Ever since the first rumours that Apple might launch a tablet computer, the publishing world has been obsessed with the idea that this might be the new way to read magazines and newspapers that people had been waiting for. Obviously readers must be waiting for something, because they weren’t buying as many magazines and newspapers. And it couldn’t be editorial quality that was the problem, because everybody in the office was so nice and they were all working so terribly hard. Honestly, Carolina – the intern who left last week after that breakdown thing – you never saw her off Google! So it must be that people were simply tired of paper, and all we needed to do was make everything into an ‘app’ instead of a magazine. And then it would be all right.
Well, it’s taken a while, but the means by which we can go about designing iPad magazines are finally shaping up. Of course, many publishers have already plunged in, hiring their own coders or partnering with services such as Zinio and PixelMags. But what’s clearly been required is a way of creating dedicated iPad publications using familiar tools like Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress.
We’ve been watching Adobe’s solution (as yet unreleased to the general public) in action within Dennis Publishing, and we’ll let you know all about that in due course. Now Quark has released a full toolkit to users of its high-end Quark Publishing System, while a plug-in version enables any QuarkXPress 8.5 user to turn layouts into apps. You can read our hands-on report on p64.
The ease of use and scope of both these solutions have impressed us – in different measure – and it’s reassuring to see the big players finally rousing themselves to address the new medium of the tablet screen. As we pointed out last issue, however (MacUser, 18 February 2011, p114), the way forward in business terms is still not quite clear. Both Adobe and Quark require
a repeat payment every time you release an issue – something that’s never been the case with print. Are we going through this just to replace physical overheads with virtual ones?
Apple, whose invention sparked all the optimism in the first place, has suddenly thrown its own wet blanket over proceedings by announcing that it wants a 30% cut of all subscriptions sold in-app – and, by the way, everyone has to sell subscriptions in-app. Readers, in their strange illogical way, seem to expect things to cost a little less on screen, because they’re not buying any paper or ink or postage. Yet at this rate digital editions might not end up being any cheaper to produce and distribute.
The crazy thing is, Apple doesn’t need the money. It’s sitting on a pile of cash and raking in more every year from hardware, which customers buy because they can do useful things with it conveniently and affordably. Making the delivery of content on it more restricted and expensive seems neither a necessary move nor a wise one.
Still, let’s not be downhearted. As reporters, we’ll keep you informed about where all this goes. As publishers, we’ll continue to monitor all the options for digital editions; many of you already subscribe to MacUser that way, and we’ll move along to the payment system together in due course. And as magazine people, we’ll keep loving magazines, which to us are shiny, heavy, papery things that thunk onto your doormat or catch your eye from across a shop and beg to be picked up and read.
We cede to no-one in our admiration of the iPad, but the publications we read on it are the ones we’d otherwise probably survive without. Reading on screen is the newspaper equivalent of FaceTime. Reading in print is like a face-to-face conversation, on a Sunday morning, at a café table, with really good croissants.
Not even iPad 2 can change our minds about that.
Adam Banks
