Media Money
- LinkedIn Earnings Bode Well for Hiring and Social Media
- News Corp. Beats Estimates on Studio, Cable Strength
- Disney’s Earnings Beat; CEO Bob Iger Talks Piracy, Parks
- Ahead of Disney’s Earnings: Ads and Cable Revenue at the Magic Kingdom
- Coinstar Beats Earnings Forecast on Redbox Growth
- After The Super Bowl: Who’s Buying?
- Super Bowl XLVI: It's All About the Second Screen
- The Super Bowl's Big Advertising Winners: Super Sunday Ad Tracker
- A Sneak Peek at Facebook's New Headquarters
- Twitter’s CEO Weighs in on Google, Censorship Ahead of Facebook IPO
RSS FEED
- In Search of America's ‘Hottest Forecasters’
- Dow vs. S&P 500: Which is a Better Investment?
- Mick Fleetwood on the MP3 ‘Dumbing Down’ of Music
- Avis on the Road to Strong Growth: Analyst
- Private Homebuilders: Dead Men Walking
- LinkedIn’s Growth Is Already Priced In: Analyst
- The Real Reason Behind Bank of America’s Rally
- 5 Hedge Funds’ Top Stocks Soar After 2011 Rout
- This Valentine’s Day Love Is Served on a Silver Platter
- Greek Cabinet Approves EU, IMF Bailout Bill
- We're Not Greece: Italian Prime Minister Monti
- Private Homebuilders in the US: Dead Men Walking
- Dividend Payout Could Hit Record Amount This Year
- With Investors So Bullish, Stock Pullback Must Be Ahead
- Obama Likely to Call for Cutting Top Corporate Tax Rate
- New York Fashion Week Fall 2012
- NetNet: Why Saving Greece Could Destroy the World
- My Funny Valentine: When Love and the Fed Collide
Disney's First Digital Subscription: Online Books
Text Size 
Correspondent
 |
CNBC.com |
] announced the first-ever digital children's book platform, which also happens to be the media giant's first digital subscription business. A "virtual bookshelf" of 500 books at launch, plus an additional 20 books every few weeks will cost $80 per year or a monthly fee of $9.
Most notably, the service will be accessible online - but not yet on the Amazon's Kindle [AMZN
Loading...
()
]- Disney says it's waiting for e-Readers to offer color and sound. Paying a subscription gives you online access to any of the books, which range from the classic Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh story, to the more contemporary Cars, Toy Story and Hannah Montana. But you can't download the books to a laptop to bring them on the road to entertain kids on a long trip, so it doesn't yet offer the portability of an old-fashioned book or even a DVD.
Disney is hoping to snag more readers - customers - through a new, interactive approach to reading. Each title can be listened to as kids click through the pages, there's an interactive dictionary, and kids can create their own digital books. There are three reading levels, which critics say are a bit tough to navigate between, a technical glitch Disney is addressing. But the teaching approach behind these reading levels indicates that Disney will likely to grow this business to include more educational games and materials. It already has an "in" with the demographic: Disney is the world's largest publisher of kids books and magazines, selling 250 million books and over 400 million magazines annually.
Perhaps most important, this allows Disney to test the much-discussed digital subscription model. CEO Bob Iger has talked about putting Disney-branded content behind a subscription firewall, with the idea that above all, people will pay for quality content. Also, parents trust the Disney brand and kids are loyal to the characters and franchises. With the ad market weak and unstable, an additional revenue stream certainly seems a smart idea. So far the only real digital subscription models have been for music services like RealNetworks [RNWK
Loading...
()
] Rhapsody, and the Wall Street Journal. News Corp [NWS
Loading...
()
] CEO Rupert Murdoch has talked openly about his commitment to rolling out subscription plans across his news platform.
Now we'll be watching to see whether Marvel comics are integrated into the platform once Disney's acquisition of Marvel Entertainment [MVL
Loading...
()
] goes through. And I'd suspect that Disney is talking to makers of e-Books about developing a reader that targets just that children's book audience. It seems like a Disney branded e-reader could be key at advancing the digital children's book market, and a new gadget for Disney to sell.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes
