Hearst hails the age of the tablet, says readers are willing to pay more for tablet editions

Duncan Edwards, CEO of Hearst Magazines International, who highlighted the striking rise of tablet publishing.
Hearst is of the largest magazine publishers in the world and has pushed magazines like Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire and Marie Claire, onto the iPad and Android tablets of late, moves which would seem to illustrate just how seriously Hearst is taking tablet publishing.
“At Hearst, we see the arrival of the tablet, and the scale of the tablet market, as a significant media opportunity. There is a huge opportunity through a new distribution market”, said Edwards, when speaking in London.
Edwards went on to assert that Hearst is looking to reach one million paid digital sales on tablets a month for the US by the end of the year, but said that monthly tablet magazine sales currently stand at around 600,000.
Despite the disparity in sales between digital and print (Hearst sells 22 million print magazines each month), it is clear that Hearst has spent some time configuring its tablet editions. The firm first established the Hearst App Lab - a laboratory for testing different tablets and software, after the launch of the first iPad, and has clearly spent some time figuring out how to bring its world-renowned print magazines onto the tablet.
Edwards explained that the tablet versions of Cosmopolitan, Country Living and Good Housekeeping are identical to the printed versions, but said that the publisher completely redesigned the likes of Elle, Esquire and O, The Oprah Magazine for the iPad. Despite some clamour for new tablet versions in the industry, Edwards stressed that most readers actually prefer their tablet editions to be ripped straight from print, and admitted that this was an easier process than having to redesign the entire magazine.
“People thought we’d reimagine the magazines to take advantage of the technology behind the device, but consumers prefer this replica version, and in reality we’re much better at doing this.”...
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