WSJ iPad subscription sets you back $17.29 per month

I have the following free iPad news apps waiting in iTunes for sync with the iPad when I receive it:
Fluent News Reader
AP News
Reuters News
Thomson Reuters Finance
USA Today
BBC News and NPR
While I understand that the journalism of some of the above is not on a par with the WSJ, they will have to suffice for now since I am unwilling to pay this exorbitant subscription fee. Perhaps the WSJ will eventually conclude that a high readership of a free edition will drive much higher advertising revenue than the small circle of readers willing to pay for a subscription. Print media has a high physical production and distribution cost on top of the cost of content creation. In this case the cost of content creation and delivery is more comparable to television and radio, which has a time-honored tradition of advertisement-financed, free-to-the-consumer delivery.

I am still absolutely floored at how laughably high the price is

You would think he would understand that putting a lower price would attract significant amount of users that would pay.

Now? I doubt they get half as much as they think

Wow, is the publishing industry running scared. Apple appears to be a victim of it's own success. First it's book publishers wanting to price ebooks to compete with hardback prices (even when some of those books aren't, and never were, available in hardback). Now the WSJ is charging more for electronic delivery than home delivery?

Wow.

They're so scared that if they price their goods appropriately they'll lose control of pricing like the music business did when iTunes revolutionized that industry. What they are forgetting is why the music industry allowed Apple to do what they did - rampant piracy was killing them. That's what happens when companies blatantly over price electronic things - geeks steal them.

Now I don't think it's going to be a problem for online newspapers, their content changes so quickly it's not worth the trouble to rip it and post it elsewhere. That said, book publishers are in for a rude awakening. With the iPad busing open the doors of ebook consumption, the trade in illegal book downloads is going to skyrocket. Eventually the market will force their prices down (as it will with the WSJ when most people will morally object to being raped on price). In the mean time, however, prepare for the wild west.

I have watched with amusement the comments related to the article about WSJ's monthly subscription price for the iPad. Nobody seems to have checked what the regular annual subscription price is for their combined online/paper version for existing subscribers. Everybody is quoting a special introductory offer that is only available to a first time subscriber. Once you are a regular subscriber a combined print and online subscription price is $395.00. That is $7.60 per week or $32.92 per month. Based on that reality I would say a price of $17.29 . . . which is a little more than half of a regular combined subscription price . . . is not a bad deal.

It will soon become evident that there is a sweet spot for subscriptions. I suspect that for the WSJ or NYT it will be around $9.99 per month. A couple of years ago most would have thought that 99 cents or $1.99 for an iPhone app was insanity but in the meantime there are a lot of developers who have, seemingly, made a lot of money. $17.99 times X doesn't make nearly as much sense as $9.99 times 3X especially when your expenses remain fairly constant. Let's just hope that these publishers look for that sweet spot rather than throwing up their hands and saying "this didn't work."

There is plenty of room for them to lower the price and still make a tidy profit. Daily reader since mid 1980s and consider it the finest publication in the world. Willing to pay dearly for it. But not this much, not after $80 nut already.

He probably thinks the iPad hippies are willing to pay more to save the environment. But he's clearly misjudged his customer base here. Most people buy the WSJ just so they can have it sitting in their office or hold it up at a restaurant/coffee shop or carry it with them down the street - so people who look at them think they are hip, with-it, financial know-it-alls. 90% of WSJ's are thrown out unread. Having to pay MORE for a WSJ that nobody can see you pretending to read is utterly pointless. Frankly I doubt they could give away free WSJ iPad subscriptions. Yeah at first some people will want to see what it's like to read a newspaper on the iPad and a few will try it out for that reason only. But long term subscribers? Yeah right. Not even for $0.99 a year. When you have an iPad you hold it back-out so everyone can see that you have an Apple iPad. You don't hold it screen-out so everyone can see you NOT reading the WSJ.

And don't respond to this telling me that YOU read the full WSJ every day. You're not fooling me or impressing anyone.

I have to wonder where people pull their numbers from when they complain about this being too expensive. Producing the content costs a lot of money. Distributing the content is also expensive in bandwidth costs. That money spent has to be balanced out somewhere.

Michael, in your post you say in one paragraph that they're offering it for free for a limited time, and then say that it's priced out of the point where people will try it, but I think people will try limited time free.

Hello. They HAVE to charge more than the print edition, simply so the internet division can catch up to the revenue generated by the print edition over the past 15 years. They've only been earning pennies with online ads, so now they need to charge money hand over fist to make up the difference that has accumulated.

Maybe once the revenue streams have balanced out, then they can look at reducing the charge to be approximately what the print version costs.

So your choice is: 3g internet or the Wall Street Journal (+$2) hmmmmmm.