Nearly 65 percent of U.S. magazines now have a digital replica edition, but those editions make up just under three percent of overall circulation: That's the latest news from the Alliance for Audited Media (formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations), which on Thursday released its report on U.S. magazine circulation in the second half of 2012. For some individual titles, digital growth was a lot more impressive -- though in some cases that's because they're giving away the digital edition free.
Readers like magazine web sites or even magazine apps on tablets and smartphones. I've never understood the attraction of what PaidContent describes as 'replica editions' that is the same editorial as the print magazine wrapped in a digital format.
Digital replicas have clumsy user interfaces - sometimes its a proprietary piece of nonsense requiring a download. Others are effectively PDFs on something similar. Many have relatively low resolution and just don't look good on-screen, Hell, some even mangle the text making it hard to read.
Either way, it seems there is a market for them.
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