At the American Book Producers Association first working brown bag lunch for the 2011-2012 calendar year, Paul Canetti, founder and CEO of MagAppZine spoke about the state of the app market.
Canetti first laid out some statistics, including: 92% of the Fortune 500 companies are testing and developing apps for iOS devices; the average user of Apple devices downloads 53 apps per year; and a new iPad is sold every two seconds. The statistics were used to illustrate Canetti’s main point: the app market is a fertile one for publishers. Canetti said “apps are the new Web site,” stating that this is the perfect time for app development because everyone is craving apps, yet not many people are really taking advantage of all the benefits apps can provide.
Canetti used the example of an independent surfing magazine. If someone were to type “surfing” into Google, he or she would come up with thousands of results. But if someone were to type “surfing” into the App Store, he or she would get far less results, with the top rated apps filtering toward the top. Canetti said publishers should get into the app business for three reasons: you want your own digital bookstore, you want interactive media and you want web integration.
Canetti stressed the branding advantages in apps, saying that if you ask someone who published their favorite book, they usually won’t be able to tell you. But by putting titles that an audience reads and enjoys within a branded app bookstore, the audience will discover other titles from the same publisher.
MagAppZine, which launched in April, already has 17 clients—three of which are book publishers. Of the 17 clients, 12 are in the App Store and five are pending. To date, 6,000 end users have viewed his clients’ publications via the App Store.
