Case Study: Digital Editions Driving Technology

Technology never stays the same; to stay in the game, you’ve got to change with it. Sound familiar? Nxtbook Media clients really get it.

"If you’re not moving forward, you’re dying," said Wayne Gale, President of Stokes Seeds. Gale met the challenge of the increased trend for Internet purchasing while also battling an inefficient company Web site. As Stokes Seeds caters to customers in both Canada and the U.S., Gale also faced down additional challenges of currency and language barriers.

You are invited to get a sneak peak into how Gale and Stokes Seeds solved complicated challenges associated with needing to keep up with technology. Read how a digital catalog was the impetus needed to revamp one company’s approach to technology: Click here for the case study!

Two Awards in Three Months

There’s a reason Nxtbook Media tells clients to enter digital editions contests. They’re good at winning them!

Nxtbook client AAA Living won this year’s Digital Nichee Awards for Best Digital Edition. According to the awards’ website, "This category is judged on how well it ties in with other digital products, design, and ease of use." This award comes to AAA Living just three months after winning another award, the 2010 Apex Award of Excellence.

The award was well won; AAA Living’s digital magazine is optimized specifically for reading on a screen. They utilize some of the great technology features only available in digital products, like videos, interactive buttons, ad animations, and pop ups. My personal favorite is the full spread slide show appearing on multiple pages in this article: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aaaliving. This makes it possible to present as many gorgeous pictures as possible in an easily digestible way. It reflects back to the "ease of use" and great "design" for which AAA Living won the award.

The Value of a CPM

Eric Shanfelt wrote a nice piece on the variety of factors that should affect your CPM. Eric nails nearly all of them and it’s a great place to start the discussion.

That said, the one metric that he doesn’t include is arguably the most important: How effective was the darned thing at getting clicks?

In the good old days, we talked about click-through rates because we were proud of them. As banner blindness set in but we learned to optimize our sites better (not for better readers, in many cases, just more of them), we’ve drifted to CPM.

But the reality is that in many BtoB cases, quality trumps quantity, so more isn’t always better. Sometimes, it’s just more. We this all the time with digital magazines, where are page views are always lower than websites, but our click-through rate is much higher.

So think about everything Eric lists because they’re all important, but then factor in more thing: Are you delivering results to the advertiser?

What’s Your Play (Book)?

We predicted that Blackberry wasn’t done, yet, and yesterday’s announcement of the Playbook, a Flash-powered mini-tablet offers one of the more intriguing developments from the long time mobile leaders, as they try to slow erosion of their market share. Here are three quick observations:

1) It appears the device will be running the full version of Flash, which means the typical browser Nxtbook will play just fine in it.

2) With so many BtoB readers of Nxtbook publications, it could do a lot to boost readership of digital editions among those publications.

3) My biggest concern? The display size. At only 7 x 5.6", this is a good bit smaller than an iPad. As we’ve noted, the iPad, with its larger footprint, already has eclipsed the iPhone in Nxtbook market share, so clearly form factor helps engagement. We can only hope the Playbook is big enough to keep readers hooked. That being said, there seems to be a slew of slimmer tablets coming to market, so the Playbook may not be the only device with that problem.

Want data? How about an iPod Touch?

I saw this headline on ARRS Radiology’s twitter feed: "Should data from registries help serve the radiologist, or the patient?" The tweet linked to this article in their digital edition. Though the article is specific to improving the radiology practice, the point is to develop a decisive process of quality-improvement. Part of this process is collecting data. Another part is to use this data to serve clients.

The Survey:

Nxtbook Media is offering you the chance to be both a part of giving the data and gaining from the results. Regardless of who your digital service provider is, we want to know how your digital magazine is working for you in today’s marketplace. In a quick survey which takes minutes to complete, we’ll ask you about your satisfaction with your audience, circulation, mobile use, growth, revenue, and other integral aspects of the publication process.

The Reason:

As to why you should take the survey, two reasons:
1. As Peter Houston says in his blog, The Flipping Pages Blog, "the results could help highlight the common concerns publishers have about the medium." Feedback, whether positive or negative, drives us to be even better, and that can only help you.
2. You can get a copy of the results and know how your responses compare to other publishers’.

If you really need a third reason to take the survey, well here it is:

Participants in the survey who provide their email addresses get not only the results of the survey, but they are also automatically entered in a drawing for an iPod Touch. (Those who have already taken the survey are also included in this drawing.)

(image from the apple store)

Did we mention the iPod Touch is perfect for downloading the Nxtbook Newsstand app and perusing nxtbooks anywhere?

Click here to take the survey now!

Connecting With Niche Markets

The 2010 Niche Digital Conference has come to a close! Nxtbook Media’s Wayne Metcalfe attended the show, which started late Sunday evening with a mixer and carried through Tuesday afternoon. Wayne comments, "It was definitely a full house," packed with primarily publishers in the niche market.

