Happy Fourth of July!

To our audience in the USA, happy Fourth of July!

What better way to mark the holiday than by celebrating some USA digital magazines?

Take this one, Splash by USA Swimming. In it you can read all about the Olympic trials for the USA swim team. Go team USA! (And be sure to check out the video in the AT&T ad on page 17. If the video looks to small on your screen, click the corner of the player and drag it to make it bigger. Take up the whole page if you want!)

LaunchPad by Creative Age takes a moment to celebrate "American Beauty" with decades of iconic celebrities in America and all American beauty products. Click here to see the article. (And hey, look at how they use the left of cover position to promote their advertisers. Creative!)

There’s no place in the world quite like Hollywood, CA, USA, the birthplace of Blockbuster hits. Check out American Cinematographer and get some behind-the-scenes looks at new release "The Avengers" on page 34. (Not a subscriber? No problem. This DRM protection page has a "preview" button. Click that to be taken into the book in preview mode.)

Or celebrate America by traveling to any of the 50 states. Take a travel guide with you, like this one, the North Carolina 2012 Official Travel Guide. The animations are great and really inspire you to get up and explore. (If you’re traveling to a different state, contact us! We might have a travel guide you can use.)

Regardless of what you do, happy July 4th. Celebrate well.

A Shining Example for Animation and Design

Last week, I covered a few of the ways publishers are using animations to add value, not just aesthetics or flash. Sometimes, however, a publisher really "gets it" and uses animation for both additional content and attractive design.

A shining example of this is AAA Traveler, a digital magazine dedicated to helping connect travelers with the best vacation for them. This magazine is all about the reader: every potential destination  was accompanied by additional information the visitor would need to know. Tucked behind an "i", magnifying glass, play button, camera, envelope, or several other icons is additional content to help readers either find inspiration or make the best decision for their vacation.

The benefit to the reader is what helps set AAA publications apart as a valuable resource, a status most publishers covet.

The design incorporates the additional content while keeping the travel magazine feel vacationers are used to. All of the forms, videos, pop-ups and additional pieces of content are designed to fit within a designated space within the layout, rather than dropped anywhere on the page. For example, check out the additional tour information on page 19 or the tips on page 32.

Final bonus: flip to page 31. If you answer a question correctly, you could win a pass to all U.S. National Parks. Just submit the form (a functional animation) behind the question mark icon.

We’ve Upgraded!

The success of every business depends not on just one innovative idea, but a continuous measurable growth of the product or industry. Nxtbook is proud to announce one such upgrade.

Starting next week, your digital editions will be even better for you and your readers. Based on the behavior patterns of readers viewing digital editions on our platform, we’ve enhanced some of of our features. (Click here to see a preview issue!) Some changes you will notice right away:

•  - Most of the side toolbar and bottom tab functions have been moved to one easy to use location in the top toolbar
•  - Functions appear as full-screen overlays which creates a focused view while maximizing screen real-estate
•  - The toolbar will contain a page number box that not only shows you the current page, but you can also use it to jump to a page by typing in the page number and pressing Enter
•  - Functions not in the toolbar can be found in the More Options overlay
•  - The print function allows you to select multiple individual pages, in addition to a page range
•  - The zoom slider, which allows you to adjust the zoom level, has been simplified and made more prominent
•  - Email and Share have been combined into a single overlay
•  - Bookmarks and Notes have been combined into a single overlay
•  - The toolbar is much simpler for readers to use, and it still allows for sponsorship and subscribe buttons
• The real estate available for your book has been increased

Each of these enhancements were specifically chosen after researching how readers use our platform. Because we believe in these changes, we are automatically giving our clients these upgrades for free! So check it out, view a preview issue of the new version here.

Nxtbook Knows Travel

Hey, Nebraska, check out what Colorado is doing. They’re letting the skiers, the artists, the hikers, the sightseers, the riders, the rafters, the enthusiasts and the adventurers know that Colorado is where they can go for all their thrills and needs.

Nxtbook Media has clients creating travel and lifestyle digital editions for 36 out of the 50 states of America. In other words, over 72% of the states are represented with a Nxtbook digital travel/lifestyle collateral. Publishers, chambers of commerce, travel advisers, and community centers are using digital brochures, magazines, and collateral to attract readers who turn to the Web first when searching for where to go on their next vacation.

You can click here to see our NxtVacation Map which highlights some of the travel brochures we’ve done across the globe.

Two of my personal favorites are this “Perfect Hawaii Vacation Guidebook” and "North Carolina 2011 Official Travel Guide". The Hawaii vacation guide excels in providing additional content by adding icons linked to videos, websites, and a "Book It" icon directs vacationers directly to a ticket-purchasing page. The North Carolina guide enraptures vacationers from the start with videos and intriguing animations, then keeps engagement through adjolt animations throughout the book.

Of course, these are just my personal favorites. If you’d like to see your home state’s edition, or your favorite state’s if you have one, comment here and I’ll post it. Chances are 36/50 that we’ll have it.

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!

Wanna Go Cruisin’?

Nothing’s worse for wanderlust than a great cruise brochure, and the recent project we did for Holland America makes us want to hop right on the nearest boat.

From a technology standpoint, we did something a little different with this one. Holland has lots of video footage, but rather than embed it all within the NXTbook, we used simple pop-up windows so that each one would play in its own window. Click here for the page in the catalog and then click on the play buttons to see for yourself.

Where do you want to go NXT?

Not sure where to go on vacation? Here’s a thought: our Travel Collateral samples page now includes more than twenty great vacation guides, all in NXTbook format!

Did Somebody Say “Vacation?”

Nothing against the Jersey shore, but this NXTbook brochure about Tahiti makes us think we might be missing out on some prime sun and sand.

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