saving ink

I hate to resort to LOLspeak, but it’s true, New Yorker.

In case you haven’t heard, Condé Nast, parent company of The New Yorker, released an iPad-only app of the esteemed magazine. The app may be beautiful and functional, but as I wrote last week, the world is not quite ready for an app-based publication.

First of all, as the above commentators point out so eloquently, there is no subscription model in place. Second, print subscribers are (justifiably) infuriated that they have to pay twice for the same product - which also exists online for free. Not only does this highlight an absurdity, but it illustrates something that the decision-makers at Condé Nast have obviously failed to realize: it’s the content, stupid. The content is what matters, and the delivery system, whether print or app, only exists to facilitate access to that content. When people buy magazines, they’re not paying for the dead tree parts in their hands, they’re paying for the content - the same principle applies to apps (and should have applied to the Internet from the start).

What the New Yorker should have done is to hold off on the app until the time was right: until tablets and iOS devices became truly ubiquitous, at least in the US, and until their print subscriptions had dropped down to the point of non-sustainability. That’s the tipping point, and that’s when you make the switch.

But the switch cannot be made half-assed. Once you decide to go app, you must kill the print, and discontinue the system of offering the same content for free online. In fact, just stop offering magazine content online! No one wants to read that in a browser when they can experience it in an app, even if that means they have to pay. Because if the product is good, they will.

Will it piss people off? Of course. But revolutions always piss some people off. Hell, revolutions piss most people off. I’m sure when Gutenberg was extolling the virtues of his dandy new machine, there were plenty of detractors predicting the end of civilization behind his back. And yet, there will always be those few people who embrace change and usher in a new, better system, years before everyone else catches up. The history books will call them visionaries. But are they visionaries? Maybe. Or maybe they’re just fairly smart people not crippled by the fear of change.