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Summer 2011 Cover

Cover. By Dabu Ch'wald |

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Progress Report

by 2600 Magazine | 1353 words

It’s been a mere six months since we began offering electronic subscriptions to 2600 via the Kindle, and not much longer since we created our first digital edition last autumn. We mentioned in these pages that this was an experiment for us, and perhaps for the publishing world in general. We also promised to keep our readers in the loop as we tested the waters and experimented a bit. While there is still much to be learned, what has already happened is fairly enlightening.

The response so far has been nothing short of staggering. It only took a couple of months for digital subscriptions to shoot past paper subscriptions in number, with many more coming in every day. We attribute this to several factors:

It’s extremely easy to subscribe. Literally, a couple of clicks and the content is there on your Kindle and automatically updated.

There has been a lot of word of mouth. We’ve been trying to approach this in our own unique way so that our readers are involved in the process and ensuing evolution. This has gotten a good degree of attention from the public as well as other publications since the results we get could very well portray what the future landscape will be.

We stand out in a relatively small field. What we’re doing is dangerous in the eyes of those who fear innovation and change. Unfortunately, that represents a large number of existing publishers, as well as entities used to an older way of doing things. This is why, to this day, there are only a few dozen magazines represented on the Kindle.

To us, this proves beyond any doubt that readers will support a publication electronically as well as physically if the content is of interest and the price is reasonable. Neither of these conditions is a given, however. We’ve encountered books and publications that obscenely overprice their electronic content. We’ve seen downloadable CDs that are more expensive than the physical CD itself - often from the same online source. There is no better way to drive people away than to treat them with this kind of disrespect. Rather than fear the consumer and try to take advantage of them as much as possible, publishers of words, music, film, etc. need to connect with them and remember why they’re doing this in the first place.

All of that said, the Kindle is but one device with certain limitations. There are a number of other devices and formats that we’re trying to work with as well. But there are some inevitable growing pains.

Every format requires a different conversion process and all sorts of potential for mishaps. This will have to improve over time. What’s a lot more annoying is the way we have to get embroiled in the battles that providers like Amazon, Apple, and Google are having between themselves. For instance, we have to provide the lowest price to Amazon or our payment from them gets cut in half. Other services, such as the Barnes & Noble Nook, set the price of a subscription themselves, meaning they could undercut Amazon without our consent and then we’d be screwed. So the solution for now is not to offer a subscription in that way, much as we want to. (Issues can only be obtained individually on the Nook.) As of press time, an agreement still hasn’t been reached that would allow Kindle magazine subscriptions to be readable on iPads and other Apple devices. Again, we’re offering the issues individually in order to get around this. Recently, it was announced by Amazon that we no longer supported Android devices when it was actually Amazon’s decision (or mistake) to do this. We were pretty outraged, as were many of our readers who had already subscribed using those devices. By the time Amazon got it sorted out, we had already amassed enough negative reviews to knock us out of the Number One spot we had held in customer satisfaction. (Apparently, you can only rate the publisher, not the provider.) In addition, to this day there’s a prominent notice on our subscription