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.

 

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.

E-Magazines Won’t Have Links Just As Soon As Your Mortgage Company Stops Accepting Those Pesky Payments…

So Josh Quittner’s post we blogged about last week was the form of reference for Erick Shonfeld’s rebuttal over on TechCrunch, all of which is a long way of saying that it’s almost silly to suggest that digital magazines will exist without links. Simply put, while there are many thoughts about click-throughs, the reality is that clicks are the commerce of the Web, and any argument that fails to acknowledge this is one with little regard for how business is conducted online.

The idea that so many voices wouldn’t acknowledge this simple truth is fairly disconcerting until taken in the context of this Seth Godin quote:

"…the products and services that win (if win means you can make a good living and make positive change) are rarely the products and services that are beloved without reservation by the true believers."

For every person who doesn’t like zooming in on a digital magazine, there’s a publisher who figured out that a critical mass of their readership doesn’t mind.

For every person who thinks that links disrupt a "lean back" reading experience, there’s a publisher who uses the links (and the clicks) they create to make a living.

Unless your business model is based on a trust fund, don’t even wonder if your digital magazine should have links. Just put them in.

The Three Rules of Digital Magazines

I’ve written about this before, but a publisher asked me to make it all pretty-like for an upcoming issue, so I did. Or at least, I hope I did:

The Three Rules of Digital Magazines

When working with publishers new to digital magazines, one of the first questions we hear is, “How is a digital magazine different from my website?” This is a great question. In today’s age, we don’t have extraneous budgets or time to produce multiple products that do the same thing.

Rather than discuss product features, though, let’s focus on how readers treat the two entities differently, for it’s the unique reader behavior that really gives publishers additional property to market to advertisers.

Since we started producing digital magazines in 2003, we’ve come to form these “Three Rules of Digital Magazines,” and have yet to have a customer that they haven’t proven true for.

Rule 1:
You will have more visitors on your website than your digital magazine.

Think about it: If I send you a link and say you have to read this, you’ll probably click on it. If I drop a magazine on your desk and say the same thing, you likely will put it aside until you have time. As a society, we’ve already conditioned ourselves to click in and out of websites quickly, but we view all magazines – not just print ones – as something requiring more time. And time is something we have less of today.

Your move: If you’ve got an advertiser only concerned about page views, steer them to your website. You’ll have more there.

Rule 2:
You will have longer engagement times inside your digital magazine.

The average website visitor across all categories stays about one minute. Last month, the average Nxtbook reader stayed inside the digital magazine nearly seven minutes. What’s more: the number four most read Nxtbook had an average engagement time
of fifteen minutes.

Your move: Savvy advertisers are looking to engage with readers. Long engagement times make the digital magazine an ideal vehicle to position to those sponsors who want to make sure their messages are seen for longer periods of time.

Rule 3:
You will have a significantly higher click-through rates inside your digital magazine.

Advertisers tend to ask about page views, but that’s not really what they want. They want lead,s and leads come from clicks. Rules One & Two show that digital magazine readers are more highly engaged than website visitors and they demonstrate this time and time again with click-through rates that are typically four to six times that of our publishers’ websites.

Your move: If your advertiser is selling high volume products and treasures leads, the digital magazine may be a better buy for them. In addition, the significantly higher click-through rate can often negate the lower page views of the digital magazine as well.

Understanding the difference between your digital magazine and website is the first step in helping to position these two products in your portfolio. Properly understood, they represent unique buying opportunities for your advertisers and additional property for your ad sales team to market.

 

Newsstands & You…

The newsstand, be it a physical one or a digital one, is an alluring concept, isn’t it? The idea that you can plop your stuff there and just let the buyers come to you… man, that makes it sound easy, doesn’t it? No marketing. No heavy lifting. Just waiting for the money to show up. Now that would be cool, we think.

Trouble is, that’s not how it really works. Want proof? Of the 13 million songs available to buy online, 10 million of them haven’t sold a single copy. And yet you can be sure that when the artists put their music on iTunes, some of them thought the hard work was over.

Truth is, the best one to sell your stuff is YOU. Through your website, working with the partners you know that know a lot of your audience.

When we talk about newsstands, or Amazon, or Wal-Mart or Target, someone often starts yapping about the Long Tail, which is fine, because the Internet is all about Long Tail Economics. But remember, it’s not the creators who reap the rewards of the Long Tail. It’s the aggregators. And unless you’re Amazon, that ain’t you.

That’s not to say the aggregators don’t have their place and that they shouldn’t be part of your plan. But if you’re thinking of them as your savior, you might be in more danger than you realize.

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