Magzter is an upstart digital magazine company that is looking to give Zinio and Next Issue a run for their money. In the last few weeks, the company has signed on a number of publications, such as Maxim and Newsweek. Today, Magzter has announced that Hearst has signed on and will contribute all of its U.S. titles, and some of its international ones, onto the platform.
The Digital Magazine company has initiated a number of overtures with major publishers in the US, the world’s biggest consumer of digital content. While publishers are eager for a larger audience, Magzter’s 50-50 revenue sharing plan is the biggest stumbling block here. Magzter is asking for 50 percent of the subscription fees, which is far higher than the 30 percent commision Apple requires. Magzter is eager to trade some vital user statistics in return, which can be hard for the publishers to ignore. What Magzter is willing to divulge is not only how many users are actually reading which magazines, but also the email addresses of those who are reading. Magzter has also stated there are no hidden costs involved at any stage, even if the publishers add more pages or interactive multimedia content to their magazines.
Magzter also boasts of a new automatic magazine uploading system where publishers will just have to upload their magazine only once and the software will render the magazine into the formats of various devices in vogue. Publishers will only have to upload the PDF file (or any other suitable format) into the system and it will be with the subscribers within the next one hour. The entire process is automatic, the patent for which is still pending. This way, users will get to enjoy the favorite magazine no matter if it’s on an iPad or Android tablet.
The company currently offers apps for iOS, Android, and Windows 8. It has offices in India, London, Singapore, and New York, and has been making its way across Asia and Europe. The service now claims about 7 million app downloads from a collection of 1,500 magazines from 600 publishers.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.