In perhaps the smartest subscription plan any magazine or newspaper has ever come up with New Yorker Magazine will soon offer a ‘pay once, read anywhere’ model (courtesy AdAge) -
The New Yorker wants to let readers pay once for digital access across the iPad, the Kindle and other platforms, hoping to improve on the current industry practice of charging even subscribers for each edition on each device.
“We’re going to have a situation where if you pay us X dollars, you can have us in any form you like.”
Unfortunately, by ‘any form you like’ New Yorker seem to mean – any form you like except for print.
New Yorker’s All-in-One subscription is actually one of two options
This is what the new model will look like -
- Get the print edition if you pay a certain fee – probably the current rate of $39.95 a year.
- Get the print edition plus the magazine in any digital format – web, Kindle, iPad – if you pay a certain other rate. Hopefully it’s a reasonable rate.
It’s not clear why they have two separate rates – It’s one product being sold and there’s no reason to create this artificial distinction.
The AdAge article points out that the older model of charging again for each new distribution channel punishes existing subscribers. That really is one of the big problems with the approach magazines are taking to digital channel subscriptions – What reasonable business punishes its most loyal customers?
It’s good to see magazines (or at least one magazine) begin to understand this.
The only part of the model that isn’t ideal is the bifurcation between print and digital.
Why not take it to its logical conclusion?
Why aren’t print subscribers also getting free access to the magazine online, on their Kindles, and on the iPad?
- It adds a lot of value to users.
- It doesn’t cost the magazine much – when you consider the benefits. More on this below.
- It gets the magazine a lot more subscribers due to the perceived extra value for money.
That’s the whole crux of the issue – Instead of looking at how much more valuable and tempting they make their main offering if they add-on digital access for free, most newspapers are looking to nickel and dime customers.
All the overhead and costs of maintaining two separate product offerings is probably going to cost nearly as much as any possible profit by having a more expensive print+digital line.
If instead they make it one offering -
- They get larger print subscriber numbers.
- Every print subscriber gets the added value of electronic access.
- It’s much better value for money.
- They don’t have to bother with two separate product lines.
- They can focus on efficiency and get prices down instead of raising prices.
The other anti-customer initiative from magazines is giving away content for free online – which is quite frankly an insult to customers who pay for the print edition. Hopefully, that ends soon.
The ‘pay once, read anywhere’ model should apply to books too
If you think about it that’s what Amazon is offering with its various Apps – read a Kindle book across any platform. The book is the core product – whether it’s read on a Kindle or on a PC doesn’t really matter much. The natural extension is that the paper book is a medium too.
It would not be a huge surprise if sometime down the line Amazon started offering paper+ebook bundles of AmazonEncore and AmazonCrossing books. This is something that’s going to happen sooner or later and it would be a good thing. Then when a reader buys a book they get -
- The physical book.
- Access to the electronic edition via any device.
Yes, there’s room for people to ‘steal’ and halve the number of purchases. However, that’s focusing on the downside. The plus side is that many more people would buy books and it becomes much easier to sell $10 or $12 books. People would have much less of an issue with attempts to increase the price a bit (to a reasonable $12 or so) if they got a paper book and an ebook.
Publishers have been arguing that paper books cost just $1 or so to print, create and ship - Well, then they should gladly offer $11 or $12 bundles. A lot more customers would buy books if they were $11 bundles that included a physical book and an ebook that could be read across pretty much every device.
Filed under: publishing Tagged: | future of magazines, future of publishing
At present, the New Yorker is free of charge online but not for all articles. Certain articles require a digital subscription at a modest fee yearly. These articles, like ebook texts, cannot be downloaded or copied. Doln’t know about access on portiable reading devices like Kindle.
I dont understand what the advantage would be to getting both the e- and p- versions of the same book. I really don’t want any more p-books, and don’t have space for them. I certainly wouldn’t want to pay for the printing/shipping just because it’s part of a bundle
I don’t think the suggestion is that you would -have- to get the print version. Only that purchasers of the print version could get the electronic version as a free bundle-in. I would love this approach myself, as while I’m now tending to prefer the e-book for personal reading, the ownership of the physical book has some advantages like being able to lend it to friends. I’m not going to buy both separately, but bundled for a reasonable price I certainly would.
I subscribe to Reason (print). I would be happy to switch over to (or even just try) the Kindle version, except my current subscription ends in November 2012. How much would Reason save if they allowed subscribers to switch formats?