We Love the Shiny (Uninvented) Things…

PriceWaterhouse recently release a study called The medium is  the message* Outlook for Magazine Publishing in the Digital Age. Well worth the price (free) and it includes a few interesting tidbits. Here’s just two:

• Consumers expect to pay more for printed content than for content distributed electronically, but they are not prepared to pay more than half the sum they would pay for a printed magazine.

• Of all magazine categories, the two where demand in digital content is the smallest are women’s magazines and home and garden magazines.

Now, if I were so inclined I’d reference the picture from the study below and proclaim that e-Paper will be HUGE and the demand for it is DOUBLY HUGE. However, it’s worth noting that the version of e-Paper shown to those taking the survey was full color and magazine-size. In other words, the way people most want to read content is the only one that hasn’t been invented yet. Imagine the scores if they’d offered readers the choice of viewing content on the heads-up display of a flying car!*

*This sarcasm in no way underscores my burning desire for e-Paper to be the biggest thing since real paper.