Why does digital cost so much?

From AdAge:

iPad editions and subscription offers for Bonnier siblings Popular Photography and Sound & Vision will arrive later in June, followed by TransWorld Skateboarding and Islands in August.

But consumers who think iPad editions should cost no more than print editions and perhaps should cost less -- given all the money publishers save on paper, printing and distribution -- are going to be disappointed. IPad subscriptions to Popular Science, Popular Photography and Sound & Vision will cost at least twice as much as they do in print.

A year's worth of Popular Science in print, for example, runs you $12 if you order through the magazine's website and $10 if you find it on Amazon. A year on the iPad, however, will cost you $29.95. That's 83¢ a print issue through Amazon, but $2.50 an iPad issue.

Bonnier's subscriptions and pricing strategy will have company fairly shortly. Time Inc. CEO Anne Moore said last week that Time magazine iPad subscriptions are "coming soon." And she didn't sound any more interested in discount pricing than Bonnier. "It's becoming increasingly clear customers will pay for trusted, quality content," she said in remarks at a Time Warner investors day.

Readers won't see it that way, but they'll need to adjust their expectations, said Andrew Degenholtz, president at ValueMags, a magazine-subscription marketer. "They're thinking, 'We're not knocking down any trees, there's no ink being used, and there's no truck being used to deliver it,'" he said. "But there are significant editorial costs, creative costs and research-and-development and production costs," he said.

Bullshit. They're already spending those costs in developing the print edition. The only additional costs they incur are to pay programmers and designers to turn it into a digital edition. And in the case of the Wired magazine app, they're exporting directly from the same original InDesign files that the print version is created with.

I've long wondered why digital downloads aren't significantly cheaper than buying a CD in the store. After all, there are no material costs to buy, no shipping costs, no packaging costs, etc. All that must be done is to create a digital file master for download. Instead of an album costing $10 (or more) on iTunes, it should only cost, maybe $4 or $5. We've always been told that record companies and artists only make pennies per album sold anyway, right? Remove the overhead, drop the price and watch the profits roll in. There are lots of albums I would buy if they were cheaper. I just don't value them at anywhere near $10.

The same should work for magazines as well. You want to increase your readership? Release an iPad edition that is cheaper than your print edition. The world is going digital, and eventually your magazine will go completely digital as well. But it seems that once again, these companies don't seem to understand a thing about their readership. Someone should tell whatever bonehead is making the pricing decisions that if they continue to force readers to "adjust their expectations" it just pisses off the people they depend on to make their money. There's only so many times readers will take a good kick to the ribs (or the wallet) before they go somewhere else, especially if they don't feel as if they're getting their money's worth.

In this age of magazines folding left and right, you'd think that they would understand that a little better. People aren't stopping reading magazines just because. There are reasons people stop subscribing: too many ads, not enough content, not enough good content, price is too high or better options elsewhere.