Hearst unveils plans for wireless e-reader

Hearst Corporation, the publisher of popular magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and Popular Mechanics, has announced it has plans to roll out its own e-reader by the end of the year. Like the popular Kindle, it will be an e-ink device, but with a larger screen more suited to displaying newspapers and magazines, will be black and white (but will be upgraded to color later) and may be flexible and even foldable. Content will be delivered wirelessly.

What Hearst and its partners plan to do is sell the e-readers to publishers and to take a cut of the revenue derived from selling magazines and newspapers on these devices. The company will, however, leave it to the publishers to develop their own branding and payment models. “That’s something you will never see Amazon do,” someone familiar with the Hearst project said. “They aren’t going to give up control of the devices.”

The question now is, will readers give up their newspapers and magazines for these new readers?

Seems to me they already are. Newspaper and magazine readership is in a decline. Hallmark magazine recently announced it is folding and many newspapers are struggling to stay afloat amid steadily dropping ad revenue. One of Hearst’s own papers, the San Francisco Chronicle, is among them. Some papers, such as Newsday, are looking toward the net to make up for their lost revenues by beginning to charge for their online content.

Hearst is being tightlipped about any further details regarding its reader, including price, so we’ll have to see if it will give the Kindle a run for its money, or flop.

Read [Fortune]