Publishing isn’t a matter of technology
When Marco Arment decided to launch an iPad digital magazine, probably he didn’t know that he would have resigned so quickly
Today I learnt from Marco Arment’s move to sell The Magazine to his chief editor Glenn Fleishman and leave him alone, that doing a media outlet doesn’t take a developer.
Marco created The Magazine with the vague idea to put together stories that somehow connect with a geeky world, thus not giving a primary editorial push but leaving authors free to pitch on whatever they would prefer.
The Magazine has an interesting business model. For the two of you that don’t know the details, Marco invested in something simple and straightforward. He attracted writers by making it simple to pitch stories, and by promising 800$ for every published story paid a few days after going live.
That meant real money and a real business model for contributing authors. It took an Editor to manage the process in the middle, and that’s why Glenn Fleishman is part of the narrative.
It’s so straightforward that people liked the experience, and someone like Chris Higgins took the time to draw the results of a one-of-a-style battle for the most published author at The Magazine.
It’s amazing how simple it is, and how well it went since of today with a sleek and clean UI, a clear and simple business model, and just one price point.
It’s the platonic ideal archetype of simple.
It doesn’t take Marco Arment proven development skills to make a magazine though. Sure it was made right, and sure people liked the clean and distraction free reading experience, the well designed super simple subscription model with a tiny pricing, and the periodic issue of eclectic pieces more or less tech related.
I believe that The Magazine is still a product of Marco’s popularity. He perfectly centered the target of his audience with the tech related edition, thus reaching out to a potential first affluent market. Everything was fine since yesterday. Exception made for the thing itself.
The actual development required now is minimal, so I’ve been handling the business overhead of The Magazine without doing much of the kind of work I actually enjoy. I accidentally built a business that I’m not very well-suited to run.
It turns out that publishing isn’t a matter of technology, or developing a product. Also it is not a matter of being one of the bravest product designers out there.
The Instapaper founder probably discovered how much he made thanks to his name in the project, and how much was made by the idea itself. In a sort of balance between powers, seems like branding goes by itself when it comes to selling issues of a periodical to a public.
Maybe that was unsatisfactory, maybe there’s much more coming from Marco. Certainly The Magazine will start struggling to maintain, acquire and delight an audience with its own feets starting on June 1st, and that’s interesting, fair, respectable at once.
