Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

Haven’t taken a look at Kindle magazines in a while and it was a surprise to see there are 52 magazines now available (although just 1 new magazine has been added in the last 3 months). That’s not bad at all. This post will just take a look at all of them and analyze the prices and more.

You could also take a look at the list of kindle magazines yourself.

Kindle Magazines and Price

Price is obviously an important criteria and here’s what we have -

1. $1.25 a month –  There are 12 magazines at this price point including Shape, Business Today (bi-weekly), MIT Technology Review (bi-monthly, $2.50 an issue), ForbesLife (delivered quarterly, $3.75 an issue), Reason, The Fountain (bimonthly, $2.50 an issue) , Reader’s Digest, InformationWeek (bi-weekly), Women’s Adventure (delivered quarterly, $3.75 an issue), The Atlantic, India Today (weekly), and Cash: Personal Finance for Real People (weekly).
2. $1.49 a month - 7 magazines at this price including Opinionated (weekly), PC Magazine, PopMatters (daily), Fortune (bi-weekly), OneStory, and The Nation (weekly). 
3. $1.79 a month – Prick of the Spindle. It’s delivered quarterly so the price is more like $5.25 an issue. 
4. $1.99 a month – 9 magazines including Front Desk Chicago, Front Desk New York, U.S. News & World Report, Foreign Affairs (bi-monthly, $3.98 an issue), The Big Money (daily), Dell Horoscope, San Francisco, China International Business, and US News Weekly (big surprise – it’s weekly).  
5. $2.29 a month - The New Republic (weekly).
6. $2.49 a month -  3 magazines at this price including Forbes (bi-weekly), BusinessWeek (weekly), and Slate (daily).
7. $2.99 a month – 9 at this price point including Newsweek (weekly), Time (weekly), The Escapist (weekly) , Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Objective Standard (delivered quarterly, $8.97 an issue), Analog Science Fiction & Fact, The New Yorker (weekly) , Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. 
8. $3.49 a month – Salon (daily) and Narrative.
9. $4.99 a month – New Statesman (weekly) and The Spectator (weekly).
10. $5.99 a month – Modern Healthcare (weekly).
11. $7.99 a month – The Times Literary Supplement (weekly) and WirtschaftsWoche (weekly).
12. $8.99 a month – The New England Journal of Medicine (weekly) .
13. $10.49 a month – The Economist (weekly) and Barron’s (weekly).
14. $12.99 a month – Journal of the American College of Cardiology (weekly).

Please note that some magazines are not monthly – These have been indicated and it’s recommended to take a look at individual pages to confirm this.

It’s nice to see lots of clustering around reasonable price points – 12 at $1.25, 7 at $1.49, 9 at $1.99, and 9 at $2.99. Magazine Publishers seem to have taken some time to think about what a reasonable price would be. It is puzzling to see a number of blogs in the magazine section. It definitely helps them seem more credible and to stand out. Being 1 of 52 magazines is much better than being one of 8,800 plus blogs.

Kindle Magazines listed by various criteria

Bestselling Kindle Magazines

The 10 bestselling Kindle magazines are – Time, The Economist (surprising to see it selling so well despite it’s $10.49 a month price), The New Yorker, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, PC Magazine, Technology Review, BusinessWeek, The Atlantic, and Foreign Affairs.

The top 10 are followed by Forbes, Fortune, The Nation, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and One Story. There’s only one magazine priced above $2.99 a month in the top 15 (while 12 of 52 magazines are priced above $2.99) so price is having a bit of an impact.

Best Reviewed Kindle Magazines

The best rated magazines (4 stars or more) with at least 5 reviews are Opinionated, Foreign Affairs, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The New England Journal of Medicine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Forbes, and WirtscahtsWoche.

Some really good magazines (in my opinion) just miss out – The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, and Reader’s Digest all get 3.5 stars.

The best rated magazines (4 stars or more) with less than 5 total reviews are The Spectator, India Today, The Objective Standard, The Fountain, One Story, Narrative, and China International Business.

Why do magazine publishers keep talking about color and advertising?

Magazine Publishers focus a lot on the iPad and how it will support color. While it’s understandable for a magazine like National Geographic to be obsessed with color and images the reason why all Magazine Publishers are enthralled with color eludes me.

Their fascination for advertising is even more puzzling. Skiff is the magazine publishers’ dream child and it seems more intent on being an advertising device than a reading device.

Why are Publishers so concerned with advertising when readers don’t want advertising and are willing to pay for content?

Publishers live in some strange parallel universe where instead of selling people your main product you want to give it away cheaply and try to sell them other things. There aren’t that many sheep left – It’s time to get over the advertising model and let people buy your main product at a fair rate.

What does the Future hold for Magazines?

With both the Kindle Store and the Kindle App Store not allowing advertising and eReader owners and people in general showing a severe allergic reaction to advertising it’ll be interesting to see how much longer Magazines (and other content creators) keep trying to make money from advertising instead of content.

There are two models to choose -

1. We provide excellent content and serve our readers. We sell our content at a fair price that pays our bills and also allows for profit. 
2. We provide good content for free/cheap. We then turn over our readers to advertisers who try to brainwash them into buying advertised products. We get a cut from the exploitation of our readers.

It seems to be a simple choice to make – Especially on a channel where readers are willing to pay for content. Yet magazine publishers want to go with advertising.

Are Magazine Publishers using ‘we can’t advertise and it’s hurting us’ as an excuse for their other failings? Are they simply too comfortable in their advertising models to consider a change? Is it that there’s more money in exploiting customers than serving them?

Whatever it is it’s vexing and confusing - Just sell us your content and stop thinking you can make fools out of us.