Leaks give clues to iPad news pricing
Some news is beginning to emerge about how much it will cost iPad owners to subscribe to magazines and newspapers. Prices seem to be all over the board, reflecting the current confusion in the publishing industry.
It looks like there is finally news emerging on the subject of news on the iPad; that is to say, some subscription prices are finally coming to light in advance of the first shipments of the iPad some eight days hence. This news on the news was printed in the Wall Street Journal (presumably both the print and online versions) and included information about how much the Wall Street Journal itself is going to charge for a subscription. The venerable financial newspaper will be charging $17.99 per month for the iPad edition of their paper. This, and other subscription prices that are beginning to leak out, may indicate that there is still some hope for the publishing industry’s survival, depending.
In order to have a newspaper or a magazine to read, consumers have to be willing to pay the publisher for the costs of gathering and distributing the news, where that is defined as real journalism: actually going to the source of the news to get it, rather than reading that original news and re-reporting it. Actual Journalism requires people, airplane tickets, expense accounts, and so on. If no one is willing to pay the costs for the news, none of these bills get paid and there will no longer be any genuine reporting, and thus nothing to re-report. Newspapers and magazines have been going broke at a record pace because not enough people are willing to pay them for their expenses via their paper editions. Instead, the hopes of the industry have moved to the production of digital editions.
In addition to the $17.99 subscription to the Wall Street Journal, we learn that Esquire will be charging $2.99 per issue to read on the iPad, while Men’s Health will cost $4.99 per month, a huge difference. Surveys show, for the first time, that a significant number of consumers may be willing to read such content on a mechanical device, in this case the iPad, and are moreover willing to pay for the privilege. Still, one must wonder how much they will be willing to pay.
The WSJ iPad subscription price is higher than the pure internet version, the Men’s health price is the same as the newsstand price and the Esquire price is lower. Only the Esquire pricing makes any sense, since the publishers will be saving the costs of both printing and distributing their publications. If the publishing industry really wants to save itself in the digital age, it will have to give up one of the most popular attitudes down through all of the ages: greed.
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