Everyone knows the print magazine industry is struggling with publications shutting their doors one after the other. Many freelance writers depended on income from print magazines for many years before digital content usurped the print publishing industry. What’s a freelancer to do when print publications are reducing the amount of articles they freelance and paying the freelancers they do accept content from lower amounts than ever?
According to John Lettice from The Register, Apple’s iPad might just be coming to the rescue for magazines and freelance writers who depend on those magazines as income sources. Lettice explains that the iPad version of Wired is available with a monthly price tag of $4.99, significantly higher than the printed version. Interestingly, the iPad version of Wired (which includes ads, although many aren’t clickable ads) has outsold the printed version.
It’s important to point out that the target market for Wired is probably also the target market for early iPad adopters, but it’s also probably safe to assume that finding ways to offer print content in the wireless reading device format through iPad, Kindle, and the multitude of other devices coming our way, is an interesting idea. The question is what will be the differentiator between the ereader version of those publications and the free content people can access online. Of course, that’s the marketer in me speculating though.
The point is this — while the print publishing industry is struggling simply to stay afloat for another month, week or day, new tools to consume content, like the iPad, offer new opportunities for those publications. And with new opportunities for publications to connect with readers, all might not be lost for freelance writers.
However, with news like we got on Monday when The Washington Post announced it sold Newsweek (after a half decade of ownership) to Sidney Harman of Harman International, another once thriving print publication succumbed to massive debt from falling sales. As reported by Newsweek, Harman was asked why he wanted to purchase the failing publication. In response, “Harman, in a brief interview, said he saw it as an ‘opportunity to synthesize all of that experience [in industry, education, and government]. I couldn’t pass it up.'” We’ll have to wait and see what becomes of Newsweek under Harman’s ownership.
How do you feel about the struggling and constantly changing landscape of print media as a freelance writer? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: Julian Stallabrass via Flickr
Actually, Wired started at $4.99, but is now free.
It’s still $4.99.
Originally the idea was to have a separate app for each issue, costing $4.99.
Now there’s a single, free app which you install once, and then you use the app to buy each issue for $4.99.
As a freelance writer, and an iPad owner, I truly believe that online content and tablet magazines will save us all. People still want to read content, but they also want it immediately and cheaply. As long as there are readers, advertisers will still pay for ads whether they are in print or online. Subscriptions basically pay for the printing/distributing aspect anyway (I know this isn’t true in all cases).
I hadn’t subscribed to a print magazine in more than five years. Since getting an iPad, I now have four subscriptions through the Zinio App. Most subscriptions are only $10 – $14 per year, and they don’t get lost, torn up by my dog, and are always with me whenever I have a free second.
I’ve written several articles about the iPad as an e-reader (exp.: http://www.applematters.com/article/the-ipad-a-great-magazine-reader/)
The iPad is the perfect device for reading magazines. I subscribe to three publications because of the device, which means no stacks of magazines growing in my office closet. It also means I can access back issues anytime I want.
The e-readers for magazines though are not as good as they could be. Zinio is the most well established. But it has no annotation or bookmarking tools. It has a fair amount of magazines in its store, but there are plenty of publications that are still not on board yet.
I can’t speak to the “constantly changing landscape of print media as a freelance writer,” (because I haven’t published much there), but I’m wondering if it should matter since it seems that as the paper publication industry declines, the online publication industry will be on the rise. Devices like the iPad, if more widely available, can help in that transition. At some point, tablet like devices need to be in every home like television sets. They will be used to read “newspapers” and “magazines.”