When I was a kid, getting a new magazine in the mail was a great experience. I’d come home from school and there it would be, waiting for me to read. The Internet has changed that. I hardly ever have time to read magazines anymore, I simply spend too much time sitting in front of the computer reading the 21st century equivalent to magazines (and newspapers), blogs.
Today, the world’s largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble, is attempting to bring the magazine back — in the digital world. BN.com (Barnes & Noble’s website) has teamed up with electronic publisher Zinio to sell subscriptions for more than 1,000 magazine titles. Subscriptions will be available both in digital and regular formats at prices up to ninety percent off the newsstand price. The digital version will be available to start reading just minutes after purchase.
Zinio is currently the provider of BN.com’s “See Inside” feature, which allows potential book purchasers to get a glimpse of a book’s contents before they buy it.
The real question here is if people will want to read magazines online? The market this would seem to cater to, people like myself, who already spend so much time in front of a computer screen during the day that spending an hour or so more to read a magazine might seem like too much. However, transferring a digital magazine copy to an e-book reader like the Kindle might make sense, but seeing as Amazon.com, a chief BN.com competitor, makes the Kindle, that probably won’t happen.
Another interesting aspect of this partnership is that over 12,000 back catalog issues of various magazines will be available for purchase digitally. While it may not seem obvious why you would want to read an old copy of a magazine, for something like a research paper, this could be very useful — provided of course, that the catalog is searchable. Several publications have back issues of their magazines online on their own sites already, but most are rather limited.
M2 Media Group will handle the subscriptions for those who choose to go the more traditional, paper route.
We previously covered Zinio in early 2007 when it was in the process of being dismantled.
[photo: flickr/PinkMoose]
Tags: co:amazon, co:barnes and noble, co:M2-Media-Group, co:zinio
7:33 pm
Barnes and Noble Launches Digital Magazine Downloads »TechAddress said:
[...] MG over at VentureBeat has the details on Zinio, the company powering these very exciting digital downloads. MG says the issue here is whether people will want to read magazines online. The issue is completely different in my opinion. With the ability to pick up nearly any magazine for pennies at FatWallet (and other cheap subs sites) and/or the ability to get many magazines for free, what’s the benefit to downloading the magazine? If you say it’s to get the content faster, hogwash — the content from the magazine is almost always available on the Web site even before the magazine hits the news stand. [...]
4:57 am
Digital Object Identifier for Media « Wedia Up said:
[...] Barnes & Noble and Zinio take magazines digital for those who just can’t leave the compute… [via Zemanta] [...]
10:54 pm
The Modern Journalist » Blog Archive » On Innovation and Engagement said:
[...] Barnes & Noble and Zinio take magazines digital for those who just can’t leave the compute… [via Zemanta] [...]
12:14 pm
Has your favorite BBC program been off the air for 81 years? You’re in luck » VentureBeat said:
[...] to 1851. Similarly, many magazines make back-issues available to subscribers online. Bookseller Barnes & Noble and electronic publisher Zinio recently teamed up to make magazines from the past available [...]