Time reaches agreement for free iPad issues for print subscribers
Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the U.S., has reached a deal with Apple to allow print subscribers of its titles to download iPad editions for free, according to a new report.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple and Time have reached a deal, which stands as a vital turning point in the impasse between the iPad maker and publishers over digital subscriptions.
According to the report, the iPad editions of Sports Illustrated, Time and Fortune will support subscriber authentication starting Monday. People magazine began supporting free subscriber downloads last year, ahead of other titles from the publisher.
The deal has reportedly gone through in spite of an executive shakeup occurring at the company. In February, parent company Time Warner fired Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin after just six months on the job, citing a clash of management styles as the reason.
During the search for a new CEO, which could take until at least late summer, a three-man committee of executives will lead the company in the interim, the Journal reported. Time Inc. may be in for rocky weather ahead, as analysts expect quarterly results from Time Warner on Wednesday to reveal flat revenue for the publisher.
According to the report, Time and other major publishers have not reached a deal for selling digital subscriptions to the iPad editions of their magazines. Publishers are reportedly hung up on Apple's insistence that the practice of forwarding subscriber information to publishers operate on an opt-in basis.
Maurice Edelson, general counsel for Time, told the Journal that the company's executives have held frequent meetings with Apple executives, including Eddy Cue, vice president of Internet services. The Time executives "say the latest deal to make iPad editions free for print subscribers is a sign the two sides are moving closer," according to the report.
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that publishers such as Time Inc., Conde Nast and Hearst were frustrated with delays to Apple's then-forthcoming application subscription feature for the App Store. At the time, people close to the company's discussion said that Time had yet to strike a deal with Apple.
Apple sparked a controversy in February when it revealed that it would take a 30 percent share of income generated from in app subscriptions to an App Store app. In addition, publishers must match or better prices from subscriptions offered outside of the app and are not allowed to link to out-of-app purchases.
In response to the news, one subscription service called the terms "economically untenable," while one developer called Apple's new rules "a huge dick move." The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is in the preliminary stage of looking into the terms of Apple's App Store subscriptions.
However, not all publishers are dissatisfied with Apple's terms. Bloomberg announced a $2.99 monthly subscription for the Bloomberg BusinessWeek app in April, adding that the company was "pleased with Apple's terms."
"iPad is the most important place to be right now, and that?s where we?re focused," said Bloomberg mobile head Oke Okaro.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple and Time have reached a deal, which stands as a vital turning point in the impasse between the iPad maker and publishers over digital subscriptions.
According to the report, the iPad editions of Sports Illustrated, Time and Fortune will support subscriber authentication starting Monday. People magazine began supporting free subscriber downloads last year, ahead of other titles from the publisher.
The deal has reportedly gone through in spite of an executive shakeup occurring at the company. In February, parent company Time Warner fired Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin after just six months on the job, citing a clash of management styles as the reason.
During the search for a new CEO, which could take until at least late summer, a three-man committee of executives will lead the company in the interim, the Journal reported. Time Inc. may be in for rocky weather ahead, as analysts expect quarterly results from Time Warner on Wednesday to reveal flat revenue for the publisher.
According to the report, Time and other major publishers have not reached a deal for selling digital subscriptions to the iPad editions of their magazines. Publishers are reportedly hung up on Apple's insistence that the practice of forwarding subscriber information to publishers operate on an opt-in basis.
Maurice Edelson, general counsel for Time, told the Journal that the company's executives have held frequent meetings with Apple executives, including Eddy Cue, vice president of Internet services. The Time executives "say the latest deal to make iPad editions free for print subscribers is a sign the two sides are moving closer," according to the report.
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that publishers such as Time Inc., Conde Nast and Hearst were frustrated with delays to Apple's then-forthcoming application subscription feature for the App Store. At the time, people close to the company's discussion said that Time had yet to strike a deal with Apple.
Apple sparked a controversy in February when it revealed that it would take a 30 percent share of income generated from in app subscriptions to an App Store app. In addition, publishers must match or better prices from subscriptions offered outside of the app and are not allowed to link to out-of-app purchases.
In response to the news, one subscription service called the terms "economically untenable," while one developer called Apple's new rules "a huge dick move." The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is in the preliminary stage of looking into the terms of Apple's App Store subscriptions.
However, not all publishers are dissatisfied with Apple's terms. Bloomberg announced a $2.99 monthly subscription for the Bloomberg BusinessWeek app in April, adding that the company was "pleased with Apple's terms."
"iPad is the most important place to be right now, and that?s where we?re focused," said Bloomberg mobile head Oke Okaro.
Comments
FREE E-VERSIONS FOR ALL OUR PRINTED VERSIONS (BOOKS, ETC.)
If these morons don't get it in the print business they will soon, as all the world is stealing their products via book torrents and the like and while they could just offer an effing e-version (epub, pdf, whatever) with every printed book they insist in making everyone pay twice for a printed book and the ease of having an e copy as well.
