The New Yorker Offers Free iPad Access to Print Subscribers

Good news: Finally, print subscribers of The New Yorker can access digital versions of current issues via the iPad app. Previously, iPad access required all users – even current print subscribers – to buy issues individually at the $4.99 single-issue price. It was stupid and short-sighted, but to be fair to the publisher, Apple’s confusing subscription policies made it difficult to offer much else.

A major sticking-point has been demographic information; publishers want it to sell more advertising, Apple wants to protect user privacy by allowing opt-out. It seems, however, that Apple and Condé Naste have come to some kind of agreement on the issue.

This is a major win for people who love reading magazines but don’t feel like paying for the same content multiple times, i.e. most people I know. As many others have said, the iPad and tablets like it present a great but thus far untapped opportunity for both distributors and consumers of written content.

Distributors get access to a low-cost, instant delivery mechanism (Apple’s App Store). Additionally, they get the benefit of being within one-click (or tap) of an impulse purchase. No longer will potential subscribers be stymied by the relative difficulty involved in actually subscribing to something; sure, publishers lose the demographic information that was their cash cow for decades, but the trade-off – one-tap access to the millions and millions of credit cards on file in the App Store – will, hopefully, make up the difference. 

Consumers of written content, on the other hand, get a viewing platform with instant, portable access to the stuff they want to read. No more waiting for the print edition of a magazine to arrive in one’s mailbox. No more dragging bags full of old newspapers and magazines to the recycling bin every week. To me – and I’m sure many other people like this guy  – it’s a no-brainer; digital content beats traditional paper-based content every time.

So far, though, magazine publishing on the iPad has been a dud. Apps have offered little in the way of additional content while still requiring very large downloads and tedious navigation. Launches of digital versions of magazines like Wired, for example, have seen lots of initial downloads but few repeats. Today’s announcement (and a similar recent one by Hearst, another publisher) is a step in the right direction. 

It’s an exciting time to be alive.

Speaking (writing?) of The New Yorker, expect a post soon about my ever-growing fondness for the magazine.