New Yorker hopes for unified iPad and Kindle fee

New Yorker editor David Remnick has claimed that his magazine will soon have a single-fee digital subscription. He was concerned about the cost of maintaining a subscription across multiple devices and was determined that customers would only have to pay once for the same subscription across the iPad, Kindle and other devices for a single rate. Remnick didn't have a technical solution but expected it to happen "fairly soon" and to involve a fee merging both the digital and print subscriptions into one rate.

"We're going to have a situation where if you pay us X dollars, you can have us in any form you like," he said in front of AdAge at a Conde Nast-organized discussion panel.

A unified system would prove difficult due to the differences between how each handles subscriptions. The Kindle has a full subscription system but can't account for a subscription being valid on other platforms outside of other Kindle apps. The iPad can handle subscriptions in a native app but, without an account system that could be shared with not only the Kindle but other devices, would be isolated on its own.

Regardless of content, Remnick set himself up for a potential conflict with Apple has he vowed never to censor the New Yorker as long as it remains a native app. Apple has created controversy by requiring censorship of sexuality and ridiculing political material in all iPhone and iPad apps, even when the content follows different social standards or could reach the iBookstore without the same restrictions.

"We're going to publish what we're going to publish," he stressed. "If the Pentagon isn't going to talk me out of a story, then Apple in Cupertino isn't going to either. If they throw me off, they throw me off."

By Electronista Staff