Wired releases current magazine issue on iPad


Wired Wednesday announced that its first issue of its print magazine is now available on the iPad.

In an impressive effort, Wired is showing publishers and advertisers how to get it done on the iPad. At least except, in our opinion, everything but the price.

Editor in Chief Chris Anderson introduced the digital edition on Wired's Website. He described how it and its parent publisher Conde Nast worked with Adobe to create an export system for Indesign. Essentially this allows the magazine to be created by publishers rather than app programmers. Wired will be able to develop print, Web, and iPad editions from a single workflow Indesign, except of course for the rich media elements that won't live in print.

It looks very slick and the plug-in is to be made available for sale for other publishers. Hats off to Adobe here for creating what appears to be a great extension of their publishing software.

The hitch, however, is the $5 per issue price, which is the same and the news stand price. The problem is not many people regularly buy Wired at the full retail price so it kind of smells like iPad gouging. The magazine can be had for as low as $0.83 an issue. Advertiser pays the bills and advertisers pay based on eyeballs. Certainly Wired should be compensated for the extra costs and effort involved in creating the iPad version, even though it lacks the expense of print and mailing. If this was sold for something like $1, this would be truly awesome. Perhaps after the initial costs are recovered, Wired will pioneer iPad magazine pricing too.

Wired Magazine's iPad Edition Goes Live