MediaShift . How the Kindle Made Single-Story Sales a Reality for Magazines | PBS
I’ve never seen a “Not for Individual Sale” label on a magazine story. So why can’t I buy most individual magazine articles in digital form just yet?
Selling stand-alone stories has seemed like a potential business model for magazines and other journalism organizations since the rise of iTunes. Observers hyped an incipient micropayment business model for journalism. But few companies have tried this model, instead offering complete digital editions and, whenever possible, digital subscriptions. The advantages of that approach are clear: packaging more into the product justifies a higher price, and loyal subscribers attract advertisers. Yet with the growth of e-reading on tablets and mobile devices, as well as new options for processing small payments for content (e.g., PayPal, Facebook, Apple’s App Store), marketing individual stories may soon gain fresh appeal.
Magazines exploring this option would have to maintain their brand reputation and their editorial voice by carefully selecting stories to sell and ensuring that they respect their relationship with existing readers. Recent experiments with selling individual stories show, however, that it can be done successfully. The only cloud on the horizon could be Apple’s new subscription service for iOS, which demands that the company gets 30% of all subscription sales.
Very interesting article. And I really like Kindle Singles.
