Hearst and Apple come to terms on subscriptions

I've used Zinio for years and their iPad an iPhone apps are great. Also an OSX app and online reader.

I've found their pricing is very attractive too with hundreds of titles and a great search function.

Big fan (... and not affiliated with them!)

Yes, I remember when you last wrote about magazine pricing on the iPad. You gave the strong impression that you didn't know what you were talking about at the time. There is nothing "baffling" about magazine's charging more for individual issues than a subscriber would pay per issue. That is how periodicals have always been sold. Are you baffled that a smaller bottle of Tide costs more per fluid ounce than a larger bottle? Are you unfamiliar with the concept of volume pricing? Is $5 too much for one issue of Esquire. Possibly, but not because subscribing will cost a reader less per issue. And, for what it's worth, not everyone knows that magazine make most of their money from advertising--as you wrote in your last post on this subject. Some magazines do. But increasingly they do not. Smaller niche magazines, like the New Republic, rely on subscription revenue--and some magazines have moved to a nonprofit model that merges subscription revenue with donations in order stay in the black.

I like the idea of an integrated iNewstand to browse and purchase newspapers and magazines.

These prices are certainly a step in the right direction. It's crazy that in app magazine costs are typically in the neighborhood of $4.95.

Even Apples take of 30% is far less than bookstores take of 50% (of the cover price). Plus the distributor pays a return fee for magazines not sold along with the delivery fees to get them to the news and bookstores in the first place.

I'd like to see an iBooks app for OSX. I think we'll probably get our wish for that soon.

It doesn't need another app.

It simply needs a category in the AppStore, as did iBooks except Apple framed that up as required to read books and PDFs, perhaps but is a pretty cheap wrapper.

The whole media story as in music, video, tv shows, film, books, mags, apps that are one of the former, games, apps, websites, feeds, radio, live streams, recorded streams and on and on...

It is a mess of varying methods of getting, storing and accessing. Even on iOS it is a mess. Apple may be good at reinventing to easy but they aren't so good at reinventing what they have invented.

$19.99 for Esquire is low cost?

You can get a 1 year print subscription for $8.

So that means it costs 60% less for a publisher to buy paper, run presses to print hundred of thousands of copies of the magazine (many of which are ultimately not sold and recycled), warehouse issues, bag them, address them, and pay the postage it costs to ship them around the world—than it does to send it digitally???

Understandably, Apple charges 30% fee on top... but even then, it should still could be half what they will be charging customers.

Stupid.