Brilliant article by Craig Mod on (the future of) publishing. Interesting thoughts, well thought through, a joy to read. For me especially interesting regardin the recent dying of German newspapers.

Looking at The Magazine’, and even without that comparison, earlier Newsstand Apps like ‘Wired’ (and that’s a good one, I would think) seem awfully bloated. Download of a few hundred MB every month, and a hm-okay-nice-but-too-complicated interface: Not the future. Craig points out why The Magazine’s approach has ‘disruption’ written all over it. Exciting.

When he talks about how there’s no effortless way to pay writers, I thought of Flattr, this micropayment startup. I liked the idea from the beginning, and they’re still there, but it doesn’t really seem to take off. I would like it to, and I think every tech person would like it to take off, too. But I could never see my parents pay a writer that way. And that’s where feasible and effortless come in. Like Craig puts it:

[…] you’ll notice something magical about Newsstand: given the proper container, it’s a background downloading, offline-friendly, cached RSS machine people can subscribe to. For money.

Boom.

Oh, this interview with Brent Simmons, about writing and publishing also was recommended all over the internet yesterday. It strengthens Craig’s point:

But I no longer believe that the current set of publishers will embrace the future, whatever it is, and I believe they’ll be replaced by new publications.

I just came across even another interview: Clayton Christensen (and others) on the news business