Unless consumers treat the mobile reading experience as unique ? and not just as an adjunct of the print or online ? publishers will have a tough go of monetizing the mobile medium.

Before anything else, print publishers have to avoid the King Canute impulse: they cannot turn the tides. This much is clear ? readership is moving online and to mobile and advertisers are not far behind.

Not all publishers suffer this reader and ad flight equally.

Leisure publications such as Vanity Fair, Vogue, Town & Country or Better Homes & Gardens will recover most lost ground after the economy repairs simply because the magazine is the experience ? the scent strips, the eye-catching visuals, the framing of articles, the vivid advertisements and the overall anticipation of each issue?s drop.

As for the business press, that battle has been lost to the 24-hour news cycle, where a weekly or monthly magazine offers no more insight than a newspaper?s Web site updated every few minutes.

So unless the magazine is The Economist ? whose wry humor, cogent prose, firm point of view and vast reporting footprint are unrivalled ? the clock is ticking for all its competitors. Take this from someone who has seen the industry evolve since 1992.

Walled streets
While the computer-based Internet has flummoxed ? indeed, gobsmacked ? magazines publishers, mobile threatens to become the final nail in the coffin if a coherent multichannel content monetizing strategy is not quickly worked out.

Consumers have come to expect free access to news online and that same expectation will sooner or later extend to mobile.

Rupert Murdoch?s decision to stand up pay walls in June for News Corp.?s The Times and The Sunday Times, both British newspapers, will be eagerly watched. The 20 million unique monthly visitors will reportedly have to pay $2 a day or $4 per week for the privilege of accessing The Times online.

Some industry observers fear that The Times will lose almost all its readership in one fell swoop and endanger the millions of dollars in online ad revenues generated annually.

Mr. Murdoch has been most vocal on readers having to pay for online content. Perhaps he is emboldened by the success of The Wall Street Journal, a $5 billion purchase he made a few years ago that claims more than 400,000 paid subscribers to the online edition.

But the Journal?s area of coverage is unique and its sole international rival, Financial Times, has also erected pay walls. So the two of them have the financial news market locked, albeit not entirely since other mainstream publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post continue to cover business and have yet to charge for online access.

How then should magazines deal with mobile?

Mobile as an enabler
Understand first mobile?s enabling role and then the medium itself for content publication.

As has been clearly demonstrated in Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily through reported articles, analysis and opinion, mobile gives legs to other mediums.

Let us stick to print for the purpose of this article. Most publishers today are grappling with this question: How to extend the print content or advertising experience to mobile? In other words, how can mobile gives legs to the article or ad on the page.

There are two ways in vogue to handle that question. First is to tag stories with a special icon that when scanned using a reader application transfers to a video or Web extension of the article or ad.

The most recent example of this tagging is Meredith-owned Traditional Home.

The magazine ran icons using the Microsoft Tag Reader application. These Tip Clips accomplished different tasks. When snapped by smartphones, one of these icons brought to life clips of a tour of the recent New York International Gift Fair. Another had an author walk the readers through her spring luncheon menu. 

Imagine the same application to ads. It has been done before by Hachette Filipacchi and several other publishers using bar codes that are photographed by the mobile phone camera to activate a video or Web demonstration.

Key words on short codes
Another means to give legs to print magazines is the use of SMS. Common short codes and keywords will mobilize pages like no other mobile medium can.

For example, Conde Nast?s Vanity Fair can apply for a common short code ? vanity number or regular ? and then run that across all ads and articles with different identifying keywords.

So, Vanity Fair can use one short code and have the advertiser?s name as the keyword and encourage interaction between the brand and the reader. Almost every phone nationwide is capable of text and the monthly cost of a regular short code is $500 or a vanity number $1,000 ? small change for most publishers.

The solution sounds simplistic, but it is simple. And yet publishers are going for the razzle-dazzle when they should start with basic SMS to engage consumers who are already enamored with texting.

Using SMS, publishers can run surveys for advertisers, encourage sign-ups for contests online and opt-in to receive brand, content alerts and coupons.

Even more important, a short code and keyword on subscription cards can encourage quick renewals or new subscriptions, as Hearst is doing with some publications.

Finally, magazines can run mobile-specific mini-sites for advertisers and not poach traffic from the brand?s traditional Web site.

The imagination can run wild with mobile?s application to print. But it is best to start with the simplest solution that syncs with the most common mobile activity.

Away from commodity positioning
On the mobile content side, magazine publishers have a firm ally in applications. There is no reason why the latest edition of Vogue shouldn?t sell for 99 cents or $1.99 in the Apple App Store or in the Android Market.

Indeed, it is easier for magazines to sell their monthly editions as paid applications than it is for a newspaper to sell a daily edition.

Most magazines are not slaves to news cycles and they can work to make the application itself an experience worthy of viewing on an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble nook, Google Nexus One or BlackBerry.

Truth of the matter is, unless magazines erect pay walls on their mobile Web sites, most readers will enter the publication?s Web address in the phone browser and expect to see the same content as in the magazine ? for free.

So it is critical now to train the audience to value content in mobile as not just another newsy commodity but on the same lines as music or video that they readily pay 99 cents for on the iTunes store. Yes, the trick is to position content away from a commodity tack.

On the mobile Web, the magazine publisher?s strategy will have to sync with what is being done with the wired Web. And in most cases, magazine Web sites are an utter disappointment ? neither fish nor fowl, nor well-monetized and not well-endowed with content.

As time passes, what most publishers will realize that the mobile Web experience is simply not going to be restricted to on-the-go behavior but even at home or in the office.

More people will browse the Web on their mobile phones sitting on their couches in front of the television or simply while chatting to friends and family.

And that behavior is already picking up at work, clearly delineating personal Web browsing to smartphones and work-related activity to office computers. These consumers don?t want their office snooping on their personal Web activity.

Medium is the experience
It all comes back to defining the medium as the experience.

Nothing can duplicate the print magazine?s tactile touch and visual appeal. Nothing can replace the computer-based Web?s come-to-life brilliance. And little can compare with mobile?s portability and ability to co-opt the plusses of all channels within one device.

Harmonize the strengths of these channels, while respecting that print is what pays the bills ? for the moment. But that may not be the case ten years from now. The brand may survive, the medium may not.

To stave that moment of reckoning, magazine publishers need a multichannel experience strategy where print is touch, sight and smell, online is sight and sound and mobile is not simply the best of print and online but more.