The Economist Comes to Kindle
I was pleased to discover that The Economist is available for Kindle as of June 30th. This was the last print publication I was subscribed to, so I can now go paperless for all of my reading.
Also, as I have written before, the bare-bones nature of the Kindle reading experience is more immersive for me than magazine and web pages that have ads, quote-outs, multiple photos per page, multiple articles per page, etc. I think I will be able to read The Economist more quickly on the Kindle and in a more focused manner.
The ratings on Amazon.com for the Kindle edition of The Economist are abysmal. This is because a Kindle subscription is essentially the same price as a print subscription. No savings from the obviation of printing and mailing are being passed on to Kindle readers and this has angered many of them. But, I think that anger is somewhat misplaced.
Amazon is thought to keep 70 percent of the sales price for content on the Kindle. And, no Kindle content contains advertising as far as I can tell. So, unless it was able to negotiate a special deal, The Economist is having to pay its pound of flesh to Amazon while also losing ad revenue each time it sells a Kindle edition instead of a print edition.
Savings from not having to print and mail Kindle editions may let The Economist recoup some of the Amazon and lost advertising costs, but perhaps not all of those costs. So, keeping the Kindle edition pricing on par with the print edition may allow the magazine to maintain its margin (or at least lose less if its margin).
The real problem here is Amazon and its 70 percent charge. It’s simply too high. At some point, a viable low-cost challenger may emerge that will force Amazon to lower their rate. In the meantime, The Economist is likely doing what it must to remain profitable on the Kindle. That The Economist can keep their Kindle price high when other publications like Time and Newsweek can’t do so speaks to the strength of The Economist relative to other publications.
Foreign Affairs doesn’t even mention its Kindle edition on its website. This may be because its Kindle edition margin is lower and it doesn’t want to drive its print subscribers to a lower-margin product. My guess is that Foreign Affairs is hedging. It’s trying to keep its current print subscribers while using the Kindle to snag new readers and prevent readers from defecting to other Kindle publications. A number of publications may be in this boat.
On a final note, there is one issue that I do have with The Economist and many other publications. Subscribing to them on the Kindle doesn’t get you access to special content and archives on their websites in the same way that print subscriptions do. I don’t know if this is an Amazon issue or a publications issue, but it should be fixed. I would think Kindle readers would actually be more interested in special content and archives on the web than print subscribers.