Get it free to me as you should, and I ll be your printed books too cause I love a printed book, try to stiff me (cause that's what they are doing) by making me pay double and I ll steel your ass off. You wanna go the way of hollywood where everyone is stealing avis off torrents? Be my guests...
Now they have argee to do so......
( Or Something like that )
So How do Apple make money from these Subscriptions? It is not as if Storage and CDN are free.
( Unless Apple force these Publication to be i Devices Exclusive, which would means Apple would get the sale or their devices in return )
I don't need anyone to cut down trees and make paper... and for you print on that paper and put it on a truck to my house.
If you remove all those steps... how on earth can you charge the same or MORE for a digital version of your magazine?
BTW... Amazon will sell me 56 print issues of Time magazine for $30... so the iPad-only version better be cheaper.
AT LAST! THAT'S THE WAY TO GO!
FREE E-VERSIONS FOR ALL OUR PRINTED VERSIONS (BOOKS, ETC.)
If these morons don't get it in the print business they will soon, as all the world is stealing their products via book torrents and the like and while they could just offer an effing e-version (epub, pdf, whatever) with every printed book they insist in making everyone pay twice for a printed book and the ease of having an e copy as well.
Get it free to me as you should, and I ll be your printed books too cause I love a printed book, try to stiff me (cause that's what they are doing) by making me pay double and I ll steel your ass off. You wanna go the way of hollywood where everyone is stealing avis off torrents? Be my guests...
I agree. I love my hardbound books and my iPad. To pay twice is insane.
They still just don't get it. Those of us with iDevices and other electronic readers want the option of subscribing to digital editions without having to receive the print-- we wish to avoid the burden of dealing with all that dead tree pulp. Publishers are holding back on this because print still brings in bigger ad dollars per capita. Last time I checked, The New York Times was actually charging less for a print + digital subscription than for the digital alone; they are still trying to increase their paper circulation. When will Time and all the rest come round to offering the stand alone digital subscriptions we all want?
Then push for Hemp based books. The US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written on Hemp.
The fact this country can't get it's head out of it's rear wrt to HEMP for the Textiles industry [supplant cotton and wood pulp for paper products] is the result of conglomerates like Weyerhauser and the Cotton Industry lobbying the hell out of keeping their monopolies in check.
Hemp restores the soil, processes large quantities of CO2 and it's materially superior.
Your Deforestation argument becomes irrelevant, at that point.
Reason seems to have prevailed over this one. Perhaps this will become a trend?
Agreed - this is merely as it should be, like saying Time Warner has agreed to not sue objects that fall to Earth once dropped. But we do live in a world where the triumph of reason is not a given, so hurrah!
They still just don't get it. Those of us with iDevices and other electronic readers want the option of subscribing to digital editions without having to receive the print.
I love this. Any news about products you have no interest in (the print-online combo offer) is for you a proof that another product (online-only) does not exist and thus is bad news.
How dare Time issue a press release (or Appleinsider publish an article) on a product you have no interest in? How dare they occupy any of your attention with a product you are not interested in?
So How do Apple make money from these Subscriptions? It is not as if Storage and CDN are free.
( Unless Apple force these Publication to be i Devices Exclusive, which would means Apple would get the sale or their devices in return )
Apple does not make any direct money from these subscriptions but they also do not have any direct costs (no issue of a newspaper is hosted or vetted by Apple). Apple only hosts and checks the app.
Apple makes money from those who buy online-only subscriptions (or single issues) via the app. And Apple makes money from hardware sales. It is not just the presence of exclusivity that is an advantage but also the non-presence of exclusivity on a competing platform is an advantage.
the horse has left the barn.
I recall the days when magazines like TIME and Newsweek were must-read publications, and important communicators of thought. But their political bias got the best of them, just like it did with major daily newspapers. Today, millions or readers have abandoned newspapers and weekly news magazines because of this bias, and now these publications are pretty much groveling for whatever crumbs they can vacuum up. Their misery is pretty much self-inflicted.
That's B.S. What got the best of them was the fact that as with most media, crappy free generally beats quality that costs money. Also, as a country that primarily drives rather than uses public transportation, people don't read newspapers and if they consume news at all, they get it from TV or from Google news. But even TV news has been losing ratings for years and news radio does nothing more than present headlines. The fact is that for all the thousands of news sources that people have access to, we're woefully (and willingly) uninformed. I'd be willing to bet that of the people who populate this site, they read this more often than they read a decent general news source.
While there's a mantra that the press is biased, outside of the editorial and opinion pages, if you were to read an article without knowing where it came from, aside from writing style (the Daily News isn't going to sound like The New York Times), you wouldn't do better than 50/50 guessing whether it came from a publication that's considered to be conservative or a publication that's considered to be liberal. The reporting of today's newspapers (with a few exceptions) may not be very good in terms of analysis, but it's less biased than most people believe.
