Crain Communications releases new tablet edition for its B2B title Business Insurance

A new B2B tablet edition used to be a rare event, but things are starting to heat up. Crain Communications, which recently released a tablet edition for Crain's Chicago Business, today launched a tablet edition for its trade industry magazine Business Insurance.

Business Insurance Tablet Edition is an iPad edition that gives the reader a hybrid tablet edition – one where the print ads are pretty much as you would see them in print, but where the editorial pages are reformatted for the tablet.

The design is still somewhat influenced by print, as you will see in the walk-through video below, but the digital magazine is very readable and will be appreciated by those who are loyal readers of the B2B magazine.

Business Insurance is a BPA-audited weekly that has a little over 35,000 qualified non-paid subscribers and over 9,000 qualified paid subscribers. So the dilemma here is how to create a weekly digital magazine, and how to charge (or if to charge) for it.

The problem for B2B publishers, as I have written about before (so sorry to be repeating myself), is that there is no qualification method available to publishers. If Apple would hire me today to be their publisher liaison (do it!) I would be working with the B2B guys on creating a qualification mechanism that would encourage B2B publisher to launch their qualified circulation magazine on the iOS platform. Alas, there is no such mechanism today and so the trade publishing industry has been the slowest segment when it comes to launching tablet editions.

Here, with Business Insurance, Crain is letting their current subscribers log into the app to access the issues free of charge. Then new readers who want to access the issues can do so by buying an annual subscription for $149.99 (or individual issues for $9.99.)

For now the new app only contains a smallish sample issue )which is only a little over 30 MB in size) typical for apps just released into the Newsstand by Apple. I assume the app's store and library will begin to fill up with issues now that the app is live (in fact, as I am writing this, a new version of the sample issue is being loaded which is larger than the first sample as it is 183.1 MB in size – it contains a full issue with more advertising and features inside).

I should also note that while this new app is for the iPad, there is a reference on the magazine's website to interactive tablet editions for the Nexus, Kindle and Samsung Galaxy tablets, as well. I did not find an app inside Google Play this morning, but a new app may be coming very soon.

The Chicago Tribune releases new iPad photography publication using the Apple Newsstand for distribution

On Tuesday of this week TNM looked at the photography eBook produced by the staff of The Seattle Times (see post here with video walk-through). In that project, a year in review as seen in the staff's photographs, the production team used Apple's free software package iBooks Author to produce a digital book that could be updated in the future, but would be a one-time purchase for readers.

While the Seattle paper does not have a paywall on its website, it does have mobile and tablet apps (though, to be honest, they are not worth the price of admission), so it makes sense that the eBook would be seen as a separate product from the existing digital offerings of the paper.

Today, Tribune Interactive released its own photography publication – it, too, being a year in review as seen in the staff's photographs.

But in the case of the Trib, which has several digital magazines inside the Apple Newsstand, the paper has chose to go with a subscription model and continue to use the Newsstand.

Chicago Tribune Photography requires a $0.99 annual subscription - and, by the way, the single issue price is also $0.99. The pricing model, being low, means that there will be no expectations of regular issues, though that seems to be the plan.

Introducing the new Chicago Tribune Photography app. Inside each edition you’ll find the most compelling news, sports, features, portrait and pictorial photography from the Chicago Tribune's staff photographers, available now for the first time in full iPad Retina-ready resolution. – app description

While iPad Design Editor Ryan E. Smith used Mag+ (I believe) rather than iBooks Author, the basic design of the photography publication is somewhat similar to that of The Seattle Times eBook. Layouts are in landscape only (which, of course, is the way most photos taken with a DSLR will be shot).
But where in iBooks Author the reader taps a photo to make it larger, or to bring up the caption, with digital magazine design, tapping the screen brings up the page thumbnails. To access the captions one would scroll up, swiping to reach the next photograph.

Because the app supports retina display iPads, the file size of the new tablet edition is still large, over 300 MB, though that is about 200 MB smaller than The Seattle Times eBook that used iBooks Author for its creation.

Is using a digital magazine design solution a good alternative to creating an eBook? Yes, I think so. It especially makes a lot of sense when the paper producing the digital publication already has a paywall system in place.

