Something interesting is happening in the world of iPad publishing.
The first entrants to the market â" big, weighty, flashy things â" are no longer the most interesting, at least not to me. Itâs not that they arenât still beautifully designed or useful. Itâs that my reading habits have changed. After the initial honeymoon, I found myself with less and less time for the iPad. Itâs not as mobile as I would like â" Iâm constantly worrying about dropping it or cracking it on a subway pole â" so I tend to use my iPhone in the mornings for news and my Kindle in the evenings to read the latest pick from Emily Books, my e-book club, and the longer articles Iâve saved to it during the day.
When I do have time to sit back with my iPad â" mostly on the weekends â" I donât want that time, leisure time, to mirror the frenetic reading pace of the week, a hectic verload of links from Twitter and pictures from Instagram, however artfully arranged through an app like Flipboard. I want to be immersed in a reading experience, one that isnât fussy and just shows me a few in-depth, thoughtful, well-written and interesting pieces.
Enter the iPad mini-magazine.
These outlets are emblematic of what Craig Mod calls âsubcompact publishing.â I like the way he describes The Magazine, the new mobile publishing venture led by Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper. âIt felt like a platonic mobile-publishing container. No cruft, all substance. A shadow on the wall,â he writes. âThe kind of app thatâs doing nothing fancy but everything right. The kind of app deemed anathema by Future Publishing Authorities because, quite frankly, itâs boring.â
The most recent such publication Iâve downloaded is Maura Magazine, the new venture by Maura Johnston, a music writer, in collaboration with 29th Street Publishing, which also created a mobile application for The Awl, a blog. Maura Magazine costs 99 cents per issue, or $3 a month. Die-hards can pay $30 upfront for a yearlong subscription. So far, Iâm into it. The first issue includes a closer look at the film â9 to 5â³ and an account of living without electricity in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, among other pieces.For me the appeal of these apps is something like the appeal of zines. Of course, these are solidly digital, but something about them still feels tangible, slightly more handmade, like a human carefully, lovingly, put them together.
There are stilla host of questions to be answered about these mini-magazines. Are they viable and sustainable businesses over the long run Can each publication tap into a large enough audience to support the economics of the model Will the content remain interesting enough to hold readersâ attention And how many mini-mag apps can one subscribe to before burning out
All that can come later. But for now, itâs enough to see smart and savvy writers and thinkers experimenting with new formats.