Business

Condé adds digital mag apps

Condé Nast has added digital subscriptions for four more magazines — Vanity Fair, Glamour, Golf Digest and Allure — to Apple’s iTunes store.

Condé now has five titles, including The New Yorker, available via digital subscription, with plans to add three or four more magazines by the end of the month, giving it the early tablet lead among publishers.

Hearst is starting with three next month: O, The Oprah Magazine, Esquire and Popular Mechanics. Time Inc. is offering free digital subscriptions only to those consumers who already subscribe to the print editions of People, Sports Illustrated, Time and Fortune.

But Condé and other publishers are finding out that an iPad subscription offering is no magical solution to the industry’s woes. The only new Condé title to crack the list of the 50 top-grossing apps yesterday was Vanity Fair, which came in at 42 on the day of its release.

By comparison, The New Yorker, the first Condé title available via digital subscription, quickly zoomed up the top-grossing chart following its release last Monday and is still ranked fifth.

Its popularity prompted New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick to quip at the National Magazine Awards that one measure of happiness in the magazine business was The New Yorker app overtaking perennial gaming favorite Angry Birds.