Instapaper Developer Announces ‘The Magazine,’ A Curated Periodical For Discriminating Apple Fans

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"A modern iOS Newsstand publication for geeks like us."

Instapaper developer Marco Arment has announced The Magazine for Newsstand, a new publication that’s “loosely about technology, but also gives tech writers a venue to explore other topics that like-minded geeks might find interesting.” The Magazine will get four articles every two weeks, and it costs $1.99 per month to subscribe with a 7-day free trial.

Arment explains that The Magazine’s introductory article explains what the publication is all about, but he also provides a short description:

The Magazine’s introductory article explains it in detail, but here’s the short version: the same way Build and Analyze is for developers but not always about development, The Magazine is for geeks like us and will often, but not always, be about technology.

The Magazine is a different kind of magazine; it’s not quite the same as other Newsstand publications. It aims to sit in its own category between individuals and major publishers, Arment explains, giving writers a platform that no other publication offers.

It’s a multi-author, truly modern digital magazine that can appeal to an audience bigger than a niche but smaller than the readership of The New York Times. This is what a modern magazine can be, not a 300 MB stack of static page images laid out manually by 100 people.

The Magazine prides itself on supporting its contributors in the most basic and most conventional: by paying them to write. Since it doesn’t cost a lot to produce, Arment can pay his writers “reasonably” today, and “very competitively with high-end print magazines” later on if The Magazine gets enough subscribers.

“It’s a risk,” Arment notes, but he’s confident it’ll pay off.

As a writer myself, I’m hoping Arment’s newest venture does pay off. Newsstand has been almost exclusively filled with major publications since its launch alongside iOS 5, leaving independent writers, who aren’t tied to big magazines, out in the cold.

And from a reader’s point of view, The Magazine should provide a nice variety of content from a selection of solicited authors who have a good understanding of its target audience.

Source: Marco.org

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