Wired Giving Away May Edition on the iPad for Free
It seems like Wired isnt getting the traction they wanted with their iPad application. Wired have just announced that they are giving away this months edition away for free.
Currently, Wired’s iPad application costs around $4 per edition and they already have thousands of readers subscribed, but it seems like circulation numbers are dropping month on month and this needs to be rectified.
Wired’s premier tablet edition was the June 2010 issue, and it sold a whopping 105,000 digital copies — 24,000 in the first 24 hours. In the ensuing months downloads have been in the 20,000 to 30,000 range as the publication made incremental tweaks in what has amounted to an extended, pre-subscription-era soft launch.
Single-copy pricing for digital magazines that rival that of their print analogs can’t possibly be the future, and neither will digital ever be too out of balance with print as long as print is part of any publisher’s business model.
But, ironically, a digital edition creates the opportunity to distribute for free in a way you simply can’t in print. There is no real incremental cost to making as many copies as you need (no paper, printing or postage); copies can be made to order (no waste); they can all be distributed from a single location to anyone, anywhere (nobody is left out because we ran out here, even though we have a surplus there).
