The Digital Paper

I don’t think it’s going to be too far into our future when we’re all using something like this to read our daily newspapers and our weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals:

[Image: digital reader]

For those of you who can’t figure out my poor “artists rendering,” basically imagine an iPhone about the size and thickness of a standard magazine.

The technology is all here now. It’s probably not even THAT expensive to put together, as far as hardware goes. The giant touch screen is the biggest expense. Let’s say $85.

But you only need 4 gigs of flash memory - it can download archive periodicals and articles on the fly. That’s about $20 or less. You need wi-fi. Don’t know how much that costs but it can’t be that much. $40, and that’s being generous.

You need an operating system - that’s a one time expense, and a sunk cost. It won’t go into the per-unit price.

You need the metal case and the hard plastic screen: $20.

You need a processor and some misc. wiring that’s not so miscellaneous if it’s missing: $50.

So we’re at $215 for the cost of building each reader unit. Let’s say you pass these out free to subscribers of an existing magazine, and you charge magazines and newspapers to deliver each issue. Charge them $0.50 per issue.

If your average person subscribes to a daily newspaper and two monthly magazines, we’re talking about an average of 32 deliveries per month.

32 times 50 cents is $16. Over 12 months that’s $192. The unit has almost paid for itself. PLUS you get to control the distribution medium of the future. What if people wanted their TV over these things? Charge the studios for video delivery? Hmmm…

I’m honestly just fascinated with what is going to happen to publishing. I love magazines and newspapers, but the whole space is changing. I want to find some way to preserve the idea of an “issue” or an “edition.” I think it stands as a complete work in a way that most internet content doesn’t.

Who knows, it may never happen. But this is a pretty good bet here.