New York Times has recently announced that it is raising the price for Kindle subscriptions from $13.99 to $19.99 – a rise of whopping 43 percent. There is some respite for current Kindle subscribers, who will continue to be billed at $13.99 for the next six months. The Kindle edition of New York Times app has been very popular and allows readers to get news coverage of exceptional depth and breadth, as well as opinion that is thoughtful and stimulating.
The timing of this announcement is very interesting and coincides with the launch of Apple iPad in United States. In a related move, an iPad application for New York Times hit the iTunes App Store yesterday. The current NYT iPad app is free and offers a limited selection of automatically updated news, features, videos, etc. laid out with a newspapery feel and offline reading capability; it’s sponsored exclusively at launch by Chase Sapphire. It is expected that a full-fledged paid NYT app for iPad would be launched soon.
The New York Times subscription on the nook is also going up from $13.99 to $19.99. Like with the Kindle, existing nook subscribers will get 6 months at the old price. Many print media veterans have argued that digital subscriptions should be less than their analog counterparts, however the prices for digital editions continue to rise. I wonder if the Kindle vs. iPad battle will help the customers or will it further aggravate this pricing war?
It will be interesting to see the “total revenue” from the subscriptions at the new price versus the old one. It could be the NYT will lose enough subscribers that the will find that the lower price brings in more revenue. Unfortunately, that will be skewed by the new subscribers coming from the iPad, which is essentially coming out at the same time as the price increase. I will admit, that I was tempted to add the NYT to my iPad, when it gets here, but not at $20/month.
CB
I guess the grey lady did not lose enough Kindle readers with the last increase they decided to keep pushing it. I cancelled my subscription after the last one and I’m sure glad I did now. I get it sent to my computer each day for free. Not as convenient but certainly cheaper.
This price hike was announced weeks ago?
I think the biggest aversion for me is the idea of paying for the NYT but what you get is not the complete paper. No crosswords, not all of the articles, and some of the articles end prematurely. No thank you.