What was more, the audience was far-flung: "I was expecting 20% of the people to be from the Chicago area. Even more than that, 50% even," said Wayne. "Of the cards I got, maybe three to four people were from Chicago. They were from the UK and from all over the US. There was not one locale that was missing besides Alaska and Hawaii."

What sets this show and audience apart is that almost everyone there is in the niche publishing business. As Wayne noted, "You’re around peers. You’re not sitting beside someone from [a big publication]. If a person wants to ask a simple question of ‘Who does your e-mail broadcasting,’ the publisher next to him won’t freak out and say, ‘What do you mean? We do it ourselves!’ They’re your peers. They’re going through the same issues together."

The conversation in the conference was reportedly "Mobile, mobile, mobile!" Wayne goes on to say no matter the publication size, "everyone wanted to know what was going on with mobile. That and how to increase advertising and circulation." (Are you ready for mobile? Explore your mobile options with Nxtbook Media.)

If you’d like to know more about the Niche Digital Conference, be sure to contact Carl Landau and find out what’s coming up next in the niche publishing world.

When Free Isn’t

It’s not often I talk about free document sharing services on this blog, mostly because we don’t think of them as competitors, any more than a new car dealer thinks of the local cab company as a competitor. True, they both use four wheels to navigate the streets, but there are many more differences than similarities. Still, recent action in that sector of the space prompts this blog post.

Recently, the document hosting company Scribd enacted a pay wall for some of their content, which had been uploaded by users for free. Surprisingly (or perhaps not?), many users were less than thrilled (note:PG-13 language on some of the comments).

The reality is this: if a company lets you upload content for free or darn close to it, rest assured there is a business model – either short-term or long-term – that involves leveraging that content for revenue. Whether it be behind a paywall or serving ads beside it, there is no free lunch.

If you want control over the money your content makes and the readers your publication reaches, it’s imperative you ask about the Terms of Conditions of the provider you’re using. And – to be blunt – it’s one of the reasons Nxtbook charges more for our service. We don’t do anything to your content that you don’t want us to, and we don’t profit from paywalls or ad serving. We also don’t try to sell your competitors’ magazines to your readers. Your content. Your money. Period.

Nxtbook Media: Speaking your language

No speak Americano? No problemo. Here at Nxtbook Media we speak your language; at our European HQ we are working with publishers to create European and world language versions of their publications for international readers.

Have a look at one our clients stylish Italian travel brochures with Italian language:

www.nxtbook.com/nxteu/TourismIreland/italy#/0

Another client has launched a French version of their popular UK electronics industry title, allowing French readers a detailed insight into the industry.

www.nxtbook.com/nxteu/electronicspecifier/201006-fr/

We can create Nxtbooks in over 20 languages, so if you’re looking to replicate your English language version for a new audience talk to your Account Manager who will be able to advise.

Apple Might Add a Newsstand, But It Might Not Matter…

Interesting report about Apple being in negotiations with publishers to create a digital newsstand. On one hand, this could be a cool thing. After all, Apple’s demonstrated a lot of success with this digital content store thing.

But on the other hand, the article talks a lot about negotiation with publishers in a rev share. To share subscription revenue, of course, you have to generate subscription revenue, which means you have to charge for content. Though Nxtbook content has been able to be converted to the Amazon Kindle for some time, most of our BtoB publishers pass on the option because, as controlled titles, they’re simply not set up to charge for content (ignore the question of whether or not their readers were to pay for it, given the option). This article about Apple causes me to question the same thing: will BtoB publishers be left outside of the party?

Customers Know What They Want. Sometimes.

I’m a little ashamed to admit, this post was inspired by a dinosaur comic. (Click here to see it)

The quote I found intriguing is, "Customers know what they want, and want what they know."

I like this line because it encapsulates two different kinds of customers, or in this case, publishers. First, it captures the publishers who are set in one way of doing things – print or digital – and they’ll only embrace the technology that helps them keep to that method. They like to keep things familiar.

The second kind captured here are those publishers with a vague vision of what they want, but they aren’t sure what technology can get them there. It goes right along with another line I’ve heard: "I know what I want and what I don’t want, I just don’t know anything specific. I’ll know it when I see it!"

Nxtbook Media clients are smart. They know good technology is out there, and they respond. They get educated about today’s products by talking to us or doing some research, or they get creative and come up with new features they want our development team to customize for them.

495 Communications, for example, creates a digital only publication and optimizes it for screen-reading with landscape layout, large fonts, and easy navigation. (See it here.) This digital catalog by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. capitalizes on cutting-edge digital shopping cart capabilities to make shopping a quick and easy process for readers. (Click here to view.) AAA Living’s publications are bursting with rich media, including icons housing pop-up content, custom animations, and engaging video and audio. (See an example here.)

Don’t be the customer who only wants what you already know. Talk to an account manager to find out what else is out there, or what new feature you can create for your publication alone.

 

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