Free Marketing That Gets You Readers…

Having a web-based, digital edition with page-specific permalinks is the easiest way to let new readers find you. In this example, one reader asks others about a straight iron pictured in a Nxtbook and gets 15 other readers to look at the digital edition and share their thoughts.

Everyone wins:

1) The magazine gets more readers (and hopefully subscribers).

2) The readers find others with common interests.

3) The blogger gets a happy topic to write about.  

Moving On Up…

The phrase for today might be "controlled chaos," as we’re in the process of moving our home offices from the complex we shared with Reprint Management Services into a gorgeous renovated factory in downtown Lancaster. At least, I’m pretty sure it’ll be gorgeous once the contractors have moved on. Right now, it’s a typical commercial move with electricians, painters, and first-aid kit guys all trying to finish their work while we try to move in around them.

With a rebranding campaign and a successful FOLIO show in the rearview, the move to the new offices is the final big "thing" to happen this month, which is good, as it will enable us to again focus 100% of our energies into further enhancements to the Nxtbook.

If you’re a press release kind of person, here’s the official release about our move:

Friday, September 28th is moving day for the home office of Nxtbook Media, LLC. The digital publishing company, which works with many of the largest magazine publishers in the United States, is moving into an 8,500 square foot facility located at Urban Place, 480 New Holland Avenue, Lancaster,PA.

The move became essential after owners Michael Biggerstaff, Jim Lewis & Roxanne Edwards sold off their other business, Reprint Management Services, which shared space with Nxtbook Media in Greenfield Industrial Park, also in Lancaster. This required a move for Nxtbook, though regardless of the sale of RMS, it was only a matter of time.

“After three straight years of more than 200% growth, we were desperately in need of a facility that would allow us to better manage our rapid expansion,” said Marcus Grimm, Marketing Director of Nxtbook Media. The new building will nearly double the space Nxtbook was using at its previous office.

At Urban Place, Nxtbook Media will house sales, support, marketing, accounting and production. A fourth owner of the company is based in Connecticut, and Nxtbook Media has additional resellers both domestically and abroad.

Urban Place is a 300,000 square foot mixed-use community comprised of retail space, commercial space and luxury apartments. Barry J. Baldwin, partner of Urban Place, LP and owner of B.J. Baldwin Electric, Inc., has been developing Urban Place since December 2004. Baldwin states, “After our several years of hard work, it is thrilling to watch the abandoned factory come to life. We are very excited to have Nxtbook Media become a part of Urban Place.” Joining Nxtbook Media in the revitalization of the historic site will be tenants of twelve luxury apartments beginning November 2007.

Ruth Devenney of High Associates Ltd and Thomas McDermott of NAI Commercial Partners, Inc. handled the transaction between Barry Baldwin with Urban Place, LP and the Nxtbook Media ownership team.

links for 2007-09-27

• Streaming Media – 2007 Industry Sourcebook – Page 10
  Podcasting sample
  (tags: Podcast)

Scott Karp Quote of the Week

"You would think that in 2007 most sites would be technologically capable of sensing when they are being loaded by a mobile browser and deliver a site optimized for that use. Alas, no. When I loaded Costco.com, I had to scroll through an endless list of links to product categories to get to the page content.

But wait, you will say, what about the revolutionary iPhone, which loads the actual website and lets you zoom in and out with a touch of a finger? What about that, huh?

Yeah, well, remember when everyone had a 800×600 screen resolution, and we used to design websites to fit that width? Why was that? Oh, right, because scrolling is annoying. Looking at a normal web page on iPhone’s 3 inch screen is like surfing the web through a keyhole.

So, great, you can jam the entire NYtimes.com onto the screen — got a magnifying glass? Immediately having to zoom means it wasn’t optimized to begin with."

For 4 more reasons Scott says the Mobile Web has a way to go, click here. 

FOLIO: Re-Cap

Well, we’re on the train on the way home from FOLIO – the biggest magazine event in the US. Though we do many shows throughout the year, no event is bigger, better and more important to us. In no particular order, here are the Nxtbook highlights of FOLIO: 2007:

1) The traffic – I don’t know what the true show numbers are — I think I heard counts of 800-900 people, but a sizeable number of this group spent time at the Nxtbook booth. We were prepared for this with a large sales team, and I’m so glad we did, as we really didn’t have much downtime during the entire event. As always, the people were great – eager to learn about our technology and eager to share their great ideas for how to use it. It was a great exchange of ideas.

2) The speakers – My 1 regret from this year’s show is that I was only able to attend the keynote luncheon we sponsored, featuring the hugely entertaining Keith Clinkscales. Keith was dynamite, but I heard from many attendees that there were equally as entertaining programs.

3) The education – Over the four days we were at FOLIO, we had the opportunity to speak six times. In all presentations, we found the audience excited about the possibilities of digital editions and had a wonderful time teaching to – and certainly learning from – the audience.

However, it wouldn’t be a typical Nxtbook blog post if we didn’t pull out our soap box for a just a moment, so here we go:

Dylan Stableford is back on the Red7 editorial team and there’s a lot to like about him. First off, he’s a good writer, second up – he blogged much of the event (ya gotta love bloggers), and finally, the dude has really cool hair. Still, one of his posts was a bit off. He wrote:

An odd moment happened Sunday at the Folio: Show during a pre-conference session. Doug Harbrecht, director, new media, for Kiplinger’s, effectively dissed the viability digital magazines. “They’re doing nothing for us,” Harbrecht said. “They’re static … I think people are realizing that they just don’t want their content that way.”

