Why Digital Editions struggle

An interesting article here http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/print/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003685720 that uses the rather poor audit circulation results for digital edition and industry comment to highlight the move to Web-based Mag sites rather than digital editions.

While these figures cannot be ignored, there are a couple of reasons why I think digital editions still may have their day.

In this article http://www.ojr.org/ojr/technology/1054780462.php consultant Vin Crosbie lists circulation, context, familiarity, portability and convenience as compelling reasons for a digital edition.

I would also add two more:

1) The social cost: with the growing forced global social conscience about the plight of our world, the conversion of the earth's lungs into paper pulp combined with the environmental costs of moving it around will ultimately influence more consumer decisions in the future.

2) The financial cost: As the cost of print continues to spiral upwards, digital is becoming cheaper. It is possible to turn a magazine into a digital version almost instantaneously and economically (certainly a fraction of a cost a Mag site) and so the technology can be introduced without a huge capital cost. Also consumers seem to be prepared to pay for something packaged in this form whereas it is difficult to get anyone to pay for anything on the www.

It will be advertisers though that will drive this revolution. The www is almost anti-adverting with companies resorting to all sorts of tricks to try and catch the attention of the digital generation. With print and its digital cousin, advertising can happily co-exist with content which benefits both the advertiser and reader.

In my view as soon as we have the hardware that allows us to recreate the experience of print in a digital form then nothing will stop it.