Elle, Nylon and Pop Sci gladly adopt Apple's subscription terms

I'm confused. Pop sci will be selling 1 year iPad subscriptions for $19.99, while you get 1 year paper subscription for $12. How is this a good deal for consumers? I thought the terms said they have to sell subscriptions at the same rate on iPad as they do in paper, or am I wrong here?

I don't want to rain on the parade, but newspaper and magazine subscriptions are not the same thing as book. It really isn't news (if you think about it) that newspaper and magazine publishers will take the 30% hit. They voluntarily do that, give great prices of the single issue price. This offer saves them paper, printing, and transportation costs.

What isn't news, and should be, is that the 30% rate is being charged on eBooks other than iBooks. There are fixed margins and costs, here. You can't make it up on volume and demographics don't matter. You can't make every book, or a significant additional portion into best sellers by placement or advertising. This could force the wholesale price of books down. The publishers won't take the hit; they'll pass it down to the author in the form of lower royalties and lower advances.

And before you say, well, just read on your iPad, the Kindle still is a better reading experience because it is light, small, works well outdoors, and is relatively cheap, which means you will be willing to read almost anywhere with it. I doubled or tripled my book consumption, i.e., buy, since I bought mine. I don't think book consumption on the iPad is as flexible due to hardware (though it looks good). Being able to read on *both* platforms is key to on-going success of readers and iOS.

Do the math. If the book publisher cut is constant. Apple's cut is 30% of the constant publisher's price and therefore constant. iBook = publisher$ + Apple$. Kindle = publisher$ + Amazon$ + Apple$. Will Amazon willingly take 0% or will they raise the price of Kindle books from their parity of 30% from the publisher, making themselves uncompetitive in their own market.

As an author, one of the little fish, these things worry me. Maybe it will be okay. Maybe in August the Kindle App will re-emerge as an HTML5 application and Apple loses...

I've pinged Zinio to see what their commitment is and they said to check back in a month, that they hadn't put together a formal decision. They do offer in app purchases but it doesn't use the App Store. Does anyone have any insight here? I can't imagine they wouldn't come along to the party.