Magazine publishers: we must retain control if we digitize

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By Paul Biba

The pending Apple tablet, if it really exists, seems to be sparking a lot of thinking in the publishing industry, especially in magazines. We have seen how News Corp. may be pulling out of Kindle distribution because of the control Amazon insists on having over content, subscriber information and pricing. Evidently magazines don’t want to get into this bind once they digitize.

A recent article from Advertising Age discusses this conundrum facing the publishers:

They saw how Apple dictated music prices on iTunes, where for a long time the world learned that every song was worth 99 cents, no less and no more. And they’ve watched Amazon exert total control over the magazine and newspaper subscriptions it sells on the Kindle, refusing to provide publishers any information about their own subscribers through the Kindle Store.

Retaining control over pricing and customer information is vital to the magazine industry, the article says, and evidently some consideration is being given to creating an industry storefront that could live on various ereading platforms.

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