Hodgkin has a very interesting post on his Exact Editions blog today. Here’s a snippet. I must admit that I never thought about the purchasing habits ingrained into iTunes customers:
If you are going to charge for your magazine app (and if it is really good and it costs you money to make it you should charge for it), recognize that it is a lot easier to sell an app for 99c or $2.99, or even £4.99 than it is to sell one for €9.99. And selling an app for $19.99 is really tough. I am not sure that consumer purchases can be sold effectively for $19.99 or $29.99 on iTunes. This is a fact about iTunes, where users have got used to spending 99c for a track. Purchasing habits on iTunes are different from purchasing habits using PayPal or Amazon. Recognize that fact before you get too far in. Recognize also that purchasing on iTunes can be very frictionless, easier and smoother than PayPal or a Credit Card. iTunes is different from Visa or MasterCard. At low prices, iTunes is better, slicker, easier than any other e-commerce environment, but not at the prices that many magazine publishers wish to charge for annual subscriptions.
Some of the points Mr Hodgkin makes are indeed valid, I believe. The iPad and this new technology is in it’s infancy and there is a whole lot to come. Also the subscription function in iTunes has a long way to go to satisfy what publishers need and what will make subscribing more attractive to iPad users.
Where I take issue with Mr Hodgkin’s views are on prices of apps and on the magazines themselves.
He makes NO mention of the fact that the magazines launched to date have received such a strongly negative reaction from iPad users. Their functionality has been disappointing, their file sizes have been ridiculous and they have not offered much that adds to what is on the web. Ignoring this issue in his article makes me wonder about his overview of this market and his motives in how he presents his other data.
I buy regularly from iTunes. Yes, most of the apps I buy are under 9.99. But I also buy music and I often buy several albums at a time, and I do not think this is unusual. So I don’t accept that there is some kind of glass ceiling of pricing.
I suggest that this is a distraction and an excuse for the poor performance of eMagazines to date.
I also find his comments on the “iPad Magazines Tank” chart curious. He suggests that the ” . . the real problem was the extraordinary success of the first iPad edition from Wired”. Really ? When we ignore this edition it is still clear to me that the overall trend is down down down. In a market where a decent product would be expected to go up up up ……
So overall while I think Hodgkin has some valid points, the overall impression I get from him is excuses for the failures of the Publishers to do anything like a decent job on their products.