Time Inc., the publishing company behind Time, Wallpaper, and Entertainment Weekly, will now start offering free excerpts from magazines in their respective iPad apps. As of this morning, only Entertainment Weekly has started to offer select articles for free reading, while the rest of the magazine will remain paid. We will see the rest of Time Inc’s 21 titles gain free excerpts by the end of the year.
So, why is Time Inc. offering free articles, anyway? Simple. The company wants to grow its tablet-only reader base. As of now, Time Inc. has said that it has roughly 500,000 of these users, most who have made the transition within the last year. The company has also stated that it is adding roughly 10,000 paid digital subscribers each week. On the other hand, Time’s competitor Hearst already has double Time’s tablet-only subscriber base with one million readers.
According to All Things D, the reason that it has taken Time Inc. such a long time to add these free excerpts is due to the fact that it has been working with Adobe on a back-end that allows the company to change complementary offerings quickly.
Image Source: All Things D