Digital editions

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Permalink Reply by Marcus on October 22, 2008 at 8:52am

Hi Jim,

I'll start with some thoughts & observations, based on both our experiences providing digital magazines to publishers and in our experiences in providing custom digital projects to clients:
1) Slow to open, clunky to navigate.
In today's market, there are many choices for digital magazines, so it's important to choose one readers will like. In our case, we used to get complaints like this, but we've continuously upgraded the product.
ACTION STEP: If you're evaluating a solution, ask the vendor how the product has evolved in the past four years.

2) Not how you want to read online.
We're in a place where everybody has different preferences. Some people will read content on mobile devices. Some won't. Some will read digital magazines. Some won't. The question is if a healthy percentage of your readers want to. You can learn this by surveying them.

3) Website v. digital magazines. Here are 3 rules I've seen proven time and time again:
a. Your website will have more viewers than our digital edition. Websites invites drive-by traffic. Digital magazines invite a brand experience.
b. People will stay inside a digital magazine much longer than they stay on your website.
c. People will click through ads on a digital magazine 4-6 times greater than on your website.
It's a different product offering a different experience.

I won't answer your first three questions (I think publishers will have better insight than I), but as far as metrics go, you should only consider a solution that offers plenty of metrics. Engagement time and click-through rates are critical for selling into the digital magazine, and referrer data is critical for circulators to understand how people are finding (and discussing) your content.

One other point. This year's Gilbane Report did a great job of showing where digital magazines are and aren't being successful. You can read it here.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Carper on October 22, 2008 at 10:00am

excellent info. Thanks, Marcus.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Turro on October 22, 2008 at 10:04am

Jim:
Marcus brings up a lot of good points - that's his job and he knows his stuff inside and out and you could do a lot worse than listening to him - but I'll give you a take from a more skeptical perspective.

I have been up and down in my opinions on digital editions over the years - mainly my beef has to do with design. As I see it the main problem with the digital magazine is that it tries to replicate an offline passive experience in an online active environment. Most often that fails and feels "clunky" as you say. Certainly it may hit some notes with some readers but it is far from where you want to be in terms of a reading experience.

Yet - in the last few years - we've really seen some tremendous progress in terms of devices that work - like the traditional print magazine - in the passive mode (Kindle, iPhone, etc.). I believe that this is the space that will ultimately be the domain of the digital edition. As of now there are still limitations with regard to display technology and standards are anywhere but close to being hammered out, but rest assured these shortcomings are being actively addressed. Once that stuff is figured out you'll start to see some really beautiful digital magazines that don't feel so clunky.

Obviously we are still years out from the above being an everyday reality for your readers. In the short term I would advise staying the course - digital efforts should be web first - digital editions should be viewed as primarily a low risk experiment that will ultimately yield more in feedback than revenue.

And if you experience resistance from the Publisher or the Editor or the mailroom then you have bigger problems - fear of change or experimentation in this environment will not get you very far.

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Permalink Reply by Jasmine Grimm on October 23, 2008 at 5:16pm

Here's two magazines that have experienced it first hand.

Reed Business Information (RBI) is a business-to-business publishing company. The company has been involved in digital editions for four years now. The company produces digital editions of 51 print magazines (48 are controlled circulation) using various technology platforms.

When they used a digital edition they learned:
• RBI received feedback from readers and digital vendors. The company learned how to optimize print legibility and make it so readers wouldn’t have to zoom to read the content.
• Search features and navigation tools and mouse over zoom on content made it better for advertisers.
• The table of contents helped with branding, direct links to digital edition conversions and Web site links.
• Open rates, across the board, were better than e-newsletter products.

A second example would include Subiesport.

Subiesport has been active in online promotions with YouTube and Subiesport.com. Subiesport has been leveraging the power of social networks including Myspace and Facebook to build a community around the title because it is free marketing for events and promotions. The company has more than 4,000 friends on Myspace.

Subiesport also creates digital content products such as blogs, email newsletters and as of December 2004, the digital editions. The company wanted to successfully leverage the digital edition of Subiesport.

They learned:
• Advertisers loved it because they received additional exposure with no additional money.
• Advertisers considered “spiffing up” their digital ads. They wanted to know how they could better use that tool.
• The “ma and pa shops” wanted to learn how to increase their ad values to grab readers’ attention.
• Subscribers loved getting the digital addition as a supplement to the print edition.
• Existing subscribers gave away passes to forum friends.
• Subscribers enjoyed the rich “magazine like” experience.
• Postal delay complaints were reduced.
• Sold 25 straight digital editions without promotions.

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Permalink Reply by Christian J. Morris on October 24, 2008 at 2:30am

The key to success in DE's is educating advertisers and editorial contributors to use the rich media capabilities to their maximum potential.
The more the end user/subscriber can interact with the content the more likely you will have repeat reader's.

I have have had the opportunity to see most management portals of the industry leading platforms, and in today's daunting market, most come with easy to use analytic reports creating quantifiable ROI which is going to be the key in the next quarter to maintaining advertisers.

Hope this helps.

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Permalink Reply by Keith Gregory on October 25, 2008 at 5:01pm

one of the better digital editions I got- I think it was actually a show daily type report from Folio from their show. It was perhaps an 8 pager- got the link via email and hit print without thinking.

That, to me, was an especially good way to interact with a digital edition.

Kindle & iPhone's might make a digital edition make sense.

Having an archive of past issues, where you know you read it last year, in the spring and if you see the cover, you will remember- as opposed to having to track down hard copies you routed to a colleague or have stacked & buried.

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