A Review of Popular Kindle Magazines

Looking to subscribe to a magazine on the Kindle? Or are you just curious about how well magazines translate on an electronic reader? This article reviews three of the most popular magazines available on the Kindle: Newsweek, Time and Reader's Digest. At the very least, all three magazines share one major benefit: no ads.

Newsweek (Issue: Jan. 12, 2009), $1.49 per month

(published weekly)

Newsweek is the number one magazine in the Kindle store. The sections available on the Kindle are "Cover Story," "The Issue" (a collection of news articles), "Periscope," "Voices," "My Turn," and "Letters to the Editor." Cut from the issue were sections like "Perspectives," "Checklist," and "Tip Sheet" (most likely because they rely on visual images).

It's easy to go from article to article (readers can choose to navigate from "Articles List" or "Sections List" or go through the magazine manually). Each article is in an easy-to-read format, clearly distinguishing titles, subtitles, author, and text. It also appears that Newsweek is experimenting with photos, which accompany a few articles. Hopefully that will mean eventually adding the aforementioned omitted sections that are reliant on graphics. Overall, it's a little dull, but Newsweek has a solid, reader-friendly design.

Time (Issue: Jan. 12, 2009), $1.49 per month

(published weekly)

Time ranks number two among Amazon's magazine offerings. Sections include "Cover Story," "The Well," "10 Questions," "Arts," "Briefing," Commentary," "Essay," "Inbox," "Life," and "Post Card." Time has the same set-up as Newsweek to browse through the magazine.

Unlike Newsweek, Time has included some of its sections that are graphic heavy. Problem is, Time didn't include the graphics, and that makes those sections look awkward. Just by adjusting the font sizes and space, Time could fix this problem. "Pop Chart" is especially jarring and could use some adjustment (see picture 3 at the top). So far, Time is apparently not experimenting with photos on the Kindle yet. That's not necessarily a detriment as it's somewhat refreshing not to have distracting photos plastered all over the magazine. Overall, Time needs to spend a little more time ensuring their pages are Kindle-friendly.

Reader's Digest (Issue: Jan. 01, 2009), $1.25 per month (published monthly)

Reader's Digest takes the number three spot on Amazon. In design, however, its quality is far above both Newsweek's and Time's. Its stories are split among three sections: columns, features, and departments.

Each article has one picture, and the images are higher in quality than Newsweek's. Although pictures shouldn't make or break a person's opinion of a Kindle magazine, it is nice to have a visual. Far more important, however, is Reader's Digest great use of font and space. It appears that some thought went in to converting each story into a Kindle-friendly format. For instance, when there's multiple entries within a column (as in their humor sections), there's enough space between each entry (and asterisks) to separate them. Overall, Reader's Digest's graphics and format differentiates itself against other Kindle magazines, making it much more memorable.