• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 4, 2012

Big magazine publishers are looking for ways to make it easier for consumers to find and purchase the digital versions of their favorite publications. This week, Next Issue Media, a joint venture of leading publishers, launched an “unlimited” newsstand for digital magazines designed for Android tablets, which allows readers to get access to a variety of titles through a single subscription.

Next Issue, which was formed by Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time Inc., is offering unlimited access to 32 magazines via the Next Issue “Unlimited” Android app, including Better Homes and Gardens, Elle, Esquire, Fortune, Glamour, Parents, Real Simple, and The New Yorker, among others.

There are two subscription options on offer. “Unlimited Basic” gives the user access to all of Next Issue’s monthly and biweekly titles for $9.99; “Unlimited Premium” offers access to all titles in the Next Issue catalogue, including weekly magazines like Entertainment Weekly, People and Time, and costs $14.99 per month. Individual magazine subscriptions are available for anywhere from $1.99-$9.99 per month, while single copies sell for $2.49-$5.99 per month.

The app provides a common interface for all the different titles, with interactive features like “carousel” scrolling to get a quick view of what’s in a particular issue, as well as online video, exclusive photos, and links to other information online. The consortium also said that an iPad version of the Next Issue “Unlimited” app will be submitted to the Apple App Store for approval sometime in the next few weeks.

Earlier this week, the MPA released voluntary guidelines for reporting tablet-based circulation. The MPA suggested that publishers report the following metrics: total consumer paid digital issues; total number of tablet readers per issue; total number of sessions per issue; total time spent per reader per issue; and the average number of sessions per reader per issue.

Also this week Hearst Magazines announced that it will begin reporting metrics for paid digital copies, starting with its iPad editions; this follows a similar announcement from Conde Nast in March. The Audit Board of Circulations recently introduced a new report format that will offer significantly more detail on consumer magazines’ digital publications, incorporating several recommendations from a combined task force of U.S. and Canadian publishers and advertisers.