Condè Nast, publisher of popular magazines like Wired, Vanity Fair, GQ, and The New Yorker, amongst others, has finally given their print subscribers access to the iPad edition of their magazines. As of today, readers of the print magazine can now get their magazines in both a print format and a digital format at no extra cost.
iPad sales of Condè Nast magazines have increased dramatically since their inclusion in Apple’s Newsstand program. According to Condè Nast, iPad issue sales have increased for GQ 94%, Wired 169% and Vanity Fair 245%.
According to Jamie Jouning, Digital Director of Condè Nast Britain:
Our existing readers will benefit from the ease of access to subscribe, while the prominent inclusion of our brands in Newsstand will allow an even higher level of ‘discoverability’. Ultimately this should lead to greater subscription growth.
What remains to be seen is how growth will continue as the novelty of Newsstand wears off for early adopters. Remember how much coverage Wired got when it released its first iPad magazine? Newsstand is doing the same kind of thing for these publishers. The application is new and notable now, so obviously people are wanting to try it out. The real success of Newsstand won’t be realized for a couple more months. That being said, giving print subscribers access to digital editions is long overdue. There are plenty of situations where a printed magazine is more useful than a digital edition, and vice versa. Being able to hop between print and digital editions means that I’ll be reading magazines more frequently during my stolen minutes in waiting rooms and that’a good thing. Now if only Fast Company would offer up a digital edition of their print magazine.
