Time Inc.
today announced plans to create tablet editions for all 21 of its U.S. magazines by
the end of 2011. InStyle, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly and others will join the four titles already available on tablets: People, Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune.
To date, Time's digital magazines and other content apps have been downloaded more than 11 million times through the Apple iPad, Android Marketplace, HP TouchPad and Next Issue Media's store.
Time said hundreds of thousands of print subscribers have upgraded subscriptions to include the tablet editions, with thousands more being added weekly. It has also sold more than 600,000
digital single copies of the four titles noted above. In May, Time reached an agreement
with Apple to provide free digital editions to iPad owners, who are already print magazine subscribers.
Time on Wednesday also announced striking a deal with Barnes & Noble to offer digital
subscriptions and single-copy issues of Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated and Time on the Nook Color starting later this month. The rest of the portfolio will follow by year-end.
Starting in January, Time will extend print ads to the tablet editions of all titles. To date, the digital versions have only run some ads. Time also plans to report digital sales and subscriber
information to ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) beginning in January.
A Time spokesperson said the company would work within ABC guidelines so that digital editions can be counted as paid
circulation. As a first step, print advertisers will have the opportunity to run their ads in the digital editions as part of their print buy. "Our current strategy is for print editions to make rate
base on their own, and tablet editions will be incremental," said the spokesperson.
The ABC board of directors earlier this year said digital magazine editions don't have to carry the same advertising as print versions to
be counted toward total circulation figures. However, editorial content and photography have to remain the same for digital versions to be added to total circulation.
Time said it is extending
print ads to its digital magazines in part based on internal research showing consumers actually prefer ads in tablet editions.
Conde Nast on Monday said it had added 242,000 for iPad editions of
its titles in the first six weeks after launching in May. Most of those -- 136,000 -- have come from print subscribers adding the iPad app version at no extra cost. In addition to digital-only
subscriptions, the total also includes single-copy sales.
Condé Nast has had nearly 1 million paid downloads of its digital editions on Apple devices, Barnes & Noble's Nook Color, and the
Kindle since launching a GQ iPhone app in November 2009.