The current state of Emagazines

[LandSurveyor]

Suspect it has to do with licensing agreements. But even with Zinio I could read on more than one device.

[Mi An]

Just discovered a severe problem with Amazon's setup. Unlike books--where once you own it for one device, you own it for all--you have to buy magazines for a particular device.

You don't buy magazines for a particular device, but not all mags are licensed for use with apps outside the kindles, as LS suggested. Looking up Details, under the price, it's available only for the Fire. But if you had multiple fires on the same account, I'm sure you'd be able to read it on any of them. On the other hand, Popular Science is available both for the Fire and the iPad kindle app, but apparently not the android kindle app, or the iphone kindle app for that matter.

[Mitlov]

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.

[LandSurveyor]

I'm not thrilled with the current state of this. To me, If I buy the magazine, I should receive a pdf or something that I can, if I wish, save to, and use on another device or simply archive. It's almost like you are leasing the content. Doesn't look good next to the conventional paper paradigm at all.

[questionfear]

That's very true, and a big part of it is how much magazines have struggled to be more than just "a pdf", mainly because PDF'd magazines look awful on certain screens.

Magazines have not had the same luck as ebooks in converting fairly seamlessly, and I sometimes wonder if they simply won't. They almost need to be app-ified in some way to make them compelling over their paper cousins.

[LandSurveyor]

I've tried a mag that I used to buy in paper form a lot from B&N. The Article View makes a world of difference in readability although typically it takes only one photo and often truncates even that. Of course one can read the article and switch back to the regular view. It's not perfect but as good as I've seen on a smartphone. Can't try it on my tablet because there doesn't appear to be a Nook app for Touchpad.

[Varjak]

LS, what do you mean it takes 'only one photo?'

[questionfear]

LS, what do you mean it takes 'only one photo?'

I think he means it only brings one photo into the reading view. At least that's what I have seen on these types of apps...

[LandSurveyor]

And if it's long rather than square, the sides get chopped off. It wouldn't be necessary on a tablet or anything with a decently large display.