The unhappy Economics of an iPad Magazine [Ipad]

While you turn the newest Sports Illustrated iPad issue to the portrait position, like a book, nothing happens. Just an error message. That’s because Sports Illustrated is too poor to give it in anything but the landscape format.

The issue, says Time’s Josh Quittner, who’s been guest editing the iPad edition of SI, is that offering an alternate view taxes already overburdened designers. It’s 33 percent more work. And they’re able to’t hire more designers. They need to! ” Well, if we were ready to build a real business, with subscriptions that offered our iPad versions to readers at an affordable price, that could be a no brainer. But we will be able to’t yet…” Emphasis mine: SI needs subscriptions to be a viable business as an app, is what Quittner’s saying.

Subscriptions the one largest pain point for publishers facing Apple, who’ve otherwise come running to splash themselves on the iPad, one desperate belly flop for print salvation. The sticking points were many. Apple doesn’t wish to hand out valuable subscriber info willy nilly; publishers don’t wish to give a third of subscription revenue to Apple in perpetuity, as current App Store guidelines would dictate. So there’ve been no subscriptions. Earlier, maybe.

The rumor, which started as an easy ” Apple will allow newspaper subscriptions ” is now that Apple’s going to open a wholly separate service for newspapers and magazines, a ” digital newsstand” that’s ” designed particularly for the iPad” and ” can be just like Apple’s iBook store for electronic books.” (Update: The Wall Street Journal backs up Bloomberg with similar details about Apple’s ” efforts to steer publishers to sign up for the company’s first foray into selling newspaper and magazine subscriptions for the iPad.” )

An iPad digital newssstand will be the beginning of the iPad print revolution publishers had been dying for. It’s not hard to look how it’d change the best way you read magazines on the iPad, currently dispensed as disjointed, single-serving apps. My iPad has been affected by an unruly mess of stories and mag apps. (Until I got Folders , thank Christ).

It’s still too soon to celebrate, though. Talks are ongoing. The hangups are over an analogous issues as before, says Bloomberg. Revenue splits and subscriber info. The newsstand could open for business in ” a few months” (in time for a new beefed up, marquee NYT app?) or ” early 2011″ with a better iPad. Or it could possibly take a good deal longer, if talks collapse. (Subscriptions will happen, at some point, besides the fact that it takes an overly long time.) And if mags and newspapers are framed within this new app and service, publishers would do well to think about what it mean to be window dressing for Apple’s frames.

Still, glorious as SI’s new Super Looooong View photos may be in landscape mode, I’m sure Quittner and the remainder of SI wouldn’t mind having the ability to include a portrait mode, if they may afford it. [ Bloomberg , WSJ , Netly via AppleInsider ]

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This post is tagged: landscape format, magazine subscriptions, newspaper subscriptions, portrait position, sports illustrated, subscription revenue, wall street journal