Last year, tablet ownership was eight percent; by 2016,
it’s expected to be 40%. With an adoption rate that swift, it’s hard to ignore the changing face of the publishing landscape. Even the most stagnant proponents of tactile reading are coming to realize that what’s lost in paper is gained in multidimensional interactivity—and publishers are acting fast to reinvent their industry to reflect this dramatic shift in consumption.
Next Issue Media: The scenario is familiar: Select a
Watch Instantly series at random “just to check it out” and,
one weekend/three seasons later, you have a new favorite show.
Next Issue Media, a JV from a marquee roster of publishers (Condé Nast, Time Inc., Hearst, Meredith, and News Corp.) is now delivering a similar media buffet to readers with its Netflix-inspired service for tablet magazines. For $9.99 a month, subscribers can access an unlimited number of monthly and biweekly titles. With most tablet editions going for $1.99 a month, it’s a deal for anyone who reads five or more tablet rags. Not to worry, New Yorker fans: a $14.99 premium plan includes weeklies.
Travelreads: Last year,
Longreads launched to provide readers with the best long form essays online. The portal has since become a key content hub for tablet owners seeking reading material that’s deeper than a typical blog, yet doesn’t require the investment of a book. (Or, what New York Times editor David Carr labeled the types of reading material used to
“occupy [the] places in between,” like on subways and planes.) Longreads’ new sister service,
Travelreads, marks its
entrance into brand partnerships. Sponsored by Virgin Atlantic, Travelreads’ ongoing compendium of stories about exotic destinations offers travelers one of the best ways to spend a layover since the introduction of the airport bar.
Punch: MAD magazine may no longer boast the cultural impact it possessed during its heyday in the 1970s, but satire as an entertainment category is still thriving (see: Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, any number of
*$%! People Say videos).
Punch is a
new iPad app that offers both fresh humor content and a potentially game-changing tablet publishing platform. Seeking to become one of the first iPad-native media brands with which fans make an emotional connection, the app’s creators (writer/media entrepreneur David Bennahum and Radar magazine founding editor Maer Roshan) are introducing a system of in-app apps designed to make sticky content that much more adhesive.