But that is where there is a disconnect. Digital subscribers to Tribune's website or its tablet publications like Bear Download and RedEye for iPad do not automatically gain access to this new digital magazine. That is a sign that left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
While not a big fan of metered paywalls, I understand that there is tremendous pressure to build the revenue enhancers. To make them work, however, a newspaper would be wise to continually create digital products for their new digital subscribers – to reinforce the idea that buying a digital subscription is a great idea.

The NYT has been especially bad at becoming what I like to call a serial launcher. Tribune Interactive, on the other hand, has launched several new and very good new digital products, this one should be part of the family of products that will justify in the minds of its readers that they should sign up for its digital subscription plans. Then charge that $0.99 fee only to non subscribers (and then they might consider raising that price a bit).

Consumer magazine ad pages fall 8.2% in 2012, extending publisher's losing streak

The year end Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) report did not hold much good news for consumer publishers, with ad pages for 2012 ending 8.2 percent below 2011 levels. The last time publishers enjoyed a bump in ad pages was 2010 when pages eked out a small gain.

Worse, ad pages that fell dramatically at the start of the financial crisis have not recovered at all.

For the fourth quarter of 2012 ad pages fell 7.3 percent, though these numbers are always a bit skewed by magazine closures such as Los Angeles Times Magazine and Spa, among others.

Big losers in the quarter, by percentage, included Boating, Caribbean Travel & Life, The Economist, Family Circle, Natural Health, O-The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Saveur, Veranda and Working Mother. Magazines such as National Geographic and Martha Stewart Living, while losing a smaller percentage of ad pages, still lost the most actual pages, with huge ad page drops that will result in big losses of revenue.

The B2B report for trade publishers lags behind the PIB report by several months, with final 2012 probably to arrive in April.

The problem most magazine publishers face is that ad page losses are compounding, with losses occurring in most years in the last decade. Since 2008, consumer publishers have seen their ad pages drop by over 30 percent.

The PIB also reports revenue as part of its research, though as a publisher I have always found the data far less reliable.

Media App Updates: TRVL issues update as it refines its own publishing platform; NYT updates both its iPhone and iPad apps; bug fix updates for Next Issue and CNN

This afternoon several media app updates were released by Apple into the App Store, including the much anticipated update to TRVL, the independent travel photography magazine that is now using its own platform, PRSS, to create its app.

The app now features 87 free magazines, the newest one centers on Prague.

In order to make the move over to its own platform from off the Woodwing/Adobe solution, TRVL had to redesign all its existing magazines – at the time 80 different travel subjects.

"We could only test our app the minute we've actually gone live. We designed 80 magazines in the four days before we've gone live," Michel Elings told TNM back in November.

The update brings the app up to version 3.1. Here is what the publisher says in the app description about the update:

What's New in Version 3.1
★ Extremely fast
★ Runs smooth on all iPads
★ Newsstand works like a charm
★ Cover update
★ Filters (pull down in the store to reveal)
★ Easier way to make magazines available for offline reading
★ Photo books are easier to find

☂ Smooth animations
☂ Lot's of bug fixes

I don't know if those fancy symbols will work in your browser, but they really are from the app description!

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The New York Times updated both its main mobile app, NYTimes, and its tablet edition, NYTimes for iPad, this afternoon.

In addition to bug fixes, the update adds search and live blog auto update support.

Next Issue Media today updated its iPad app, which here we will simply call Next Issue rather than its official long name.

The update "addresses issues reported in the latest release, including fixing a problem where some users experienced missing cover images. Also reduces crashes."

Also updating their iPad app to fix bugs was CNN. There app is called blandly CNN App for iPad.

BevNet uses a replica solution to create its first tablet edition; pricing policy is contradictory and a bit mysterious

Following lunch I looked at my Twitter and found a vendor promoting a new app inside the Apple App Store for its client – and good thing since finding newly released digital magazines inside the store has been made more difficult by Apple's strange new redesign.

Having said that, there are times when one looks at a new tablet edition and the immediate thought that comes to mind is that you wish you had talked to the publisher before hand and asked them "do you really want to do this?"

