But Seriously…

Last week, one of our competitors sent an e-mail to a lot of you. (This is bound to happen when you’re not afraid to promote your customers’ content.) The e-mail said (in part):

 

 

So Long Nxtbook. I’m Getting Serious With (insert classy competitor name here)

Sometimes you just grow out of a relationship because you may not be getting everything you need. We understand.

The Benefits of (working with said competitor) are endless:

Double audience readership (Compared to what??? Half audience readership???)
Track advertising and reader behavior (How very 2003)
Integrate keywords for better Google search (Cute… we had this four years ago. )
Enrich and keep sticky with multimedia content (Is it me, or does this just sound gross?)
Reduce costs of print and mailing by up to 95% (Insert baldness cure claims here)

First up, whoever is in charge of marketing for these guys should be fired. Or worse. Consider the strategy:

1. Even though the ocean of digital edition prospects is a million miles deep and a million miles wide, let’s poach them from a competitor’s website.
2. After we poach them, let’s make it obvious that we poached them in our e-mail. They’ll think we’re cool! (Judging by what we heard, most of them thought you were creepy.)
3. In the e-mail, let’s mention a bunch of features that they have and pepper it with unprovable statistics.

Are you kidding me? The only thing that was missing was a free order of steak knives if you act now.

When shared with a top ranking industry insider, he wrote, "No classiness in this type of advertising. On the other hand, you guys exemplify class… so it positions you well in an odd way." So there’s that.

All of that being said, aside from the intrusion to our customers, the only thing that stung was the idea that you and we aren’t serious about this industry.

We’ve written of the many publishers who carefully have mapped out a strategy to grow international readership through their digital magazines. We’ve promoted webinars for those publishers who’ve found six figure revenue streams. And we’ve helped others launch their first forays into the mobile space with Nxtbook Liberty. You’ve gotten serious results, and we’ve provided serious support.

Along the way, we’ve built an entire layer within our organization of Account Managers, whose only mission is to help you be more successful. We added Flash animators and video experts – specialists who exist for the sole purpose of pushing the technology as far as it will go. And along the way, we’ve added a small army of developers, whose job it is to push the boundaries of the product even further. In fact, as a full-service provider, our entire survival is based on delivering serious results.

At the end of the day, we share many traits with our customers. Our mutual dedication to pushing the digital edition envelope further is just one of them.

We Got Game

Here’s a post discussing our involvement with the Cardiff City Football Club (you know – that kind of football), which caused us to think about how much sports work we’ve done at Nxtbook. We’ve done digital editions of American football, marathons, golf and even hunting & trapping. 

It turns out if you can kick it, carry it, run it, hit it or shoot it, we’ve done it!

Six Nxtbooks You’ve Got to Read…

Here are six very cool Nxtbooks, all produced within the past 30 days (some within the past 3). Some are listed because they’re some of the most-read titles of the past month. Others are listed because the content is unique or intriguing. Each is worth a look.

The Official Event Guide to SuperBowl XLIII – One of our most-read titles of 2008 is back for 2009!
Your Guide to Verizon Wireless, Winter Edition – Commence wishing now.
The 2009 Catalog from the Stuttering Foundation – NEW to the Nxtbook family, this catalog has great integration with their e-commerce site
Gold Medal Whole Wheat Baking – Custom publications from General Mills consistently crack the Nxtbook Top 10 in readership
Boat U.S. – January, 2009 – Who says it takes time to build readership? Since launching last year, Boat U.S. digital readership has been near the head of the fleet every month – Check out the animated water on the cover!
Connections Magazine – This one’s close to our heart – a magazine produced by Nxtbook Media’s in-house custom publishing team. Notice the font styles and sizes, perfectly chosen for on-screen reading

How Do You Say “Drool” in French?

Check out the gorgeous new Nissan GT-R in either the Canadian version or French version of the Nxtbook. For a wide variety of Nxtbook language samples, click here.

Another Step Closer to the Permanent Magazine…

The NY Times features Readius, the first roll-up e-paper display due to hit the market next year. At $359, we’re still nowhere near a price that the average consumer will pick one up and at five inches diagonal with black and white text, we’re still nowhere near the size or resolution it will need to be if magazine publishers are to embrace it, but no matter…. it’s the type of product that could birth the magazine of the next generation.

 

Google Loves Nxtbooks (continued)

Several months back, we made reference to the fact that traffic to Nxtbooks via Google is up tremendously. In fact, comparing April, May and June to January, February and March, we see more than a 400 percent increase in traffic via the big guy.

It’s possible that the rapid growth (which started in April but continues to increase daily) has to do with Google’s news that they’re now able to index text within Flash itself. As we’ve said, Nxtbook content has been indexed for some time via our hybrid index Flash technique. However, if Google is now indexing the Nxtbook itself, the result would be that Google would see the content twice on the page – inside the Nxtbook and within the XML. This double-shot of content seems to be having the desired effect for our publishers and their readers.

Word for the Day – SHOSHMOSIS.

We recently had the good fortune to sponsor a great presentation by Hillary Bressler, an awesome Internet consultant to the travel industry. Afterward, Hillary asked us to convert her presentation to NXTbook format. Inside, you can see how the travel industry can plug into scented web sites and much more. Oh, and if you’re not up to speed with Shoshmosis, click here.

Autumn Comes Late to the Big Apple…

One the obvious benefits of digital publishing is that your publication doesn’t get stale and dog-eared. Looking through our traffic statistics from last month, a book that remained in our Top 20 list was the Official Fall 2006 Visitors Guide to New York City, which received tens of thousands of readers and had its best month ever — in February!

Where do you want to go NXT?

Do you know where you’re going on your NXT vacation? Use our new Google Maps Mash-up to visit more than one hundred and fifty different destinations!

Why Blog?

Why should marketers (or anyone for that matter) blog? Christina Kerley posed that question on her blog last month. The answers and insights can be found here.

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