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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

> But what’s foolish about publishing on a single platform? ... I publish only on the web

Is he pretending not to understand, or he really doesn't know? Publishing on the web doesn't limit users, since web is an open and accessible platform (given that you have any decent browser). Publishing "to iPad" is artificially limiting your audience, because publishers weren't smart enough to use cross platform publishing technologies (PDF anyone?).

So no - one platform publishing is plain stupid in this day and age. And no - the Web is not called one platform publishing either.

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I think calling it 'stupid' is a little strong. There are hundreds of millions of iOS users, and many newspapers exist serving cities with smaller populations than that.

iOS is also a very different environment with regards to payment:

- On iOS the process of purchasing paid and free apps is the same: you type in your password.

- On the web the process of purchasing paid applications has built-in friction: 'free' is the default, and payment requires the user to trust the store, input card information etc.

There are more people on the web, but web users are less willing to pay for things.

I don't deny that a larger audience is better, but it adds overhead to support more platforms, so focusing on one can be an advantage. Marco, the creator of The Magazine (http://the-magazine.org), mentioned that he hasn't ruled out other platforms, but with limited resources it's easier to focus on iOS for now (he's the sole developer). Apparently after four issues he already has enough income to pay market rates per-word to writers and hire an editor.

For example when you buy e-books through some web store, you don't expect all of them to be free, you pay and get your PDF/ePUB or whatever. So it's not an entirely foreign concept for the web.

And comparison with regional physical newspaper distribution is not valid, since physical media is limited with physical space. Digital media is not - it can easily be distributed anywhere the network can reach, as far as publisher put just minimal effort to publish it in accessible form. So there is for sure nothing smart in limiting the distribution media to one isolated platform.

> I don't deny that a larger audience may be better, but it adds overhead to support more platforms, so focusing on just one can be an advantage

Publishers should however consider approaching their readers with respect. Limiting access to content with platform is not pleasant for those who don't use that platform. In case of physical books / magazines there is no such limitation. So spending some more resources to avoid offending potential readers is a worthy goal. Plus as I said that overhead doesn't sound to be that dramatic - what's so difficult in providing a link to a PDF?

Back of a napkin, shaky math, but if we say The Magazine has maybe 25k subscribers it should net about $42105 after Apple's cut per month, which is pretty damn good money for what's essentially a niche publication, but it's not exactly cash to start throwing after other platforms until it's got a consolidated base on one platform. That 25k could turn to 5k tomorrow if the quality dips.

Well, one would of course hedge bets and reach farther by going for multiple platforms. But the whole point was that the Daily (and most iPad magazines) mostly go for a "PDF with bells and whistles" approach, and it is exactly that which makes the product poor in usability. PDF is the lowest common denominator, and also the worst in usability and value. But it shouldn't be to difficult to deliver a lean iPad App AND a PDF for those who wants.

Yes, if they want a classical publishing style in digital form - let them simply ship PDF which anyone can use wherever they want to. And if they want some interactive "bells and whistles" they should better use the web for that. Also many publishers are plagued with DRM paranoia, and instead of shipping their content in various forms they choose some awkward limited mechanism which requires device/tool X to read it.

Nitpicking, but The Daily uses JSON describing page layouts which map pretty closely to UIKit objects and properties.

No Postscript, no PDF.

You can see this for yourself if you let Charles or any kind of wire sniffer observe the network traffic while The Daily loads a new issue.

But the article he was responding to included the web as one-platform publishing: "Publishing for a single platform, whether print, web, or the iPad, is a foolish move,"

So in that context, his response makes sense.

It's also my understanding that it wasn't possible to link to The Daily articles. So no facebook/twitter/reddit/stumbleupon/etc. sharing. Did they expect that to work out?

If access were all that mattered in a platform, you could make the leap from "less accessible platform" to "stupid". I'd personally probably look at a few more dimensions before concluding.

I only commented in the context of distribution limitations. As others pointed out, it wasn't really the main reason for this publication failure, but it was definitely a flaw regardless of other reasons.

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