Quicksilver Replaces Nxtbook Toolbar w/ a Sharpie

Seriously, I’m not kidding. Don’t miss the draggable, rescale-able video player on this page – which is standard from Nxtbook.

Open Rates RE: Digital Magazines Don’t Ask the Right Question

Mike from Napier Technology Marketing was curious to know about digital magazine open rates. When asked, I responded with the following:

One thing to keep in mind w/ open rates is that the most successful digital magazines aren’t content to let e-mail drive readership. Instead, they’re using social media, websites, etc. Our most successful titles will get 50% or more readership from sources other than e-mail, and that’s where the medium can really be leveraged. To use a print analogy, the "pass-along" rate is infinite.

Mike did publish a few results on his blog and if I were a publisher, I’d want to see them, but they’re not very conclusive as they fail to compare the digital magazine open rates to newsletters from the same publisher. For all we know 16% could be awesome or awful. But most important, e-mail’s just one leg in the digital edition promotion stool. Those who attend our webinars know there are three key components to digital magazine readership growth. Check with your account manager for details!

Mike also lists some of the aspects he sees as benefits of digital magazines:

Opening and browsing a digital magazine is a much bigger commitment on the part of the reader than visiting a web page. Digital magazines also deliver news in a push format, highlighting new products and technologies to readers who would be unlikely to learn about them through search engines.

Well said!

 

Hearst Launches Latest Digital Only Custom Magazine

From the people who brought you Project Analog comes Project Test, Hearst’s latest digital-only magazine. Optimized for the screen, using video and pulling in dynamic RSS feeds, this one’s a winner.

Mine Magazine – The “Digital” Review

There are many reviews about the Mine Magazine project from Time, Inc., though most of them focused on the print issues of the magazine. Because we’re digital guys, this review will focus on the digital edition technology which was used. Our review is based on this issue of Mine.

Surprisingly (or not), Time, Inc. didn’t use a traditional digital magazine company for this project, but instead used a custom design house. While built on new Flex technology (like the new Nxtbook 3.0), there are more than a few basic features missing from the digital magazine:

1) Spreads of the publication are a fixed size. Make your browser bigger, make your browser smaller – Mine doesn’t care. In doing so, there’s a ton of wasted real estate and it’s impossible to read the magazine when a spread is open.

2) Zooming in automatically moves the viewer to single page mode, rendering it impossible (once again) to pan or move about the spread.

3) When they say, "Mine," they mean "Mine." While you can share the link to your magazine, you can’t find the link to any page of the magazine, which is rather 2005. Don’t bother looking for Facebook or Twitter integration, either. (Think of that: Who wouldn’t love to upload MY magazine to MY Facebook page?)

4) But the zoom level isn’t your’s. Go ahead and zoom, but if you don’t like the level you get, you’re out of luck. Mine uses JPEG images, NOT vector images, which means that the Zoom level can’t be customized to the level the user wants.

5) Click on the back cover. We dare you. The only outbound sponsor link to Lexus is on the back cover of the magazine (let’s hope Lexus cares more about branding than web traffic). However, the entire back cover of the magazine is linked, which you can only tell because of the subtle change in the mouse-over tool tip. This means that a user who clicks on the back cover hoping to zoom in gets bounced to the Lexus website. Whether this was poor programming or intentional is anyone’s guess, but it’s the kind of linking only seen from those who don’t think through how readers will engage with the content.

6) If it’s MINE, why can’t I read it? Though our digital issue of Mine came last week, loading the magazine was impossible at the time, and we were greeted by silent screens and curious error messages. Today, Mine loaded cleanly, finally allowing us to get under the hood for this review.

All in all, what’s a bummer about the digital edition of Mine is that while it does give the reader a somewhat "customized" experience, content-wise, it totally failed in using features standard in many of today’s digital magazines, let alone a "break through" experience. In doing so, Time helped neither itself nor the digital magazine category.

To Everybody Whoever Asked “Who Reads Digital Magazines?”

It’s a very common question: Who reads digital magazines?

The print-centric people try to imagine people reading without sofas and paper.

The web-heads, strangely fearful of digital magazines, question the format and purpose.

And even when some are shown data or studies, they sometimes question the validity. Maybe for some of these people, a picture will be worth 1000 words.

Clicking here will take you to the Nxtbook Reader Map, a dynamic map showing you where in the world Nxtbooks are being read in real-time. Clicking on any title will take you to the link of the Nxtbook. Random info.:

* The IT dept. would’ve had my head if we would’ve captured every one of the more than one million reads we get every month, but still — on average someone opens a Nxtbook every two seconds. You can see a lot of that here.

* This project was created by Nxtbook developer Brent Colflesh, who liberated the idea from e-tailer Zappos.

The Webinar Train is Leaving the Station!

Thursday at 2pm is FOLIO’s can’t-miss webinar on Digital Magazines, including two Nxtbook customers on the panel, talking about what works and what doesn’t with digital magazines. To learn more, go here.

 

One Good Looking Digital Magazine

Be sure to check out the new digital magazine from Nurse.com, a great looking book that does a lot of things right:

Optimized text for easy reading
User-friendly tabs for easy navigation
Gobs of rich media for a dynamic experience

This one’s a winner. Don’t miss it!

Blogger of the Week…

Let’s hear it for Robert Cagna, library director for the Health Sciences Center of West Virginia University, who had very kind things to say about a Nxtbook this week:

"I would also recommend Contract Magazine which is available free in a very cool digital edition using the nxtbook format. The magazine focuses on commercial interior design."

 

A Happy Earth Day Post That Doesn’t Beg You to Read Digital Magazines

I don’t like Earth Day promotions from digital magazine companies that ask you to save the Earth with digital editions. While it’s true what we do is inherently good for the environment, it just kind of sounds like Thanksgiving greetings from the Poultry Association. It’s the low hanging fruit of the digital marketing orchard.

Instead, this Earth Day, we ask you to look at some other things you can do around the office to keep Mother Earth spinning. Unplug monitors from the guy who’s off this week, buy a coffee mug for your cubicle mate sipping from styrofoam, and – if your co-workers don’t drive you nuts – share a ride. Do that kind of stuff and then open up a digital magazine not because you’ve been guilted into it, but because you want to.

links for 2009-04-17

• Connections – April 2009
  Sample of a digital only publication in portrait format
  (tags: digital-only-magazine-portrait)
• Green & Design – March/April 2009 [Intro - Cover1]
  Sample of a digital only in portrait format
  (tags: digital-only-magazine-portrait)

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