Lekiosk, the France-based digital newsstand that last year raised $7.1 million in a Series B Round to push its vision as a “Spotify for magazines”, is today announcing a deal with Asus in a bid to grow its Android business. The makers of the Nexus 7, the PadFone and FonePad, and other tablets will preload the lekiosk app, covering some 800 magazines, as part of its ASUS@vibe+ content platform on… → Read More
A little sweetening of the deal for would-be Android holiday tablet and smartphone and buyers in one part of the world: today Google announced that it is expanding its Magazines section of Google Play apps to the UK. Some Android users started to notice the store appearing yesterday; today is the formal launch where it will be available to everyone. → Read More
Scoop.it launched last November to give anyone and everyone the ability to create their own digital magazines — to aggregate and distribute content from across ye olde Internets according to their particular interests — not unlike Pressly or OnSwipe. In December, the startup released its first mobile app and has since been adding integrations with services like Hootsuite, SlideShare and Buffer… → Read More
Tablets, with their larger touchscreens that are less cumbersome than laptops, have been shown to lend themselves naturally to long-form content consumption, and that is spawning a new breed of services to fit the bill. One of those is Paris-based LeKiosk, a digital periodical “stall” that has now closed a Series B round of investment totalling $7.1 million to grow its business across Europe. → Read More
Google quietly announced the addition of an online magazine reader this week, which works within its Google Play media and applications store. The Magazines section of Google Play allows you to search for, purchase, subscribe to, and now, read magazines right in the Chrome web browser. Magazines can be purchased individually or on a subscription basis via an Android phone, tablet or the web (for… → Read More
Newsweek, the U.S. weekly news magazine that’s been in publication since 1933, today announced it would be going all-digital beginning in early 2013. The last print version will be the December 31, 2012 edition, and the company will rename its publication “Newsweek Global” when it goes digital-only, targeted web and app delivery. → Read More
Future, an international publisher whose titles include T3, Official Xbox Magazine and websites like GamesRadar, revealed in a new trading update today that it is building up a good incoming gross revenue stream from Apple Newsstand, which has driven over £5M (roughly $8M U.S) in total since Newsstand’s launch in October. Increases in digital revenues are offsetting the decline on the print… → Read More
As e-book publishers and Apple face an antitrust lawsuit over pricing, magazine publishers are now looking into an alternative solution to the digital pricing dilemma: being able to extricate themselves from Apple’s grip entirely. A startup called Netizine, makers of a new, tablet-ready social magazine platform for publishers is currently in talks with seven of the ten top global publishers… → Read More
In the landgrab among reading apps that aggregate content to make it more accessible on tablets and smartphones, one of the early movers, Pulse, is today announcing a deal with magazine publisher Bonnier that will give its offering a significant boost.
Bonnier is adding 20 titles from its special-interest magazine portfolio to the Pulse reading stream, including titles like Field and Stream… → Read More
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Done right, it can also help the imitator tap into the zeitgeist and pick up more followers as a result.
That looks like it might have been some of the logic behind the relaunch of the website of Easy Living, a UK magazine published by Conde Nast, which relaunched this month with a Pinterest-like grid interface on its home page. → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Pressly is an HTML5-based platform that turns online publications into tablet-friendly websites that work on the iPad, Android tablets or the BlackBerry PlayBook. The sites it produces are nearly indistinguishable from their native counterparts, like Flipboard and Zite for example, offering a similar experience for browsing through articles, images and videos. → Read More
Now that iTunes allows for subscriptions, more and more magazines are putting out iPad apps. The best ones offer new experiences beyond what amounts to turning the iPad into a fancy PDF viewer. This week, Spin magazine is releasing its very first iPad app (iTunes link) which production director Dylan Boelte recently demoed for me (see video).
It’s a magazine app in that includes a digital… → Read More
How much pricing power exactly does Apple have over publishers desperate to figure out a digital strategy that results in paying subscribers? A hell of a lot—at least that is what Apple is betting with its new subscription billing service. Apple is taking a 30 percent cut of all digital subscription revenues. Just take a moment to think about that for a second.
Up until now, Apple took a 30… → Read More
Ever since the iPad came out, print media companies have been feeling their way in this new medium, but so far they’ve just been stumbling over themselves.
