Conde Nast: 365 iPad GQ Sold So Far

The first sales figures of magazines testing the iPad are coming in and so far they are muted. Conde Nast says it has sold 365 iPad editions of the December 2009 Men of the Year issue, so far.

“This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage,” GQ vice president of publishing Pete Hunsinger told reporters. “Everything is profit, and I look forward to the time when iPad issue sales become a major component to our circulation,” he added. GQ, which began selling the iPad version in April, sees the period as a testing phase, where the publisher can test the waters on pricing, advertising and ways to offer a digital version of the print publication.

When Conde Naste offered an iPhone version of GQ, the numbers were also lopsided. The version for the Apple handset sold 7,000 issues of the December 2009 issue compared to 240,000 newsstand and 667,000 subscriber issues.

Next month, Wired and Vanity Fair are expected to release iPad versions of their print magazines. Wired’s chief editor Chris Anderson has called the iPad a “game changer.” Later this summer, other magazines will unveil iPad editions, including The New Yorker and Glamour.

[via Silicon Alley Insider]

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Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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MIKE MOREIRA
Ridiculous. They should spend some money and create more interactive iPad editions. I’m all for profit, but if publishers are just putting up issue with a pulldown TOC and a scrollbar – I’m not buying.
Gary Simone Clark
@MikeMoreira Isn’t it enough for a magazine just to be digital and in doing so to save trees and other resources. But I do think that digital magazines are far overpriced, because like he admitted, they are all profit. I think 99 cents is going to be the sweet spot for magazines in a few years time (or sooner?)
Ferd
@Gary – it doesn’t “save” resources to provide this digitally. It simply uses different resources. Besides, I’m sure a bastion of left-think like Esquire uses all recycled paper anyway.
The funnier thing is that they’ve only sold 365 editions. 365? That’s it? With a naked Heidi Klum? Even with iPod/iPhone, newsstand and subscribers they are still a good distance under 1 million subscribers, and trending downward. I echo Mike’s opinion, they just don’t get it. They still want to sell magazines, not get into interactive media. No wonder these guys are all going out of business. Dinosaurs.
Greg G
They don’t deserve to have sold that many – the app doesn’t work. Two reviews on the app store said as much but I tried it anyway. Unfortunately they’re right – it just sits there doing nothing except spinning a progress icon but nothing ever happens.
Save your money until they post that the bug hads been fixed.
Peteo
First this is for a december issue being sold in April. I don’t know about you but if I saw a December issue on the newsstand now I would not buy it. Also the app is $4.99 umm seeing as it costs them “nothing” to make they might want to lower the price down to a dollar or at least let you sign up for a subscription. I would love to see what the iPad version of the zinio app is doing. I think it probably doing pretty well since subscriptions for most magazines are pretty cheap and in line with print.
http://www.jv21.com/ John Keogh
This appears to be a magazine on celebrities. Surely the average iPad buyer will want something more interesting.
Zlur
I would totally buy magazines for the iPad, even non-interactive PDFs, but i have yet to see a publisher offer them at a price low enough to warrant dropping my subscriptions or buying something i wouldn’t get in print at the newsstand. Offering digital magazines at cover price doesn’t make sense.
jennifer c
this is so sloppy. the numbers are for DECEMBER. he was making the point that the ipad launch was going so well they were even selling old back issues! they launched on iPad with their APRIL issue and have sold many more than this (numbers will be released in full next week).
in the physical world the December issue is finished, but it is still selling on the iPad—- just incremental $$.
you should read and *think* before you repost, friends.
Michael
We’ll see Jen. I have my doubts about the April sales… I’ll bet it’s under 2000. The problem is cost. Either invent a cool interactive app or lower the price to something reasonable, offer a subscription, etc. These idiots have to realize that newsstand prices won’t cut it for a digital medium.
Rick
Maybe the problem is the magazine, through Zunio I have subscribed to 6 different magazines that I would not have subscribed to before due to the ease of delivery and the fact that I can take them with me without having to carry a bunch of paper.
The iPad is still new technology, tough to proclaim any part of it a bust at this point.
BTW, a years subscription of Maxim was only $5 through a special offer. Do the math .42/issue vs $5. Maybe value is the problem.