Magazines plan tablet PC editions

Six major magazine publishers, including Forbes and the New Yorker, plan to don a new image for tablet PCs, creating digital facsimiles of their periodicals and pushing the fold on Web advertising.

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As Microsoft heralded its vision for pen-based computing this week, it also said it signed deals with these top publishers to help transform the tablet PC into something people will pick up, take with them and read.

To do this, Microsoft is working with Forbes, the Financial Times, the New Yorker, Slate and two foreign economic magazines, Frances' Les Echoes and Germany's Wirtschafts Woche, to build tools for publishing a trial set of electronic magazines that will available for download sometime in 2003.

The effort is an attempt to build on other digital publishing initiatives like that of e-books, a once-heralded business that has struggled to catch on in the mainstream. People have yet to become comfortable with on-screen reading for great lengths of time, and limitations in technology have hampered wide adoption of portable reading devices.

Still, the periodicals are viewing the opportunity as a means to innovate and appeal to advertisers in a new way. Microsoft-owned Slate, for example, announced that Volvo would be a major sponsor for the first six months of its trial, spending in the six-figure range, according to its publisher. Others say that advertisers are excited about the coming technology because it combines the familiar--magazine-style print ads--with the interactivity of the Web.

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"Everyone's been looking for the breakthrough in online advertising and it hasn't come yet," said David Carey, vice president and publisher of the New Yorker. "With the tablet, (advertisers) can take what they like about it--they can take a print ad and offer lots of ways to drill down to tell a much deeper story."

Microsoft demonstrated the device Thursday by presenting a digital edition of the New Yorker that showed an ad for the Audi on page two. Carey said that Audi could repurpose its print advertisement for the page and show a 30-second commercial or link to specific Web pages if readers asked for more information.

The New Yorker plans to produce a near-rendition of its magazine for trial, with the same layout, articles, cartoons and spot art as the print edition, available weekly. Pricing has yet to be determined, Carey said.

Microsoft's Advanced Technologies Reading Group is taking the lead on development for all magazines, creating technology to transport content from traditional publishing tools onto the tablet PC. The development team's mission is to make "on-screen reading a more vital, pleasurable experience for consumers," said Grant Duers, a director in the group.

The group is using technology called clear type to create sharper fonts to relieve reader eye strain. It is also displaying the magazines in traditional formats so as to be more familiar to readers. People can read pages as they would in a magazine, clicking page-up or page-down buttons rather than scrolling through text as on the Web.

"We're testing technology to bring magazines and newspapers to the PC in a better way, and then they will buy more PCs and tablets," Duers said. "Everybody's very excited about it. The only issue is proving the technology."

Much of the efforts depend on the success of tablet PCs.

Tablet PC advertising could be interesting as print and Web marketing converge, said Adam Gerber, an ad executive at interactive agency DigitalEdge. "The issue will be the penetration of the tablet PC and how quickly is it going to become a standard," Gerber said.

Still, many of the publishers agree that the tablet PC would not be a substitute for print magazines, but a valuable experiment that plays into the convergence of digital and traditional publishing.

"It's not a replacement for the print edition, but a subscriber could carry around dozens of editions of the New Yorker or save favorite articles," Carey said. "This is a portrait of a much more natural reading experience from the computer.

"This lets us bring an innovative idea to advertisers that is worthy of our time and investment," he said.

For online magazine Slate, the venture takes it one step closer to readers' natural habitat.

"Our content and technology are melding together nicely, giving us the ability to become a mobile magazine," said Cyrus Krohn, publisher of Slate. "Now readers can take Slate to the toilet with them."