Creating a magazine app for the iPad is not for the faint of heart or
the slim in bank account. Creating apps takes a good deal of skill or
collaboration with someone who has the skill. Even if you have the
design and technical expertise, the process is still expensive for small
and mid-size publishers. The good news, however, is the field is
rapidly changing, and prices, while still significant, are coming down.
You no longer have to hire a programmer to create an app from scratch.
Instructions
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1
Consider high-end solutions if
you have the expertise to work with the design programs involved and you
can cover the cost. Adobe, a mainstay of publication design since it
created Postscript, the background programming code that allows digital
printing to occur, is heavy into application design for publications
with its Digital Publishing Suite. It’s meant for designers who have a
working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite’s programs including InDesign.
It’s appropriate for mid-size to large publishing companies who can
afford a subscription price of nearly $6,000 per year for the DPS
Professional Edition as of fall 2011, with additional costs per
download. The professional edition can upload apps workable for iPad and
Android tablets.
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2
Take advantage of other options
that give you a middle of the road cost and more choice of how to design
the magazine. MagAppZine costs about $3,500 per year to take issues in
PDF and convert them to an app, up to a maximum of 52 issues per year.
It also charges 20 cents per issue downloaded. You don’t need the latest
version of Creative Suite to design the publication, and you can use
any other layout programs to produce the PDF. Any multimedia elements
and interactive features in the PDF are carried over when converted to
the app.
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3
Go for single-issue options for
which you pay a set price per app. Adobe is releasing the Single Edition
version of Digital Publishing Suite at $395 per app released, which is a
major savings over the Professional Edition if you only plan to publish
a quarterly magazine. Single Edition, however, uploads only to the iPad
and not to Android tablets. Magazines designed as multimedia PDFs are
viewable on the iPad and Android through reader programs such as Unidocs
ezPDF, which the user purchases for a few dollars, but the publication
itself is not available for sale in iTunes as an app; it sells
separately on the Web.
