Zinio Global Newsstand Gives Consumers Download Options

Zinio’s new online global newsstand offers about 870 digital consumer titles in more than 200 countries from 350 publishers. It also gives consumers the option of using Zinio’s proprietary reader service or downloading the digital edition directly once they’ve registered with the store.

“Consumers can read it, archive it, download it, etc.,” says Zinio president Rich Maggiotto. “That decision was made primarily from user feedback. It started off mostly from our textbook initiative, where students wanted to read textbooks on multiple screens. We’ve always focused putting the choice with the publishers, and we realized we should put choice in consumers’ hands too.”

Pricing for the digital newsstand (which can be audited by ABC and BPA) is set by the publishers and Zinio will enable them to conduct multiple testing offers at one time. Digital single copies are priced the same as the physical newsstand while digital subscriptions tend to cost slightly less than the print subscriptions, according to Maggiotto.

While he wouldn’t reveal specifics, Maggiotto says there are two pricing components for publishers, including a commission on what’s sold over the digital newsstand and payment for fulfilling orders. “We’re acting kind of like a digital U.S. Postal Service,” says Maggiotto. “There’s nothing up front they have to worry about it, it’s about getting paid for the actual delivery of that content.”

Zinio sees about 55 percent of its existing customers from overseas and has also teamed with Accesso Group, a division of Havas Media, in order to expand the number of titles on the newsstand to more than 2,000 this year.

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