The new app, BevNet Magazine, is good contrast to the new app released yesterday for Beverage World from Macfadden Communications. That app, seen here, used the Mag+ platform to create a hybrid app, where the print ads from the magazine appeared untouched, but the editorial pages were reformatted to produce a digital magazine that would be easier to read on the iPad. Additionally, Macfadden's digital team decided that the way to handle the issue of qualified circulation was to release the app as a free app where anyone interested in the content could download issues for free, subscribing only as a way to get the future issues to download automatically.

Bevnet Magazine, on the other hand, has built its ad using Tapedition. What this results in is a replica edition of the print magazine, unchanged in any way I could see from the print magazine. Another decision that was made was to charge for issues and subscriptions – well, sort of, as you will see.

According to the app description individual issues are to be available for $3.99 per issue, with an annual subscription available for $19.99. But the app has a "Buy" button for the one issue to be found inside the app, but no price. Tapping that button results in the issue downloading without the usual dialogue box that comes up confirming the purchase. Also, there is no price shown. (How this app got through Apple is a mystery.)

When I saw that the download was starting I had to wonder if I had been charged for the magazine (I hadn't). Was this December meant to be a sample issue? Who knows, this app is all doesn't say much, including how big the download that was occurring would be.

It turns out it was 234 MB, a rather huge size for a 68 page replica edition.

The only thing that might explain why this tablet edition is so large is its pop-up ads. Yes, like the app seen yesterday, Philly Beer Scene, this app has pop-up ads that obnoxiously show up every few pages. In fact, they are the exact ads as you can see below.

One might be surprised that a publisher would allow this to happen to their magazine, but after all these years I guess nothing surprises me anymore. But all I can say is "really, you want this?"
Left: the library/store page where there is a buy button, but no prices; Middle: the pop-up ad that shows up every few pages; Right: the layouts reveal that this is most definitely a replica edition.

Amazon's new AutoRip plan shouldn't run into trouble from the labels due to its limitations

The online retailer Amazon.com today unveiled a new MP3 program for buyers of CDs on its website. Called AutoRip the program gives buyers an MP3 version of their just-purchased CD that is available immediately.

The program is a logical move in a market where many buyers are choosing to buy MP3 downloads rather than physical CDs, causing CD sales to decline. The idea that would be attractive to the record labels is that the CD generally costs more so the purchase ends up being an upsell.

The key to the whole venture, though, is that not all CDs are eligible, only those music titles where Amazon.com already offers a choice between buying physical media and an MP3 download.

According to the Amazon site that is about 37,500 titles.

Because the record label has already approved Amazon.com selling an MP3 version of the CD, there should be no opposition from labels (and likely the move was discussed in advance with the major labels).

Will this lead to more CD sales? Probably a bit. Most people already know how to rip their own music, but the offer does offer some convenience.

The real winner here, though, would be Amazon's cloud player system. Amazon Cloud Player competes head-on with Apple's iCloud – but Apple, of course, does not sell physical CDs. So now buyers of music at Amazon.com, whether buying MP3s or CDs, would now have access to their music through Cloud Player.

Amazon's Cloud Player is free for anyone buying music through the online retailer, but the storage is only 250 songs imported directly from the user own library. The price for Cloud Player Premium is $24.99 per year.

But if you buy all your music through Amazon, which surely the retailer would prefer, all those songs would be stored in your Cloud Player account regardless whether you have upgraded to Premium or not.

The one advantage Apple's iTunes still has is that in some limited cases, an MP3 purchase from iTunes comes with a digital booklet included, one where the buyer can print out their own jewel case material. Amazon one ups this by offering a physical CD with its original booklet – though at CD prices, of course.

Update: Around the time this story was posted I received an email from Amazon about past purchases and the AutoRip program – no doubt thousands of other customers of the retail received a similar email. Upon clicking the email about 500 additional songs I had purchased in the past few years were automatically added to Amazon Cloud Player, in addition to the 250 or so songs I already had there from more recent purchases. I would guess that this move will encourage more users of Amazon's online music player, as well as new downloads of the Amazon Cloud Player for iPhone.