One Good Looking Group…

As a service company, your Nxtbook Media Account Management team is here to help you build readership and drive revenue. But like the wizard behind the curtain, you probably wonder what they look like. Here’s a great video of four team members talking about their jobs and their customers.

 

How the Other Half Lives…

So we sponsored a webinar this week over at Media Business that included Josh Gordon, who spoke about his forthcoming study (covered here by Folio).

During the webinar, though, publishers were polled to determine if their digital magazine is making some money, no more, or a lot of money. Very interesting: more than half are making at least some money from their digital magazine. Hopefully, you’re one of them.

Check with your account manager to learn how to maximize the revenue generation plan for your digital edition. If you’re viewing it as a cost savings only, you’re missing half the story.

Why Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs Can’t Be Real…

So the childrens’ movie Cloud With a Chance of Meatballs has been released. During one pivotal scene, our heroes are seen flying their car (Rex Hammock will like that!) into a spaghetti tornado, while one of them relaxes with a copy of Broadcast Engineering.

At Nxtbook, we’re firmly convinced that if there were a flying car and someone was reading a copy of Broadcast Engineering, they’d be enjoying the Nxtbook version.

Enjoy the trailer for the movie!

 

Cautiously Optimistic About E-Readers

Harry McCracken has a good post over at FOLIO, suggesting it will be some time before e-reader technology makes them sexy for the magazine crowd.

We don’t necessarily disagree, but think there are two other things to consider:

a. Most times we don’t know the right time until it’s too late. You’re far better off getting your business plan and process in place now than after your competitors do.

b. Those who use the Kindle have embraced simple black and white text. They may be willing to accept the same from you (for the time being).

The biggest issue not discussed by McCracken? The Kindle NOT allowing publishers to give away content. That’s the biggest reason most of our customers aren’t there today.

They’re Talking About You…

There are a lot of great ways to see what people are saying about you and/or your brand. Twitter has its own search function as do most other forms of social media.

Still, one of my favorites is Board Reader, because it searches message boards and internet forums. The advantage? Twitter search will show you how many people are blabbing about your content, but Board Reader goes one step further, giving you the ability to see how many people have responded to the initial comment. Here’s a search of people talking about Nxtbook content, each one building free readership for our publishers.

Of any of the digital publishing companies, Nxtbook seems to have the most content showing up on the boards, thereby proving that a.our customers have the coolest content and b.our interface is more share-friendly than most!

The Future Isn’t Here, But It’s Closer…

Word comes this week that the first full color flexible e-reader is coming. Soon perhaps. Or maybe not. It’s hard to say.

 

Nxtbook iPhone Version Released

We’re proud to announce the release of our iPhone version for Nxtbook. Our version includes several features uncommon to the digital-magazine-for-the-iPhone market, including:

* Live links on ads. If you’re going to drive readers to the iPhone, don’t you think your advertisers will want clicks? We thought so, too, so all ads have live links.

* Sponsor images. Sponsors pay for premium real estate and we’re all about sponsorship.

* Integrated analytics. As readers move to more and varied devices, publishers will want to know who’s reading their content where. If your readers are on the iPhone, you’ll know it.

* Text or Image Choice. As serious readers of this blog know, our early efforts into the mobile space were with Nxtbook Liberty, a text-based version of our product that enables readers to read without zooming in. For Liberty customers, we’ve integrated the text choice into the iPhone choice, allowing readers to choose a high fidelity version requiring zooming, or a text-based one, requiring none. We firmly believe that it’s this type of user choice that will be paramount to success on these types of devices.

 

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod touch, here’s a short URL you can use to see one done with our text-based Liberty Version incorporated: http://bit.ly/3cofCg

Thinking of Going Digital Only?

You’re not the only one. Our customer Advanstar’s the latest to announce the change, as covered by FOLIO.

Of course, going digital-only means you should look at a lot of things differently, in terms of layout and design. To help ease you into the transition, be sure to check out this cool guide prepared by Nxtbook Design Manager Jeremy Smith.

What the Market Will Bear…

I have no idea if you can sell your magazine online, so I really have no idea what you should charge for it. Understand, we have lots of opinions and lots of ideas, and we’ve got a flexible enough DRM to let you try them, and that’s really the point. Try everything and see what happens.

The most dramatic example we’ve seen of late? Author Cory Doctorow’s latest short story collection. Depending on how you want it, you can have it for free, $10,000, or many options in between. I don’t know which one will be successful but the concept of massaging the offering at various price points is brilliant, both in terms of what he’ll learn and what he’ll earn. 

Josh Gordon Has No Problems With Self-Confidence

As mentioned before, we’re a sponsor of a study media expert Josh Gordon is putting together regarding revenue generation inside digital magazines. Gordon details his forthcoming tour of the results within a blog post titled Oct 27th: The day publishers learn to sell ads in digital magazines.

Assuming you miss "the day," Gordon will also be presenting at FOLIO’s virtual show and a BtoB Webinar on November 3. 

For our money, we’d recommend the November 3 webinar, as it also features Nxtbook Media customer Brigitte Johnson from Tree Farmer Magazine. But either way, be sure to catch the Gordon show at a venue near you.

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