Tablets on a rescue mission for publishers?

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If it's we are to believe the chiefs of Conde Nast International, publishers have little to fear from the future provided they embrace tablets as the medium for the issue of their magazines. In the last few years, mainly thanks to the Web and the Internet in general, circulation of newspapers and magazines, especially those non-specialized and designed for the general population, is decreasing.

Many readers are not satisfied with the treatment of themes on news portals and think that they push superficial and "celebrity journalism". Apparently it is good enough as long as it's free and they do not have to go to a newspaper store to get their magazines in physical form. This has given an opportunity for poor journalism to replace higher quality journalism in print, even though large publishers mainly have portals as a tool for their own advertising of physical newspapers in the real world.
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However, according to the director of all of Conde Nast International’s digital editions and publisher of GQ, Jamie Bill, there is a cure for this. At the Expo Tablet event and App Summit, which was held last week in Frankfurt, digital publishing solution via tablets is the thing that will replace publishing magazines on paper, (and in the end, I guess, completely take over sometime in the near future). It is important to note that the tablet is seen as a separate digital medium, different from the PC or internet in general.

According to Jamie Bill, last year's GQ spread on tablets has increased the overall circulation of the magazine by nearly 10%. Also, Conde Nast International plans to issue tablet enhanced editions of all of their magazines by the end of next year because they see it as the only sure way to grow in the years to come. Furthermore, as the main partners in their efforts they see Adobe with their technology for digital publishing and Apple with their iPad line of tablets. In a rare sincere emotional break Jamie Bill said they were grateful to Apple, which allowed them to do what they could not without them.

[Ed – the concept of the tablet enhanced eZine (electronic magazine) is one that Steve Jobs pushed for in his first presentation of the iPad. He showed off more than a few concepts of this in play. Of course Bill Gates did the same thing many years before when he showed off the concept of the tablet. This is one thing that tablets are almost tailor made to do so we are not surprised that publishing companies are getting on board now. Unfortunately for Conde Nast, Apple is not fond of Adobe so they might run into a snag or if they continue to embrace Adobe over Job’s HTML5…]

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