After Fast Start, iPad Now Only Accounts for Quarter of Wired's Sales
The iPad has often been heralded as a revolutionary new outlet for magazine content. One of the publishers that has been at the forefront of this even before the iPad was announced is Conde Nast, the company behind, among many others, the iconic Wired magazine. During the last half of 2010, according to AdAge, which got a sneak peek at the Audit Bureau of Circulations‘ semiannual circulation report, Wired was one of the few magazines that actually saw single-copy sales increase. The magazine’s sales were up 28.2% in the second half of 2010. In total, Wired sold an average of 105,614 copies, including an average of 27,000 iPad editions.
Wired’s iPad edition did extremely well during its first few months on sale. At one point, it even looked as if the magazine’s iPad sales could outpace its regular newsstand sales. Since then, though, sales of the electronic edition have plummeted as the novelty wore off for many users.
While the first edition sold 79,000 copies within the first week of sales, sales in July and August were already down to 31,000 and 28,000 respectively. If the average copy of the iPad edition really only sold an average of 27,000 copies during the second half of 2010, then the last few editions of 2010 probably sold under 25,000 copies.
Current editions of Wired for the iPad cost $4 (and take a long time to download). That means that after Apple takes its 30% cut, Conde Nast is currently making less than $70,000 per iPad edition from single-copy sales. To put this into perspective, News Corps. The Daily is rumored to cost about $500,000 per week to run and operate. Wired probably gets higher rates from its advertisers and includes more ads, so chances are that the iPad edition at least breaks even.
