Top publishers aim at digital distribution
Imagine reading a headline like “5 top publishers plan rival to Kindle format” from the Associated Press, and it started off like this…
Five of the nation’s largest publishers of newspapers and magazines plan to challenge Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle electronic-book reader with their own digital format that would display in color and work on a variety of devices.
You’d think that big name ‘old media’ was about to play hardball, especially if you kept reading it. The article continues to make confusing references to a ‘Kindle challenger’. This lead me to seek out the press release to read about the new device, and how the publishers were going to shut Amazon out. Of course, because the AP doesn’t post a link to said PR at the end of the article (all the while complaining how others steal THEIR news), there was a bit of irony involved in having to use Google Bing to suss out clarification from a world leader in news services. I guess the blogosphere isn’t the only place that gets it wrong sometimes…
The actual story makes no mention of shutting out Amazon, and as the new venture is a publishing conglomorate, I’m willing to bet that e-readers including Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s e-readers and the rest will also be possible distribution points.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the point…
For years, we’ve seen the ‘old media’ wringing it’s hands as advertising dollars dwindle, and people expect more of their news for free. After all, those Google ads have to be paying the bills, right?
Things may be changing though. Five of the top publishers of magazines and newspapers (that would be Time, News Corp, Conde Nast, Hearst and Meredith Corp) have announced the plan to enter the digital distribution world, with a new format that will allow subscribers to read their content on a variety of devices, both large and small.
“For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice, including smartphones, e-readers and laptops,” explained John Squires, the venture’s interim managing director. “Once purchased, this content will be ‘unlocked’ for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform. [from the press release]”
One of the more positively interesting things is that, unlike audio and video, the electronic publication format is said to be DRM free right out of the gate. From the above quote, it also seems that subscribers to the digital version of any of the publications will have access to every digital format without any extra charge.
Sally forth I say, Kindle or no Kindle.
They will all overprotect their stuff and fail miserably. Only a company with the pre-existing online presence of an Apple or an Amazon can play strict anti-consumerist games and still manage to win. The publishers are going to be even more anal about protection and foreign to the market, thus they will choke their much smaller pool of early adopters even harder, and the whole enterprise will be seen as dead in the water pretty damn fast.
I’m not so sure that they’re going to be so anti-customer as one would expect from the magazine biz. 🙂
The new endeavour is aiming at multiple platforms (phones, desktops, ereaders etc), and a subscriber to a publication has access to all of the formats for one price (no paying separately for phone & computer versions). Though I haven’t found the exact quote, it’s been widely published that it’s DRM free, though that might be a misinterpretation from the official press releases comment about being ‘unlocked’.
So far I’m not seeing the choke point, especially if it’s DRM free, but of course this is a press release and the devil’s in the details.
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