Psst! Wanna Save $100??

Of course you do! Well, if you’re planning on attending the Circulation Management Show in June, here’s your chance. Just use this $100 off coupon and you’ll save a whole Benjamin on the cost of the show.

And at the show, be sure to join us for Preview Magic, our own workshop, where we’ll go over how to best tease your readers with content. One lucky attendee will also walk away with their own iPod shuffle! View the entire CM Show brochure here.

Digital Editions Today…

Covering the digital edition category is tough; it’s a real challenge figuring out what technologies are new and – of the new ones – what really matters to publishers.

Kudos to Jim Calder from Publishing Executive. His story, Digital Editions Today: An Era When Customers Expect More, is one of the finest and most accurate articles we’ve seen in some times and a great place to start if you’re considering doing a digital edition.

The Internet Finally Grows Up…

It used to be the secret that nobody wanted to talk about: the majority of what the Net was being used for was things of an “adult” nature. But what social media is poised to do in the coming weeks is monumental: very soon, social networking will become the biggest thing online.

Those of us who like to make money are scrambling at this notion, as it means that “There’s gold in them thar hills, and it ain’t the kind I gotta be ashamed to make!” However, here’s the most vital line from the article linked above:

It’s becoming clear that MySpace and Facebook are outliers, and their success will probably not be duplicated by more than one or two sites every few years. That makes it a poor investment to try to replicate their success. What is more likely is to take an existing application model that already works for people and to add social features to it, gradually, making it sociable. 

Which is exactly what we’ve done with the NXTbook. By taking a product that already works for people, adding permalinks and creating strategic partnerships with Digg and del.icio.us, we’ve made it easy for publishers to tap into social media – soon to be the biggest thing the Internet has ever seen!

The Value of Open Content…

What happens when a publisher opens up their content online? Sometimes, the result is new subscribers. Sometimes, the result is more Google-juice. And sometime, the result is just someone being able to use your content to write a better academic article.

Either way, it makes sense to have a strategy in place for sharing content.

RSS For the Neophyte….

Lots of chatter on the web about this video which does a great job of explaining what RSS is and why it’s important. The curious thing is that even though we would’ve rushed to blog about this a year ago, I was less excited to today, simply because – in the trade shows we’ve attended in recent months – it seems that our customers have learned a lot about RSS in the past year.

Attitudes a year ago were more: What is RSS? This year, we’ve heard a lot more of: How can NXTbook fit into my RSS strategy? And by the way, we can, and can even do so in a way that makes you money!

But if I’m getting ahead of myself, start by watching the video about RSS here.

Leading the Reader…

Guess what? It’s easier for readers to find digital editions than it is for them to stumble across print copies, but successful titles still have to work hard (and smart) at marketing their titles.

Case in point: Bentley, one of our most successful (digital only!) publishers has a conference coming up. This flyer will be given to all conference attendees and a magazine representative will be on-site demo-ing the book. Very very smart!

links for 2007-04-19

• Anthony & Sylvan – Where America Swims – 2007 Catalog – Page 12

Until We All Grow Six Arms, Digital Editions Will Have a Place.

Sometimes we get asked this question: If our content is all over our website and we’ve got a great web strategy, should we have a digital edition? Our answer is long-winded and dependent on many things (including your international strategy, revenue strategy, etc.), but the one answer that resonates loudly with many publishers is, "That’s a big ‘if.’"

The reality is that many publications don’t have the time, money or resources required to get their content online and if the print world is treating them well, you can understand why’d they’d be hesitant to put together a dynamite web team. In those situations, a digital edition makes perfect sense, as it’s an inexpensive way to get your content found by both readers and search engines.

In fact, here’s a blogger pointing out that 30% of the UK’s top magazines have no content on their website (or no website at all). This blogger calls this "scary," but we prefer to consider it enlightening, as it may mean that the print world is working for these particular titles, or – again – it could mean they merely lack the time, money and resources to build a robust web strategy. For publishers like this, a digital edition is an inexpensive way to immediately embrace the web.

Is Your Digital Edition All it Can Be?

A new magazine, Blogger & Podcaster, is hitting the stands and the screens this week. We say that because the magazine is being offered in three formats – print, a digital edition and a podcast version.

While we agree with other bloggers in that the magazine itself – and the triple distribution – are a great idea, as digital edition publishers, we were disappointed in this particular version of the debut issue.

Why? Well aside from two advertisements (one of which sounds like it was voiced by Cindy Brady), there is no audio inside the digital edition. This, despite the fact that the magazine is also going to be available in podcast format. So, the digital edition is lacking the podcasts which we know are already being created for the magazine. That’s somewhat strange.

This does a couple things. 1) It makes the reader work. They can read the content – or listen to it, but they can’t do both. Or choose which one to do with both in front of them. 2) It sends a mixed message out about digital editions. The reality is that magazine publishers can and do embed digital editions with podcasts, giving readers the choice of how they want to consume content. But when a podcasting publication doesn’t put podcasts inside the digital edition, what’s the reader to think about digital editions with audio?

Here’s hoping Blogger & Podcaster leverages the strengths of all their media in forthcoming issues. The content is dynamite and the market is right for this publication.

links for 2007-04-18

• American Royal Arts Brochure – Page 1
  Audio intro on opening page, audio clips of songs on other pages
  (tags: audio+editorial)

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