Condé Nast’s iPad version of The New Yorker has received an update and now offers readers two subscription models for the magazine. Just a week ago we reported that Apple managed to get Time Inc. to play on their team and just a few days after that both Hearts and The Telegraph joined the subscription party. Now, Condé Nast has started updating their magazine apps in an attempt to join the fray. It seems like subscription models might just catch on after all.
In addition to the $4.99 per single issue option, readers of Condé Nast’s The New Yorker can now subscribe to the magazine for an entire month at $5.99 (that’s $1.49 per issue), or for a full year at $59,99 ($10 less than a subscription to the print edition). The Wall Street Journal reports that subscribers to the print edition will get free access to the iPad version of the magazine.
This is just the first magazine for which Condé Nast is offering subscriptions on the iTunes Store. The publisher has other magazines in the App Store (Wired, Vogue, GQ, SELF, Vanity Fair, …), of which seven will be updated later this month to support the new subscription model.
The big price differences between the subscription plans of the digital and the printed editions of the apps and the use of Apple’s in-app subscription model (with its 30% fee) indicate that the publishers are finally starting to understand that they have to make it as easy as possible for readers to pay them money for their products. It’ also a move that encourages people to move away from print editions of the magazine and towards the digital editions.
If subscriptions are going to be successful, they have to be affordable for users, and on par with print editions of the magazine. It seems like Condé Nast has finally realized that, and hopefully this move will result in more sales of the iPad editions of their magazines.
Article Via All Things Digital
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