Popular Science iPad Subscriptions Off to a Promising Start

Popular Science Sells 10,000 iPad Subscriptions in First 5 Weeks. (Mashable, 3/30/2011)

Excerpt: Popular Science magazine has garnered more than 10,000 subscriptions for its iPad app, Bonnier Technology Group publisher Gregg Hano confirmed to Mashable Wednesday.

That might be only a sliver of the 1.2 million print subscriptions Popular Science has maintained to date, but it’s a promising start.

Since its launch in April 2010, the magazine has been selling an average of 10,000 to 12,000 single issues per month at $4.99 apiece, the same as its basic newsstand cover price. Although the app itself has received largely positive reviews from press and consumers, the latter were frustrated by the price.

“The problem was that readers could subscribe to the print version of Popular Science and get a discount, but they couldn’t on tablets,” Hano explains. “When Apple decided to offer up a subscription model, we [finally] found a way to give consumers what they want,” he adds.