iPad Magazines: a whole new generation of shovelware

While we’re on the topic of iPad magazine apps:

We in the publishing game have a name for this phenomenon – we call it “shovelware”. We used to use the term to describe the way we just took our print copy and shoveled it onto the web – a phase that, thankfully, most publishing businesses have moved beyond. However, the arrival of the iPad has given us the opportunity to get that ol’ shovel back out of the box, and shovel our magazines straight into a new form.

Oh, make no mistake, this has been made very easy for us. Adobe – amongst others – has given us tools to take our magazines and shove them onto the iPad with just a few clicks. And publishers have been doing this with abandon – if limited commercial success. Now wonder: this is shovelware 2.0, and it will be just as damaging to our businesses in the long term as its 1990s version was.

That’s somebody called “Adam Tinworth”, writing in InPublishing.

And then he goes on to describe a magazine app that’s really good. I think you’ll enjoy it…