Magazine publishers see tremendous potential in the Fire and hope that the device can do for their business what the Kindle did for books: bring droves of new customers into a business that is having difficulty retaining its traditional print readers.

With another player besides Apple – particularly one that is as large and influential with consumers as Amazon is – magazine companies could suddenly find they have a useful bargaining chip when it comes to negotiating with Apple.

The Fire also allows publishers to start getting a higher price for their magazines. The magazine business has long sold subscriptions on the cheap – many for as little as a dollar an issue – while advertising subsidized much of their costs. But as much as it lamented the practice and tried to raise prices, it found consumers were resistant. Prices of many magazines on the Amazon Fire are set higher than print editions.

And by offering buyers a newsstand, publishers can avoid having to worry that their magazines are getting lost in a jumble of other media. This has long been a complaint of theirs with Apple, which is set to introduce its own newsstand next week.

“When you’re lost in the middle of 100,000 apps, you only have people who find you when they’re looking for you,” said Bob Sauerberg, president of Condé Nast. “This helps with getting consumers in. They pick what they want, and we sell them more of what interests them. And everybody is happy.”

Tablet versions of magazines are still in their very early days, and so far the sales figures don’t tell a complete picture about how strong consumer demand is. But across the board, publishers have said they like what they are seeing: small but relatively strong subscription and single issue sales that suggest more and more readers are beginning to adopt the tablet as their medium for magazine reading.

Hearst, publisher of many leading women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and O The Oprah Magazine, has found the Barnes Noble Nook to be a particularly encouraging bright spot. Sales on that device have in some cases surpassed those on the iPad.

But in a sign of how much remains unsettled in the tablet magazine marketplace, Time Inc., the country’s largest magazine publisher, has yet to reach an agreement with Apple or Amazon to sell subscriptions. Time Inc., publisher of Sports Illustrated and People, continues to try to resolve issues including how revenue will be split with Amazon.

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