Wall Street Journal to cost $18 on the iPad

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by ChrisC333

...
Not all decisions - even business decisions - are made on the primary basis of cost. There are all manner of other practical and emotional reasons to make a choice. ....

Heh, along these lines you can justify blowing your mortgage payment at the online casino

I agree, kind of, but I am just not sure there are enough emotional suckers to keep this model afloat.

The wisdom of device-specific publishing content has always bewildered me.

[unicorn23]

Two words - Rupert Murdoch. He seriously doesn't get the Internet. How can you expect him to get mobile devices, other than as a means to gouge users further. Go and search for his comments on how google and the other search engines are ripping him off. I mean, seriously?

[dhiru]

It would be better to opt for pressdisplay press reader app with $29 unlimited option

[ChrisC333]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Why would someone get an iPad subscription when the paper sub has such greater value? Yes, the iPad is mobile, but you can get most of that content from the web with the iPad’s browser.

It seems to depend on how you got your subscription. This article suggests that the iPad version is competitively priced - comparing a month to a month, rather than annual rates or special offers.

$29 versus $18 according to Top News

The rate for the regular online sub also seems to vary depending on how long you sign up for, but it already seems popular. From Wiki:

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 2.1 million copies (including 400,000 online paid subscriptions) as of October 2009

I couldn't nail down what the 'regular prices' were as there were so many special deals, introductory offers and so on. I did find on reference to the news-stand price adding up to close to $600 a year if you bought it day by day.

I expect they'll get takers for all the options, and won't expect to be sweeping the board with any one of them.

[slm]

Originally Posted by ChrisC333

The rate for the regular online sub also seems to vary depending on how long you sign up for, but it already seems popular. From Wiki:

I pay about $200 a year for an annual online subscription which is a little less than the proposed ipad price, with a lot more usefulness.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

The Kindle edition has 114 one star reviews (out of 225 reviews total). All the ones I checked complained about the price. I'd say price is pretty important.

Important, I suppose -- to the people who are almost certainly not in the WSJ's target demographic.

The typical WSJ reader has an average income of around $240,000 a year, and the ads run in it are clearly for people who have money to burn.

I concur with ChrisC333, and don't regard the One-Star Whiner Brigade as meaningful in this situation.

[ChrisC333]

Originally Posted by slm

I pay about $200 a year for an annual online subscription which is a little less than the proposed ipad price, with a lot more usefulness.

Thanks for the information.

What is the extra usefulness of one type of online delivery over the other?

I rarely ever buy paper versions of things now, because they tend to rapidly bank up with only a fairly modest percentage actually read. Apart from any concerns about wasting resources, I have come to prefer electronic versions and now find them more convenient (which I probably wouldn't have predicted a few years back).

Given that none of us have actually tried the iPad version yet, what reasons do you think would either put me off that form of delivery - or, conversely, possibly appeal?

I am neither an Apple fanboy nor hater, and I may or may not buy one. Ditto for the WSJ. But I am interested in the idea of a short term sub (of a variety of online material) just to try it out.

So any further information or opinions you have would be welcome.

Thanks,

Chris

[slm]

Online, you can do more than just read this morning's paper:
You can see updates are they are added, and you can search the entire site, including parts that aren't in the ebook editions

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Uhm.... You've never heard of Google's First Click Free? I haven't had a subscription to the WSJ for years.

You must not read a lot from the WSJ then, since FCF is now limited to 5 clicks per user, per day.

Also keep in mind that Murdoch and AP are not happy with news aggregators. Don't be surprised if that spigot gets a solid turn some time in the next year or so.

Originally Posted by Sonist

For the rest of the papers, it will be an even harder battle to go paywall.

That does not alter the fact that the current situation is unsustainable.

Print sales are tanking, ad revenues nosedived by 20% for newspapers last year, web ads are not making up for those losses and cannot generate enough revenue, Craigslist and eBay have destroyed the classified market, newspapers have already slashed costs -- e.g. the industry's employment level dropped from a high of 450k employees in 1988 to around 275k, a level it hasn't been at since the 1950's -- and they're still losing money.

These are almost certainly reasons why the NY Times plans to institute a paywall in the next year or so.

Either the papers can figure out a way to generate more revenues, or they will go out of business.

Originally Posted by Sonist

Plus, if I get get all these subscriptions through iTunes, what happens when I see the WeePad and decide that I like it better than the iPad?

You cancel your subscriptions via iTunes, and pick up one on the other device. Or if you have a Kindle subscription, you load up "Kindle for WeePad."

And since the devices don't hoard newspapers (e.g. by default the Kindle wipes them after a week or so), you have a much bigger investment in your other media and app content than with newspapers. Changing your newspaper subscription is the least of your worries in this context.

[stustaff]

Originally Posted by slm

Online, you can do more than just read this morning's paper:
You can see updates are they are added, and you can search the entire site, including parts that aren't in the ebook editions

isnt the wsj going to be a seperate app on the iPad? sio whos to say how it will work/ be updated etc.

[ChrisC333]

Originally Posted by slm

Online, you can do more than just read this morning's paper:
You can see updates are they are added, and you can search the entire site, including parts that aren't in the ebook editions

Thanks. Does that mean the edition on the iPad will be a 'static' version that is more or less a straight copy of the print version? Any idea why it wouldn't or couldn't be as 'live' as the regular online version? Has that been confirmed?

Chris

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Of course, others (WSJ, NYT) aren't consistent on what you get for what you pay...

My understanding is that if you subscribe to the NYT via Newspaper Direct (or whichever one it is that handles the NYT), you are getting a duplicate of the day's print version. If you subscribe using Calibre's feeds, you are not getting the daily paper but the daily website, which changes regularly.

I know that when I bought 1 day's NYT from the Sony store and compared it to my print copy (I am a print subscriber), it was identical. I'm just waiting to buy a larger screen device before switching to the e subscription.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

The Kindle edition has 114 one star reviews (out of 225 reviews total). All the ones I checked complained about the price. I'd say price is pretty important.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the one-starrers are the folk who believe that everything should be free because they want it to be free. I wonder how many of them actually subscribe to the WSJ.

Whenever I see a review that focuses on price only, I ignore it and I suspect a lot of people ignore those reviews. Out of the billions of people in this world, fewer than 2 million read the WSJ. It is safe to assume that the WSJ doesn't meet the wants or needs of the remaining billions, but that doesn't make it an overpriced newspaper.

I have a neighbor who thinks that if the New York Post doesn't report it or Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck doesn't say it, it isn't fact, it didn't happen, etc. And the neighbor is happy to pay the subscription fee for the NY Post. Me, OTOH, think the Post (as well as Beck and Limbaugh) isn't even worth free, but I wouldn't one-star it for being overpriced.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Sonist

What Jobs did is sell the idea that the newspaper/magazine publishers can finally monetize their content. Some of the publishers bought into it, and now will be making iPad versions of their product.

I am not at all sure it will fly. It's the same concept as Apple TV: Let us sell you something through iTunes, which you can get elsewhere for free - legally. A few may go for it, but most will not.

This is in fact the whole concept behind the iPad: monetize publications, monetize video, monetize audio and monetize apps and games. Much of it stuff you could get elsewhere for free, if you were not locked in a walled garden, and if you had Flash.

My take is, many may try it, but after the initial rush, all these subscriptions will start petering out, advertisers will figure out that Steve can't deliver enough of the paying faithful on a small niche, locked-down, platform, and at the end we'll all go back to the ad-supported pages of today.

I agree. Calibre works great!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

... Seven additional bucks a month is peanuts, anyway.

That's exactly how they want you to think.