Digital magazine apps have had a hard time over the past decade. Promises of rich multimedia iPad editions fell flat as the mobile revolution took over, and magazine apps struggled to adapt to the requirements for light, responsive downloads at an affordable production cost.
Bauer is one publisher who has steadfastly persisted with its app editions where many others have given up. Last October, they decided to try a new approach.
‘Bikes Unlimited’ is the result. It’s an app that includes all six of Bauer UK’s motorcycle titles: weekly issues of MCN, plus the monthly magazines of RiDE, Classic Bike, Practical Sportsbikes, Bike, and quarterly custom biking magazine Built. Motorcycle fans can get access to every issue of these titles when they come out, with both a PDF replica format and a mobile optimised text view for as long as they keep their subscription active.
The app is available on both iOS and Google Play stores for £7.99 a month, or an £89.99 annual fee.
“Tremendous value” for subscribers
The publisher believes magazine content streaming is going to grow in popularity over the next few years, where magazine apps have more regular content fed into them than just monthly issues.
“Bikes Unlimited is a way of giving fans of motorcycle magazine content a streaming-style app that really does represent tremendous value,” said Jim Foster, Head of ePublishing at Bauer. “And because there isn’t a third party – other than Apple – to take a cut of the revenues, it delivers a higher average revenue per user than other streaming platforms do.”
The publisher has optimised its workflow and mobile optimisation processes to minimise the amount of work needed to get the magazines into a digital format. Bauer UK has worked with Sprylab’s digital publishing software platform for all of its digital and interactive editions since 2017.
It’s early days for Bikes Unlimited, but Foster is happy with their progress so far. “As with any app, the key is organic acquisition together with building awareness outside the app store ecosystem to generate installs,” he explained. The app has had a soft launch, and a marketing campaign in the relevant titles to get it off the ground.
A winner with Android
One unexpected success for Bauer has been the Android downloads for this combined app. Android users have historically been very difficult to monetise through apps, and for many publishers, are only a tiny proportion of paid app downloads.
Read the rest of this article by Esther Kezia Thorpe on What’s New in Publishing…
