iPad magazines are not the solution to the publishing crisis, at least not yet: sales are already in decline.
Despite the novelty being very recent, the first assessment of iPad magazine sales is already being tracked. This is being done by the Audit Bureau of Circulations: the collected data highlights a downward trend after an initial phase of dizzying growth, likely due to the desire to try out a new iPad feature.
Examples, later reported by the magazine WWDM, speak clearly: Wired USA saw a debut of around 100,000 iPad copies in June 2010, then collapsed to 22,000 copies in October. Similar trends were observed for Vanity Fair, Glamour, and GQ.
It’s too early to make a definitive judgment: the time frame is still limited, however, it’s worth noting that as iPad sales increase, magazine sales for the Apple device have not followed suit.
There can be several hypotheses: first and foremost, the price of newspapers on iPad, not competitive enough compared to print and especially not “justifiable” when much of the proposed content is already available online for free.
In a sense, the issue of subscriptions is related: at the moment, they are not available.
Another difficulty might be related to the very structure of the App Store, which, as of today, has not provided a dedicated section to find iPad magazine apps. Consequently, these apps get “lost” among thousands of existing applications, risking insufficient visibility.
So far, these are the hypotheses to work with for launching the iPad publishing sector.
The evolution of the situation can be measured in the coming months, as despite the not-so-positive data, new developments are announced: in fact, News Corporation’s magazine The Daily, exclusively for iPad, is scheduled to launch soon.
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