Nxtbook Publishers Are Getting Smarter

We’ve been looking at our global tracking statistics and have noticed some awesome trends, particularly in how publishers are getting new readers into the Nxtbook.

Specifically, we looked at Jan. 1 to May 13 of this year, compared to the same dates last year.

An overall traffic comparison from the two periods shows that readership is up 82 percent during this time. While the Nxtbook sales staff can take some credit for this (more books equals more traffic, certainly), our sales aren’t up 82 percent. Most of the increase can be attributed to more readers per book. How publishers are getting more readers is extremely interesting.

A year ago, a whopping 86 percent of Nxtbook traffic were coming from Direct Traffic. While this can mean many things, traditionally it means e-mails that publishers send out to subscribers. They’re real readers, mind you and they like the content, but it also means that the publisher is doing a lot of work (or paying us to do it) trying to build readership in a world where e-mail open rates are declining.

Where are we a year later? Direct Traffic is now just a bit more than half of readership, while referrer traffic and search traffic have experienced triple digit growth. This means that publishers are doing a better job of posting the digital edition on Web pages where readers are likely to open the Nxtbook. It also shows some publishers are integrating forums onto their websites, where readers tend to post digital edition content. In turn, all of this cross-linking shows the search engines how relevant the digital edition content is – so the books come up in more Google and Yahoo searches. It’s pure SEO – and as publishers employ the basics with their digital magazine, their readership is growing. And when readership grows, revenue isn’t (usually) far behind.