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The Observer is reporting on some very interesting information they have from “sources” that may indicate the future direction of electronic magazines. Everyone has heard Wired yapping about preparing custom digital content for “some unannounced device that Apple MAY produce someday…*giggle*giggle*”, but it seems other major magazines are not sitting around waiting for Cupertino to call. Some months ago I reported on the rumor that Time and other big time magazines were looking seriously at electronic distribution methods with an intent towards creating their own Reader device and online Amazon-style store. Considering the number of devices upcoming in 2010 and the buzz over various “tablets”, the Reader option may be off the table. No need for it really if there are so many other devices already out or soon to be released that are not picky regarding where their content comes from.

Instead, the source says that Time and other publishers are looking at setting up a single web portal for downloading magazines from all different companies to any reader device as well as ordering print copies. The sources described it as like iTunes, but for magazines.

BRILLIANT! I like to call it….iMagz.

The venture is being driven by Time Inc and Time’s Executive VP John Squires. The companies in on the venture include Time Inc., Condé Nast and Hearst. Between those three they publish more than 50 magazines, such as The New Yorker,Vanity Fair, Vogue, Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Esquire and O, The Oprah Magazine.

The e-magazines will be designed to run on all possible platforms, including iPhones, Ebook Readers, PCs and tablets. No ebooks will be involved, just magazines. The report says the deal is not finalized since more publishers may be coming into the deal, but it could be announced within weeks the next few weeks.

No word on what formats would be represented. Personally I feel that they will initially go with PDFs but in my opinion PDFs are still too clunky and slow to load for graphics heavy files like e-magazines. However, as they won’t want to try and pull a Sony and introduce a new format to be supported (by products already released or in final design phases, likely PDFs will be their first choice of format. Perhaps such a powerful group of publishers will be able to convince Adobe to further optimize the PDF format for faster load times.

Either way, I think this is an important step forward as the more content that is out there open to all readers using all devices in all formats, the better.