---
The problem for publishers with giving away e-book editions for free along with a print subscription is that that's all it will be - a copy of the print, rather than an enhanced and interactive version like the Sports Illustrated iPad prototype that made the rounds a few years ago. So IMO, we're all limiting the possibilities by being cheap. It's not like most publishing companies have ever made tons of money (in recent decades) - it's a very low margin business that frequently loses money. Creating an interactive version costs money - money for writing additional articles, for licensing additional photos and media, for design and for programming. It's not unreasonable for publishers to want to get paid if they're going to invest in all this.
Given this, I don't see why Apple should bother compromising with the ink and dead tree crowd at all. The only ink and dead tree outfit that I would miss if it really died is the NY Times. I think they have some of the best content out there, and I would be happy to pay for it, if only they could pull their head out of their a$$ with respect to the quality of their iApps and the sanity of their payment scheme. My hope is that Bloomberg ultimately buys them.
They still just don't get it. Those of us with iDevices and other electronic readers want the option of subscribing to digital editions without having to receive the print-- we wish to avoid the burden of dealing with all that dead tree pulp. Publishers are holding back on this because print still brings in bigger ad dollars per capita. Last time I checked, The New York Times was actually charging less for a print + digital subscription than for the digital alone; they are still trying to increase their paper circulation. When will Time and all the rest come round to offering the stand alone digital subscriptions we all want?
I agree with you, but this is a big move forward. The best way for publishers to wean readers to digital editions is to give it to them as part of their print subscription, hope they use it, then give them an incentive later to drop the print edition.
Most of the paper-based periodicals out there today either (1) aren't very good to begin with and/or (2) the efforts to publish them on the iPad have generally been pretty lame. A couple of exceptions to this are the new Al Gore book (which I realize is a book, but the technology could certainly be applied to periodicals) and Bloomberg BusinessWeek (which could be a lot better, but is at least a decent start with both good content and a reasonable iPad interface).
There are several others with great iPad versions: The New Yorker, Politico, and the New York Times all have great iPad apps. The New Yorker in particular has a great UI, a look and feel that's very reflective of the print edition without feeling like a PDF, and good interactive elements.
a day late and a dollar short.
the horse has left the barn.
I disagree. The barn is HUGE. Apple is going to sell 100M-plus iPads over the next five years in the United States along, and publishers are going to have a lot of opportunities to find an audience with first-time iPad owners. Publishers don't have an unlimited amount of time to get this right, but it's still very early in the tablet game.
[/QUOTE]
I haven't used either the New Yorker of Politico, but I don't agree regarding the NYT iPad App. I think that app really shows the myopia of the NYT -- it's just an effort to make the iPad like a newspaper, which really underutilizes the new medium. I think the NYT website has both more information and is better designed to use technology than the iPad app.
The Bloomberg BusinessWeek app is only a little better technologically, but at least they got the pricing right, and I feel some hope that bberg will be able to make technological improvements eventually.
The Al Gore book is really at the head of the class in terms of using the technology, although I bet that in 5 years we'll think even that is primitive.
I really think that a lot of these publishers don't "get it", never will, and that the best plan of attack for Apple is to just let these old dinosaurs die while helping the next generation replace them.
AT LAST! THAT'S THE WAY TO GO!
FREE E-VERSIONS FOR ALL OUR PRINTED VERSIONS (BOOKS, ETC.)
If these morons don't get it in the print business they will soon, as all the world is stealing their products via book torrents and the like and while they could just offer an effing e-version (epub, pdf, whatever) with every printed book they insist in making everyone pay twice for a printed book and the ease of having an e copy as well.
Get it free to me as you should, and I ll be your printed books too cause I love a printed book, try to stiff me (cause that's what they are doing) by making me pay double and I ll steel your ass off. You wanna go the way of hollywood where everyone is stealing avis off torrents? Be my guests...
100% agree with you. They must stop ripping people off like that. That DINASOUR way is over !!!
Then push for Hemp based books. The US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written on Hemp....
*sigh* this is just dumb - no offense mdriftmeyer. The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are housed in the National Archives and maintained by NA archival staff. All three are written on parchment using iron gall ink. Hemp was not used routinely for paper products in the US, pulped rag material (from linen and cotton, linen being a fiber from the flax plant)was the European standard in papermaking that was prominently in use in the colonies. Later in the early to mid 1800s the invention of the machines that made plant fiber pulping on a large enough scale to replace rag pulping led to several commercial paper mills being set up in the New England states to use the bountiful coniferous forests in those states to produce wood fiber pulp paper.
There is some record of China using various plant fibers (including hemp) for handlaid papermaking, but not in the US until the resurgence of art papermaking a decade or two ago.
Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the U.S., has reached a deal with Apple to allow print subscribers of its titles to download iPad editions for free, according to a new report.
I wonder what Time is paying Apple vor this "deal"? Surely nobody thinks they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts....