I saw an ad on Facebook for Texture, and I thought it was another attempt at the NextIssue model for magazines, which, if you don’t recall, is a plan to do for magazines what Netflix did for movies. One subscription gives you access to a library of choices. But it turns out Texture is actually a reboot of Nextissue. In any event, I don’t think this model is going to work very well, new name notwithstanding.

Texture charges $9.99/month for the basic plan, and $14.99/month for premium service, which gives the reader access to weekly as well as monthly magazines. The subscriber can read as much as he likes of any title that chooses to participate in the program.

There are a lot of problems with this model, from both a consumer’s and a publisher’s perspective. Here are a few of my concerns.

Why it won’t thrill consumers.

• Think for a minute about the movies you’ve watched in the past year, and compare that list to the magazines you’ve read. I suspect that your choice in movies is far more eclectic than your choice of magazines. In other words, it’s probably easier to lump the magazines you read into two or three categories than it is the movies you watch.

  I can’t prove that’s universally true, but I suspect that’s the way it is for most people. And if I’m right, it shows why the Netflix model doesn’t cross over very well to magazines. Movie watchers are more likely to want to choose from a large selection of movies than magazine readers are likely to want to choose from a large selection of magazines. Magazines tend to be more of a niche thing.

• Netflix delivers movies precisely the way everybody wants to view them — that is, on a screen. There’s no print edition of a movie. But we are in the middle of a big experiment wth print vs. digital editions of magazines, and Texture is on the (so far) losing side of that. If you look at the sales figures, people prefer print magazines in large numbers. So the Texture business model is relying on delivering magazines in a format people generally don’t prefer.

Why publishers won’t be thrilled.

• Who’s going to do customer service? Putting an intermediary between the consumer and the publisher is going to cause trouble. Since Texture is delivering magazines digitally, it won’t have to deal with changes of address, snow birds, and so on, but there are still issues about accounts and access. Some customers will be confused and will call the publisher rather than Texture. Also, there’s a growing expectation on the part of print subscribers that they should get the digital edition for free, or at a discount. How will that consumer expectation play out with the Texture model?
• Will the publisher get the customer data? Part of the publishing business model is to up-sell and cross-sell, but publishers can only do that effectively when they get the customer information. I’m sure Texture has no intention of giving the publishers the customer data, and data is becoming more and more important to the publishing business model.
• No, it’s not like the newsstand.

  When publishers ask digital newsstands for customer data, the digital newsstand people reply that the publisher should view digital sales the way they view print newsstand sales. “You don’t get the customer data when somebody buys your magazine at the drug store, and you don’t get it here either.”

  That’s not quite true. The printed edition at the newsstand has 47 of those annoying blow-in cards in it. You know, the things that drop all over the floor as you’re trying to read the magazine. They’re annoying, but publishers use those cards because they get a lot of subscriptions from them. In other words, print newsstand sales do convert to print subscriptions where the publisher gets the customer data. Not on every one, for sure, but on enough. There is no analogy to a digital sale. The publisher simply gets his cash, and that’s it.

  In some digital newsstands, publishers can sell single issues and try to upsell to subscriptions, but often they have to do it on rotten terms. In the Texture world, there would be no incentive for the customer to subscribe, since he can always get the next issue.

Generally speaking, I don’t think much of digital magazines. As I see it, a “magazine” is an inherently print-centric thing. The content can and should be repurposed for digital delivery, but the structure and arrangement should be very different. There’s not much point in trying to force it into something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a magazine (to borrow from Douglas Adams).

This is part pf why digital magazines simply haven’t taken off the way they were expected to. It’s simply not a good experience, and it’s not like a magazine. (Nor should it be.)

Back when Nextissue first came out, I offered some thoughts about the model. They still seem to apply.

A magazine is not just its content. It’s not a collection of articles, pictures and ads. It’s a peculiar sort of package, both in its content and in its presentation. It’s also a lifestyle choice. It’s a way to brand yourself. A magazine is a form of self and group identity.

You don’t subscribe to Field and Stream just because you want to know how to get a trophy buck. You want to think of yourself — and you want others to think of you — as that kind of guy. You want to feel a part of that lifestyle. You want the people who visit your house to see Field and Stream on your coffee table and know a little more about you.

The idea that consumers will grab GQ this month, then Entertainment Weekly, then People, then Better Homes and Gardens …. It seems like a flawed premise to me. A reader might browse those things in the barber shop while waiting for a chair, but this undifferentiated mass of magazines is not a compelling sale.

If you want to sell Better Homes and Gardens there’s a solid pitch to be made. Have a nicer home! We’ll show you how, and all the great stuff we’ll show you is more than worth the paltry subscription price. Plus you get all these premiums!

What is Nextissue selling? You can read … uh … all this stuff … and, uh … whatever it is that you like you can … well … you can read it on a tablet, like no one else in the world is doing right now. (Despite the hype, tablet sales of magazines are awful.)

There’s no clear benefit to an identifiable group of people who want a discrete something — except for a group of people that simply doesn’t exist, that is, people who want to read an undifferentiated mass of whatever on a tablet.

People simply aren’t getting on board with the digital magazine thing — even with titles they like that have a clear audience and a clear benefit. The idea that it’s possible to water down the benefit, target an unclear demographic and sell even more digital magazines is not a business model I would bet on.

If I were to design a service like this, I would get rid of the concept of the issue. “Issues” don’t mean as much for a digital subscription. Rather, I would include articles and tag them by concept, so that if I was interested in politics I could get all the political articles from any title, or by any author.

The content from print magazines shouldn’t just get plopped into some digital service. It needs a re-think. Texture is rethinking it a little, but, in my opinion, not enough.