier of Popular Science and Transworld fame and BERG, a London design consultancy, create a digital magazine prototype called Mag+
Increasingly the collective gaze goes to dedicated reading devices such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader with breathless anticipation over what Apple might do with the potential launch of their tablet.
A November CNN story leads with the hype, “Apple’s lips are sealed about its widely rumored tablet computer, but technology experts are giddy about the device, already exclaiming it will be the gadget to end all gadgets.”
Strong words. But the dream here isn’t necessarily porting content to these present and future devices, it’s that publishers believe they can charge information consumers for porting content to them.
The theory is that despite the noise and chatter of erecting pay walls, using micro-payments and enacting whatever other subscription-based plan du jour there may be for Web content, the battle between publisher and consumer has largely been lost. The conventional wisdom is that consumers expect free Web access and will migrate en-masse to free alternatives should a news or magazine site demand payment.
The dedicated device? That’s a different story.
In November, Amazon announced that the Kindle was its best selling product across all categories. Ever secretive, the company didn’t say how many devices it actually sold but a Citi analyst estimates total Kindle device and book sales hitting $1.6 billion in 2010.
Those type of numbers get publishers excited. Gets others excited too. Take AT&T. The Wall Street Journal writes that the company is trying to get its cellphone chips in everything, e-readers included:
Last week, [AT&T] disclosed a deal to carry on its network an electronic-book reader from British start-up Interead Ltd., adding a fifth e-reader to a lineup that already includes Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.’s upcoming Nook.
The devices aren’t quite yet there though. For the most part they don’t yet satisfy the needs of all publishers or their advertisers. Simply, they’re just too bland and geared toward the text heavy presentation of a book.
Condé Nast is keeping its titles off both the Kindle and the Sony Reader. Listen to what the publisher tells the Globe and Mail, “There’s no colour, and there’s no advertising. We want to have our magazines replicated.”
Which is ostensibly why publishing dreams surround Apple’s Tablet.
Surely they’ll be able to sex up digital magazine access and display.
Or, as the video above shows, perhaps another company will add grace, elegance and beauty to a killer reading device.
Images used with this article: dbostrom via Creative Commons/Flickr
