The Kindle Store’s Magazine Salesmanship Needs Work
First in a series of posts about adapting to life with a Kindle 2
One of the things I most looked forward to in my Kindle was the magazine store. For a fraction of the cover price in most cases, the full text of a magazine is quickly and seamlessly downloaded to your Kindle. If you order a subscription, each new issue supposedly turns up automatically upon publishing.
For publishers, you’d think this would be a great deal: distribute a copy with no physical costs, satisfy your hungriest readers, allow inexpensive sampling and get a few more eyeballs on the advertising. (Disclosure: I have no idea what Amazon’s deal points are with publishers.)
In its actual use, however, the Kindle Store seems to be doing everything possible to frighten away new potential readers. The Kindle Store, from which every issue is sold, is a neglected sad piece of real estate that does little to provoke buying.
First, KS forgets the basics of single copy sales: featuring what’s actually in an issue. Instead of that week’s cover lines and an illustration, you get a narrative of what the magazine’s history and its mission statement. So instead of buying Newsweek with this review and that think piece and such-and-such’s guest column, you’re faced with a black box.
The review system doesn’t help either. It appears to be entirely unmoderated. I found one one-star review that said I love the magazine but I’m canceling to save money. How is that a review of issue content?
On such a small screen, of course I don’t expect the full featured infographics that are the one true unimpeachable USP of magazines, but I was surprised to get no illustrations whatsoever. The New York Times is able to provide photo lead-ins for its Kindle-formatted issues, why can’t The Atlantic?
Finally, the pricing structure is bizarre. A single issue of Newsweek at 49 cents is an awesome bargain. But The Atlantic charges a monthly fee even though it does not publish monthly; it’s a 10x. Worst of all, the just-added Economist has a single issue price of $5.49, which pretty much says Stay Away, Do Not Buy Me in the competitive arena of the Store. I’d also saw the discrepancy makes its competitors also look like it does not value its content highly enough since there are no ad impressions attached at this point. I appreciate that the pricing is probably set by the publishers, but some iTunes-style guiding hand could help a lot here.
I know the Kindle DX is supposed to amending many of these issues with its larger screen and greater graphic capabilities, but expecting me to pay $480 to get a better magazine delivery system is just not going to happen. In the meantime, Amazon should spend a little time in the Kindle Store making the magazines and newspapers a little more enticing. You know, with marketing.
