Condé Nast Publications announced today the release of the first issue of Wired magazine in iPad format. Other titles from the publisher, including Vanity Fair and GQ have already come out for the iPad but Wired is being promoted as its first magazine to undergo a comprehensive re-imagining tailored to the new format.

"You start asking yourself first-principles questions, like `What is it that we do every month?'" said Wired editor Chris Anderson. The result of all this self-reflection is a innovative publication that allows readers to experience the magazine in interesting new ways. Anderson outlined some of the detailed features of the first issue:
The tablet is our opportunity to make the Wired we always dreamed of. It has all the visual impact of paper, enhanced by interactive elements like video and animated infographics. We can offer you a history of Mars landings that lets you explore the red planet yourself. We can take you inside Trent Reznor's recording studio and let you listen to snippets of his work in progress. And we can show you exactly how Pixar crafted each frame of its new movie, Toy Story 3.
Wired has admittedly maintained an "obsession" with the iPad for a long time. This is further evidenced by the magazine's contest which calls upon readers to predict the number of iPad articles they will write over the course of a year, the current tally being at least several dozen. At $4.99 per month (or slightly less with a to-be-announced annual subscription formula) it remains to be seen how large an audience will drawn to the new format. Given the large investment Condé Nast has made in re-inventing its flagship technology publication, its appears to be confident of a warm reception. This, is in spite of disappointing sales figures for the first iPad issue of GQ which was reported as selling as few as 365 copies in its first few weeks. When Condé Naste came out with an iPhone version of GQ, the sales figures were also problematic. The iPhone version sold 7,000 issues of the December 2009 issue compared to 240,000 newsstand and 667,000 subscriber issues.

iPads have been selling at a rate of 200,000 per week, outselling Mac computers by a ratio of nearly two-to-one. The number of publishers getting on the bandwagon continues to climb, with recent announcements of iPad versions from Italy's La Republica and the UK's Financial Times. The iPad is expected to be released in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Swizerland, and Japan on May 28th. Meanwhile initial reviews have started coming in and they are quite positive.

See below for a video demonstration of the Wired iPad first issue's features.

Sources: WSJ, SFGate, Wired