They are latching onto the iPad as a new walled garden where people will somehow magically pay for articles they can get for free in their browsers. But if they want people to pay, the experience has to be better than on the Web, and usually… → Read More
Another major magazine will stop printing its editions and move completely online. U.S. News & World Report, the USA Today of weekly news magazines, will no longer be found on subscriber’s mailboxes after its December issue. According to an employee memo obtained by Poynter Online’s Romeneso blog, subscribers will no longer get print issues.
Instead, U.S. News & World Report will focus… → Read More
Conventional wisdom says that it’d be a better idea to build a ladder to the moon than it would be to start a magazine in 2010. Apparently Best Buy disagrees. The retailer announced, some months back, that it would be starting a new video game magazine called @Gamer. (Pronounced “gamer”—ignore the @.) It hooked up with the good folks at Future, the same people who publish the World of… → Read More
Print publishers are in a tizzy over Apple’s new iPad because they hope to finally be able to charge for their digital editions. But in order to get people to pay for their magazine and newspaper apps, they are going to have to offer something different that readers cannot get at the newsstand or on the open Web. We’ve already seen plenty of prototypes from magazine publishers which include… → Read More
You’ll recall that, a few months ago, we mentioned that Blizzard, in collaboration with Future (the publisher responsible for Edge in the UK, among other magazines), would be creating a World of Warcraft-themed magazine. It’s called World of Warcraft: Official Magazine and I just received the very first issue, Winter 2009. From a visual standpoint, the magazine is gorgeous. It’s like looking at a… → Read More
The magazine industry is falling over itself over a new shiny object. It wants to remake its product for a new class of digital tablets with color screens and touch screens. Today, a group of big publishers—Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith—announced a joint venture to create standards for digital magazines to be read on tablets, e-readers, Web phones, and the like. … → Read More
World of Warcraft players will soon have yet another way to keep up-to-date with the game’s many complexities. Yes, there will be a World of Warcraft magazine. (That’s what Blizzard just told us, but the Web site won’t be live till Friday.) It’s the result of a partnership between Blizzard and Future, the same company that publishes the likes of Edge, PC Gamer, and Nintendo Power. → Read More
Holy crap, magazine subscriptions are becoming like cell phone deals now. Subscribe to Sports Illustrated at $49 per year and you’ll get Madden NFL 10 on your choice of console for free. Now that, my friends, beats Football Follies or a quacking duck phone any day. Well it beats Football Follies, at least. → Read More
It was a sad day ’round these parts last January when Ziff Davis shut down EGM, the long-running video game magazine. Last May, when it was announced that the magazine’s original founder, Steve Harris, had bought back the rights, there was muted cheering. “Yay, they’re bringing it back; did we really miss it?” But now that Harris has given an interview to Publishing Executive, I can say that… → Read More
Some good news for your Sunday, your day of rest. Retromags, a Web site that scans and archives old (up till 1999) video game magazines, has got its hands on the very first issue of Game Informer. Let us celebrate! → Read More
Even though we’re losing newspapers left and right in the U.S., people ought not be afraid for the future of news, journalism, etc. So says Steven Johnson, author of, among other things, The Invention of Air. Johnson, speaking at a panel at SXSWi, tried to allay the fears of every kid in journalism school—and those of us who recently graduated, lol!—by saying that people need only look… → Read More
All I have to say to Hearst is “Good luck, bro.” The flatlining publisher, which produces magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Esquire and Cosmopolitan, has revealed that it’s working on an e-reader. The idea, of course, is to cut down the cost of creating a magazine—all that paper, ink, storage, delivery, gas, etc. adds up, especially in an environment when ad sales are way… → Read More
This April will bring the 500th issue of Mad Magazine and, starting with that issue, the publication will be moving from monthly to quarterly circulation. → Read More
As you’re no doubt aware by now, UGO (owned by Hearst) has >bought 1UP.com</a from Ziff Davis. EGM, the venerable gaming mag, is no more, with the upcoming February issue set to be its last. Well played, Hearst. → Read More
Facing rising ink and paper costs and a declining demand for physical discs, the world’s most recognizable skin rag — I mean, adult entertainment periodical — is getting out of the DVD business. Their online distribution system will be their primary method of content distribution, and other cost-cutting measures will be taken in order to return the company to profitability. → Read More
Games For Windows, known as Computer Gaming Monthly prior to its marriage to Microsoft, is no more. The go-to authority on PC gaming has succumbed to the reality of the magazine business: they’re too costly to make for their own good. Editor-in-chief Jeff Green, whose columns I enjoyed for a number of years, has written a eulogy of sorts on his 1UP blog, wherein he laments the state of the… → Read More
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