Next Issue Media Solves One Problem, Creates Another

or… It’s funny watching old dogs learn new tricks.

A few years back, Time, Inc. offered up a mix and match magazine subscription service called Maghound. Back then, we talked about why it wouldn’t work. And we were right.

Fast forward a few years, and Next Issue Media (of which Time, Inc. is a partner/investor) has rolled out something like Maghound, but for digital titles. And that’s smart. (Kind of why we suggested it two years ago.) The problem this time, around, however, is that they’re doing it as a native app only. (I won’t even mention the fact that it’s Android native apps, as they supposedly have an iOs solution is coming.)

Not only will the future be browser-based, so is the present. Here at Nxtbook, we still see 85% of most of our customers’ readers coming through the browser. That’s 85% of readers that won’t be accessing their content via the Next Issue solution. But give it time; it only took them two years to implement our last suggestion. 

Why Your Digital Readership Might Not Be What You Expected

AdAge reports that digital circulation is tiny compared to print, at least among titles audited by the ABC. Here are some likely reasons for this:

1) The fact that the titles are audited by the ABC means that we’re looking at mostly paid, B2C, titles. Since the dawn of digital editions, the B2B titles have outperformed their sexier counterparts, generating 15% or more of digital readership in most cases, or 7 times what many B2C titles have.

2) The fact that the titles are audited by the ABC says something about the titles, too. Audited titles – and I’m generalizing here – often seem stuck on proving metrics that don’t make sense anymore (circulation over readership being a prime example). Until magazines begin to chase the right carrot, the bunny’s won’t look as fuzzy.

3) The fact that so many magazines have hitched their wagon to native apps to drive readership. Listen, we love native apps, but our most successful publishers still get more than half of their readership through the Internet browser digital edition. The app road is a pretty road; it’s just also pretty narrow.

4) Magazine titles that get audited are also between a rock and a hard place. Don’t optimize your content enough for screen reading, and readers won’t be interested. Optimize it too much and it won’t count as the same title. It’s yet another issue the ABC has struggled to define in this new era.

Your take-aways? Make sure you’re optimizing your content and publishing to the browser. And, of course, if you’re truly focusing on circulation, you might want to look at analytics a bit differently. 

A Future Involving Ink

So let’s pretend you wanted to do a video that made printed magazines sound as important as they were before the Internet. If that were the case, it might make sense to have the video take place on an airplane where (for the time being) you can’t always be online.

The result, while not very convincing, is still inspiring:

Nice Idea, Forbes

You may have missed it last year, but there’s been a bit of a dust-up about whether or not digital ads on websites are being seen. The theory is fairly sound: if your ad appears on the lower section of a webpage and if, in particular, the user is using a small screen, it’s possible the user could click away without seeing an ad, yet the ad view gets counted.

On one hand, I could argue that unless you’re into brand advertising, it doesn’t matter… after all, advertisers really want clicks, engagement, etc. But that argument aside, it’s a worthwhile concern, particularly as websites (and digital editions) morph into entities that might make it easier or more difficult for your ads to be seen.

Forbes is launching a new service that will guarantee that if they say your ad was seen, it was really seen. On its service, this is a little silly, but when you consider the ways we measure print traffic, well, it’s at least a lot better than that. Read more about the Forbes technology here. 

Are Your Readers Stupid?

Not individually, they’re not, of course. Or not usually. But the question remains: does audience participation help or hinder your mission to provide good editorial, assuming that’s your mission?

Gawker’s Nick Denton says no, and he’s doing something about it by trying to eliminate the "tragedy of comments," by having seasoned commenters control threads.

I think these problems are more common among BtoC sites than BtoB, but not entirely. That’s why the Discussion forums within the Nxtbook have been built to give you enough editorial control to keep the content up to your standards, or let it free if the kids can play nicely. Ask your Project Manager for details. 

