Nxtbook of the Week…

We like the new Chief Marketer! Magazine from Penton, especially because it’s rocking the Nxtbook 3.0. This book is full of great content. That being said, this article asks "What’s a Fan Worth?" is irrelevant to us. You’re all simply priceless!

Thank You!

Thanks to all who attended our special Nxtbook 3.0 webinar today. Attendance was awesome, the questions rocked and you all sounded as excited as we are!

A few housekeeping tips:

1. The webinar and slides are going through the archive process now. When complete, we’ll send you the link if you registered.

2. We mentioned the web page where you can view the FAQ’s about 3.0 and download the new animation specs. Do that here.

3. Forgot to register/attend? Contact your Account Manager today to get the 3.0 details!

Somebody’s Page Counts Aren’t Falling…

Napier has a piece of research available that suggests that page counts aren’t down as far as we might thing (despite the fact that reports from audited titles seem to say the opposite). Truth is, we’ve wondered similar things at Nxtbook.

Currently, the average Nxtbook is 51 pages and that’s really only down a few pages from where we were a year ago (54.7). Could it be that publishers with digital editions simply represent a group that’s more innovative or more successful? It’s hard to say if a digital magazine helps your page count or if a publisher that can hold page count is more likely to have a digital magazine, but we definitely haven’t seen the fall-off that’s reported elsewhere.

Our Need for Feedback has Reached Epic Proportions

It’s true. We can’t get enough of what you’re saying. Here’s just three ways to let us know how we’re doing:

1) How’s that revenue generation thing working out? Nxtbook Media is a proud sponsor of a study coming out later this year on digital magazine revenue generation. Our objective third party researcher wants to hear stories about you making money with your digital magazine. If that’s you, drop me a line at mgrimm[AT]nxtbookmedia.com

2) 3.WHAAAAT? If you didn’t hear, Nxtbook 3.0 launched this week. Feel free to join us for a special clients-only webinar to get a front row demonstration and to ask any questions you have during this exciting transition period!

3) No, seriously. How are we doing? Come on - you’ve got 3 minutes to tell us how we’re treating you. That’s all it takes. Please click here.

The Search for Relevance

It’s been an interesting few weeks as some companies that have struggled to find relevance in an increasingly online world have made moves to help themselves.

First up is BPA’s move to allow non-requested digital copies onto audit statements as non-qualified circulation. This was the logical thing to do. While there were some who wanted digital copies added without the "non-qualified" label, that’s really where it belongs. This is a good move - it allows publishers to get some credit while they promote their digital magazine.

Next we have MRI moving toward something like a ratings system for national magazines. Because it’s limited to big national ads, the relevance of such a move is nil for the average niche publisher, but it’s still curious.

But if you’re a Nxtbook customer, truth is that you don’t need MRI to tell advertisers what’s going on. Long ago, we learned that, on average, readers treat a digital magazine like a print magazine. You can take the "eye ball" data as a subset of your readership and let advertisers know what percentage of your readers are reading their ad and how long their staying on the page. That’s far more metrics than you’ll ever see in print.

It’s Not the Innovation: It’s the Audience

It’s always exciting when a popular blog like ReadWriteWeb asks: The Digital Magazine: Has its Time Come? And judging by the many comments, there’s a lot of reader interest in the topic.

If there is a criticism to the story, it would only be the writer calling eReader devices the potential "savior" of digital magazines. But if that were true:

1) Millions of people wouldn’t be reading digital magazines every month. Now.
2) Companies like Nxtbook wouldn’t be on the Inc. 500 list. Now.
3) Publishers like Graduate Prospects wouldn’t have been able to successfully kill their print brand three years ago.
4) Publishers like Hearst wouldn’t be bolstering their custom media revenues via digital-only magazines (as they’ve been for a few years now). Now.
5) Publishers like Uptime Magazine wouldn’t be selling out the next six months of their mobile digital magazines. Now.

Make no mistake: eReaders will only help the industry. But waiting for them to do so (while your competition doesn’t) would be very unwise.

A related quote from Penelope Trunk’s blog: Stop talking about good and bad media. Just because you don’t read it doesn’t make it bad.

Readership Numbers and Titles for May

The past 30 days have been huge for readership, with well over 1.6 million people reading a Nxtbook. (If you like pictures more than numbers, be sure to check out the map here.)

RE: the continuing coverage of digital magazine readership via Twitter and Facebook, here’s an update:

Readers from Facebook over the past 90 days are more than 26% greater than the 90 days before that. Facebook continues to drive digital magazine readership higher each month.

Twitter referrals over the same period are up a whopping 150%, but what continues to be cool about Twitter is the power of engagement. Readers via Twitter stay inside the digital magazine 44% longer — more than 3 minutes longer. In short, when people Tweet it, people believe it’s important.

Looking at our top titles over the past 30 days, there’s a healthy cross section. This dynamite custom digital-only magazine for Fidelity uses an optimized layout and customized toolbar to deliver a rich experience. Meanwhile GP2 from the Guitar Player people had awesome readership and used a slick intro video. Finally, Nurse.com made healthy use of the Nxtbook tab feature to direct readers where they wanted them, too. Three very different application of the Nxtbook, but all three cracked the Nxtbook Top 10 this month. Well done!

Does My Audience Care About Social Media?

We get that question a lot. When talking about things like Twitter, Digg and Social Media, we might hear, "Our audience is too old/male/young/female, etc." And while it is true that all of these things do factor a bit in participation, the most interesting (to me) about this tool is how they don’t vary all that much. Try it out for yourself or - better - yet, watch the report on the same subject. Good stuff.

Disclaimer: the tool didn’t work for me on a Mac w/ Firefox. I have no idea why.

How Social Are You?

The Telegraph is reporting 8% of their traffic comes from social media, which should be considered a very healthy number, indeed, though we’ve seen that the value of that traffic is affected dramatically by where it comes from. Twitter traffic, for instance, tends to be quite highly engaged with the content, in both terms of engagement time and click-through, whereas the Digg visitors tend to bump out rather quickly. That’s not always true, of course, and your mileage will vary, but either way, if you’re only thinking of e-mail when it comes to digital magazines, you’re missing a big (and growing) piece of the pie.

Rules Are… There Are No Rules.

Even way back when, Kenickie was right. Rules can get in the way, which is why we cringe when people make blanket statements about anything, particularly digital magazines.

Perhaps this is why Andrew Lowsowsky’s article in the WSJ (which is all about magazines but doesn’t mention digital magazines) is so completely cool (like Kenickie).

If you were told to ship a t-shirt with a magazine, or charge $675 for a subscription or ship the issue in a can, you’d say that these things defy the rules of magazines as we know them.

But that’s exactly the point, as that’s what these publishers are doing. Great article, Andrew.

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