Within months of introducing its first-generation iPad, Apple successfully positioned the device as the future of e-reading platforms.
As a result, publishers began flocking to the tablet, often bending over backwards to please the new e-content kingpins.
But not everyone rushed to the iPad.
In a new interview with AdAge, Jann Wenner – co-founder of Rolling Stone – had some rather harsh words for publishers affiliated with Apple. Instead of joining the kiss-up festivities, Wenner says publishers who ran with open arms to Apple did so out of “sheer insanity and insecurity and fear.”
According to Wenner, the publishers bending their policies to accommodate Apple are “crazy.”
“They’re going to get less money for it from advertisers,” Wenner said. “Right now it costs a fortune to convert your magazine, to program it, to get all the things you have to do on there. And they’re not selling.”
“I think that they’re prematurely rushing and showing a little confidence and faith in what they’ve really got, their real asset, which is the magazine itself, which is still a great commodity,” Wenner argues. “It’s a small additive; it’s not the new business.”