The New iPad Might Make You Rethink Some Things

So, if I came to you and said, "Quick! Tell me the worst thing about magazines on the iPad!" there’s a pretty good chance you’d say, "Page size and download speed." Nxtbook is better than most, in this regard, but still, it’s not an invalid complaint.

And now, you and I have to deal with the fact that the new retina display on the iPad3, which essentially shoves more pixels on the screen, has the potential to increase page size by 2MB. Now, keep in mind, that figure is an estimate and, as mentioned, we do a better job of compression than the other guys, but the point remains – downloading brighter pictures means downloading larger files.

As this article points out, there are 3 logical moves here.

1) Do nothing; 2) Start building dynamic layout and text rendering engines; or 3) Begin basing their platforms on Web technologies.

We’ve never been good at doing nothing at Nxtbook, so that’s out. And you can also expect that our developers will continue to find ways to compress files, too. But as far as #2 and #3 go, let’s just say this: Stay tuned.

 

Check My Temperature – I’m Agreeing With Steve Smith

Long-time readers of this blog know of my open disdain for Minonline’s Steve Smith. In my opinion, he panned digital editions as being irrelevant years ago (despite evidence to the contrary), moved on to being distracted by shiny start-ups with no clear business model and then finally settled on a predictable pattern of thinking everything Apple was beautiful.

And yet, as the landscape has settled down he seems (at least to me) to be "getting it" now, meaning he understands what digital editions can and should be. His latest review of Golf’s app seems to show that, as he appreciates how the publisher chose to use multi-media to tell their story better:

"The March 2012 issue on iPad we sampled is not extravagantly enhanced for tablets, but its interactivity is smartly targeted at the two things readers come here to experience – instruction and product." 

Of course, the fact that you need an iPad to read this digital edition is a big negative, but we can’t expect Smith to pick up on that. In his world, we all have one, even if the evidence shows otherwise. 

Article About App Development Ignores the Obvious

Publishing Executive has posted an article about different app options available for publishers. Sadly, they neglected the most obvious choice: using your digital edition provider. While it’s obviously self serving for me to point this out, here are a few reasons why you should probably consider that option first:

1.)  Single vendor/workflow. Assuming you already have a digital edition, do you really want to introduce another vendor to your mix, particularly since your app readers will almost definitely only be a fraction of your digital edition readers?

2.) Single set of analytics. Well, at least I hope so. Here at Nxtbook, your browser and native app readers are combined for reporting. Do you really want to combine analytics from multiple sources?

3.) A single set of sponsorship options. Assuming you’re looking to monetize your audience, do you really want to deal with another set of sponsorship specs to send advertiser content to?

4.) This native thing, more and more, appears to be a passing fancy. While this last statement is up for debate, we’re one of many vendors who feels that in the end, the browser will win. That being the case, that’s where our energy continues to go, even while we ensure our native apps work for readers, publishers and advertisers alike. And if you believe in the future of HTML5, we’d suggest you focus your energies on the browser as well. 

Our Customers Are Awesome

One of the highlights for me at PubExpo is always getting to interact with Peter Houston, who works with Nxtbook customer, Advanstar. He’s a guy who simply gets it… and you’d do well to read his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Peter spoke at length about using social media, according to your audience. He’s a smart guy to know that Pinterest is hot, but his audience isn’t there, so he’s focused on LinkedIn. You should do the same… know where the hot clubs are, but know where to find your people. It makes audience development that much simpler. 

So about this iPad thing….

On the second panel I sat on at PubExpo, I was joined by representatives from both Mag+ and Future Publishing, who had interesting things to say about app publishing. The first was from Mag+, who reported that paid subs for Popular Science were around 60,000. The second was from Future Publishing, which reported a combined 150k sold issues per month over 65 titles, for an average of 2,300 subs per title.

So, the take away is clear… while tablets are exploding, take-up is small enough that ROI has to be a major concern for you. We’ve priced the Nxtbook app low so that you can put your flag in the ground, without having to make it gold plated. Right now, that’s your best move. 

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