Increased Magazine Industry Revenue Partly Due To E-Readers

E-readers like Barnes & Noble’s Nook are getting some of the credit for a revival in magazine industry revenue, industry officials said. But there remain some issues about reading magazines and newspapers on e-readers, they said. “There are issues to work out on the readability side,” said Scott Havens, vice president of digital strategy and operations for Atlantic Media. Reading a magazine on the 7-inch screen is “not as good of an experience and not as pleasant as print so it is not an ideal platform quite yet,” he said.

For the first time since 2007, the magazine industry had a full-year revenue increase in 2010, the Publishers Information Bureau said. The 3.1 percent increase in rate-card-reported revenue for the consumer magazine industry mostly predated the arrival of a significant number of e-readers, said Howard Polskin, senior vice president of communications at the Association of Magazine Media.

But the Nook newsstand’s digital and periodical sales “are exceeding expectations” and it now “offers the fastest-growing catalog of interactive full-color magazines,” Barnes & Noble said in a report released Monday. Within the past month, about a dozen more publications have been added to the Nook marketplace, such as O, The Oprah Magazine and Martha Stewart Weddings. The Nook’s increase in subscription and single copy sales to more than 650,000 is “not surprising,” Polskin said.

"I am happy with the uptake of subscriptions” on e-readers, Havens said. Atlantic Media is seeing “strong demand on these tablets so we're seeing some nice growth.” Costs to produce an e-Reader version of a publication is lower than a print copy because, “on a per unit basis,” the iPad or Nook version of publications don’t require much extra effort, he said: “We're basically able to just change the format and push it out.” He didn’t provide figures for the cost of printing or mailing a magazine.

When customers look for a magazine on e-readers there is “gravity toward the bigger brands,” Havens said. “They are looking for the big brands like The New Yorker and The Atlantic”. Havens said the success of the big brand magazines is a “virtuous cycle” because “the bigger the brand, the more success you have, the higher you show up on the top download list”.

Meanwhile, The Daily, News Corp’s solely digital newspaper is designed for the iPad and should be launched within the next two weeks, said James Murdoch, News Corp. office of the chairman member, Tuesday. The publication will cost $0.99 a week and is another example of publications working to join the e-reader subscription industry. Conde Nast Publications is also “doing a lot of experimenting,” Havens said. “They're building a huge team to build out versions just for the iPad."

The impact of tablets and e-readers on the magazine industry is “still to be seen,” said Chris Wilkes, vice president of digital editions at Hearst Magazines. “The introduction of these devices has certainly energized the space and sparked a great deal of creativity and new thinking by many magazine publishers. I think there is a great long term opportunity in there for us all but we must remain focused on the consumer,” Wilkes said.