Newsstand Sales No Match for Wired iPad Edition

Chris Anderson, Wired editor-in-chief, is getting all wired up about the roaring success of the tech magazine's iPad edition. And rightfully so — in the nine days following its launch, the app spent five days in the No.1 paid app slot and sold 73,000 copies, according to Crain's New York Business. Last Sunday, Anderson tweeted the following bright prediction: "73,000 purchases of Wired iPadd app in first nine days. Should beat newsstand sales of print mag (ave. mid 80s) this month." Bloggers and industry observers seem to agree. "Considering that Wired's newsstand sales average around 80,000 a month, it seems safe to assume at this point that sales of the iPad edition will soon surpass those of the print edition," writes Carole Wurzelbacher of Editor's Weblog in her June 8 post.Nearly a year in the making, Wired released its highly anticipated iPad app on May 26. It utilizes Adobe digital publishing technology, features interactive content and costs $4.99 for each monthly edition (the same as the print version's cover price). Condé Nast, Wired's publisher, has hinted that a subscription model for the iPad is in the works and due to be released sometime this fall.Yesterday, according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle's mobile website, RocNow, Anderson lauded the "unique nature of the tablet experience" as the "future of our company ... and perhaps the future of media," during his lecture at the Rochester Institute of Technology's "The Future of Reading" conference.Another interesting tidbit garnered from Anderson's Twitter feed is the relative inability of Wired content to adapt to the Web. According to his Sunday posting, "about a third of Wired Mag content is now iPad (and print) only — not Web." He says this is mostly because smaller items were not conducive to online format.Only time will tell whether Wired's initial success will hold steady. Even so, the magazine may have an advantage over others — GQ, in particular, sold only 365 digital copies of its December 2009 issue — because Wired readers are, by nature, technologically inclined. Whether or not the Wired app can rival its paper-and-ink counterpart has yet to be determined, but Anderson seems confident it very well could be a harbinger of good news for the future of magazines.Until then, he is satisfied that, as he wrote in an editor's note for the June issue, "Wired is finally, well, wired."

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Newsstand Sales No Match for Wired iPad Edition

Jessica Corry

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Jessica Corry