Digital Magazines being made available on tablet only

Yesterday someone tweeted a link to a new magazine made “by web developers for web developers”. “Great” I thought, “that’s for me”. So you can imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the Appliness site only to find that the magazine is available for tablet owners only. I must admit, that especially in this case, I find this decision rather odd. On the front page of the Appliness website, it states:

This magazine is created by developers for developers, especially web application developers. Appliness focuses on how to use web standards to build desktop and mobile apps.

So apparently it focuses on how to use web standards in order to build desktop and mobile apps, but fails to follow these standards themselves. Actions speak louder than words.

Reader restriction

It’s also shutting out a number of people who do not have a tablet device. I know that many people these days do, but many more do not (I’m not aware of any specific numbers of course). I am one of them. I do have access to a tablet should I need to, but for me it’s an extra bit of hassle that I can well do without, especially when I want to take a quick look at a new magazine the content of which may or may not be worth it.

I might be completely in the minority here, but I use my PC for pretty much everything I do online, including reading digital versions of magazines. Since I’ve moved to Germany, my preferred method of obtaining the excellent .net magazine is via Zinio, which I read on my PC.

Cost

As a result of this, yesterday I I tweeted that I felt that:

Creating digitial magazines for tablet devices only is as bad as “best viewed in x browser”.

This lead to a discussion over Twitter with Barry Collins, Editor of PC Pro magazine on the topic. Now whilst I was initially referring to new, small digital magazines such as Appliness mentioned above, Barry gave some sensible reasons as to why a large already established magazine might only present specific digital versions of its product.

First of all he indicated that the number of people (such as me) who actually read magazines on PCs is tiny. I don’t know the figures myself, but since knowing such things from reliable sources is probably part and parcel of Barry’s job, I think it’s fair to say he knows what he’s talking about.

He also (quite rightly) said that it’s a big investment to build apps that work across every browser and device, “with potentially little return.” I suggested that the money that’s spent creating device specific apps that target a small number of popular devices (e.g. Kindle and iPad) could be better spent on building a HTML5 site that would simply need a HTML5 browser, and therefore could run on a higher number of devices and subsequently on PCs. Again it came down to money, but this time with regards to sales, as something specific needs to be built to be available through stores like Apple’s Newsstand (which requires a proprietary format), as this is where “90% of digital mag sales are right now.” Again a fair point as any commercial magazine would be crazy to shut that one out.

Bearing in mind that my initial tweet and annoyance was due to a (so far) small scale digital magazine, not all of the above factors count, but it’s still interesting to hear a point of view from an editor of a an established magazine (i.e. before the increase in digital publishing) who now also produce digital versions.

Another Option?

But does it have to be so? December 2011 saw the release of a new tech magazine for Ireland and Northern Ireland and is available in a number of formats. Idea Magazine can be downloaded in ePub format, for your Kindle or simply to a PC, the latter option simply opens the magazine content in your browser – which of course also works on Android and iPad tablets.

Whilst established magazines can pick and choose the formats they want to support, I believe that (initially!) smaller magazines such as Appliness should follow Idea’s example and make their digital magazine available to more people and stop shutting out those of us who have the potential to become avid subscribers.

Update –

Appliness have responded below (thanks to Michael Chaize), and also to feedback elsewhere and now also provide a PDF version of the magazine.