If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Problem…

Paul Conley has a great post today about the satisfaction and frustration of dragging people into a Web 2.0 world.

In other words, these are articles about Web 2.0 in a publication that continues to struggle with Web 1.0.

It’s a big task, to be sure. Those of us within the digital publishing space are teaching people who’ve been in the business of disseminating print communication in one direction how to facilitate all types of media in many directions. That’s not a short putt by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s exciting to be a part of and it’s important to celebrate the success of every publication that gets it – even if they only get a little bit of it at a time.

Case in point: the fine folks at Folio: Magazine came out with a blog earlier this year. It was good, but it was lacking an RSS feed. So we hassled them about this at every opportunity. And today, they released their RSS feed and we are the proud sponsors of it.

Pretty Vino

Our friends from Mundologico have done it again. They worked with a wine company to produce a gorgeous NXTbook with very tasteful Flash animation. Very cool!

“Check” This Out.

Here’s a great way to collect reader information – let them check the categories they’re interested in and send in their requests directly from the NXTbook!

Only Six More Weeks of Shopping!

With the holidays just around the corner, you might want to check out the Value City Holiday Guide to Savings.

Nice Gatefold!

If you like skiing, you’ll love the sweet gatefold layout on this British Columbia Ski Guide ’07.

NXTbook Media – the Epcot of the Digital Publishing Community

Most months, 40% of NXTbook readers come from outside the US. This isn’t surprising, as many of our publishers choose us as a way to distribute content overseas for less.

This week, we’re proud to debut the NXTbook format in both Chinese and Japanese. Personally, I can’t read a word of it, but the team tells me the translation and lay-out are spot-on. Very cool!

On the Power & Potential of Open (and Free) Content…

WARNING: The first four lines of this post is a commercial. The last paragraph is meaningful rhetoric.

One of the things we’re most proud about the NXTbook is that we’re always making sure our technology is ready for the next trends. This is why we have RSS feeds NOW (even though RSS won’t be big until next year) and why we have page-specific permalinks NOW (which traditional publishers are only now beginning to grasp the power of).

The always quotable Dan Blank reviews the Time article on YouTube, and makes an important point:

Why debate what to do with media. Why not try an experiment. Open it up, and see what your readers do with it? Don’t find out what they want – see what they do. 

Now, if you’re a publisher with bills to pay, you’re likely thinking that one of the problems with open content is that it’s often free content. Last we checked, mortgage companies don’t except "free content" for payment. But free is in the eye of the beholder. This week, the NY Times Select is free for users, paid for by the generous sponsorship dollars of an advertiser; an advertiser who will get gobs of attention in return for their investment. (And at the end of the week, I expect Times Select will have some more paying customers.)

Times Select article via Rex 

Great Month for Dr. Dobb’s Journal!

Looking at our October traffic, we had many books that stood out, but Dr. Dobb’s Journal continues to be a top performer both in terms of views and time spent within the publication, so congrats. to CMP for writing content that people really care about.

On the Value of Open Content…

A few weeks ago, we first made mention of a brochure we did for the Walt Disney World Marathon. It’s a cute brochure, and you can view it here, but that’s not why we’re posting about it today.

One of the features that makes NXTbook different is the multiple ways that we make it easy for people to find and post links to your content online. The easier the digital publisher makes it, the more people will do it, and the more readers you’ll get.

It’s for this reason that Disney has gotten thousands of readers, because running fans posted links to the brochure in places like here, here and here.

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