(Consider, of course, that Harbrecht also admitted that one of the most common refrains heard outside the office is “Oh, my Grandfather used to read Kiplinger’s.”)

A few minutes later, an energetic team from Nxtbook, one of the show’s sponsors, gave its sales pitch to the same room about how digital is growing, vibrant and why people “just do want their content that way.”

Nxtbook’s Marcum Grimm, citing industry research, said digital magazines will make up 30 percent in 15 years. Within 25 years, they will represent 75 percent, Grimm said, adding: “Zing!”

Those "in the know" would know that the product Kiplingers uses lacks most of fundamental features available in most digital edition products and in all of the ones that are being successful. Digital editions should be indexed and archived by search engines and permalinked so that readers can easily share content online. Without those integral features, you’re relying 100% on your marketing team to do the work of getting the digital edition word out there, and considering a "good" digital edition will convert 20% of readership from print to digital, why would the marketing team give it that much attention? Simply put, they won’t, which is why you need help from Google, Yahoo and the millions of readers who wish to comment about your content. Frankly, we’re not that surprised that Kiplingers isn’t excited about what they’re experienced, because it’s an entirely different product than the one Nxtbook (and frankly everybody else) provides. It’s kind of like saying I had a bad experience at a restaurant, so I’m not going out to eat again.

"Zing," indeed :) No worries – Dylan, you still have the best hair of the Red7 Editorial team and we’re grateful you took the time to take in our session.

Oh, and one more thing – Rob Sugar was at the FOLIO show with copies of his new magazine, FPO – a magazine designed for magazine creatives. Simply put, the content is awesome and layout is gorgeous. Great job, Rob.

links for 2007-09-20

• 2007 Benefit Review and Selection Package – Page 10
  Example of a multi-page flash form
  (tags: flash+form)
• 2007-2008 IEEE Multiplan Brochure – Page 8
  Example of flash rollovers that enlarge the text
  (tags: flash-rollover)
• NYLON – June/July 2007 – Page 18
  Example of a BRC Subscribe Card
  (tags: BRC)
• HCNE Headache Update 2007 – Spring 2007 – Page 22
  Example of a flash form
  (tags: flash+form)

Google Likes Nxtbook – del.icio.us Thinks We’re Yummy, Too.

As we pull together a myriad of PowerPoint presentations for next week’s FOLIO Show, here’s a couple interesting statistics, all looking at the past 90 days of 2007 compared to the same period of 2006:

Total Nxtbook traffic when comparing those times is up 54%. That’s a sign of a great product and a great sales staff.

Total traffic to Nxtbooks via Google is up 217%.

Total traffic to Nxtbooks via del.icio.us is up 167%.

Keep in mind that in both ‘06 and ‘07, Nxtbooks were already getting indexed by Google and already had single-click submissions to del.icio.us. So what this means is that users are simply using these tools more to find and/or share your content, which is a very good thing.

Nxtbook Client to Receive Award

We received word today that one of the newest Nxtbook Media customers will receive an award next week.  Lilian de la Torre-Jimenez will be presented with a 2007 Business Person of the Year Award at Bizcon in Anaheim. Lilian is the publisher of Bodas USA La Revista, a spanish publication making its Nxtbook debut in October. Congratulations, Lilian!

What Free Times Select Means for Digital Editions

The NY Times is tearing down their paid gateway, allowing readers to view Times Select content for free.  What does this mean for digital editions?

1.) There are many great options besides having paid content. Scared to lose paid subscription revenue? How about opening up a certain number of pages, or opening up your content for certain dates — or, heck, opening up certain pages on certain dates. It’s all easy to do within a Nxtbook.

2.) If you’re thinking of doing a digital edition, here’s the point you really really (my eleven year-old would add three more "reallys" here) need to consider:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

This is huge. The reason The Times is doing this is simply because people were finding their content from search engines and other third party sites. There is sooo much digital edition content out there today that is not indexed by search engines and can’t be shared via third parties. Ask the vendor you’re considering if this is the case with them. Ask for proof, ala Google results and del.icio.us links. If you don’t choose a product that’s indexed by search engines or full of page-specific permalinks, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that you won’t be releasing the kind of news the Times just did.

 

Analysts Offer Ringing Endorsement of Digital Editions!

"Over the next 15 years, the digital magazine will grow to become 30% of the magazine market. Within 25 years they will represent more than 75% of the market for periodicals."

So sayeth David Renard, Nick Hampshire and Bo Sacks in their piece, "The Definition of a Print & Digital Magazine." 

The trio have opened up a consulting service to help publishers figure out what the future is and obviously we’re glad to see they feel good about digital magazines. We feel very good that we’re listed as one of the companies pushing the industry, too. 

The trio also list what they consider to be integral parts of all magazines, the fact that they are: Metered, Edited, Designed, Date-Stamped, Permanent and Periodic.

There are certainly some issues in the essay to debate – Michael Turro as always offers thoughtful criticism about some of the points – but it’s great to see so much thoughts from so many respected sources and – more than anything – we think this essay serves as one of the finest starting points to define our little industry that we’ve read.

As far as the 30% number goes, it’s probably as good a place to throw a dart as any… While we have a handfull of very successful digital-only pubs with several thousand subscribers, there is certainly a sweet spot around 20-25%. Magazines that convert that percentage from print to digital usually save more in print and distribution than it costs to create the digital edition and have enough critical mass to attract sponsorship revenue to move the digital magazine from a cost saver to an actual revenue generator.

Next Page »