http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2009/01/23/us-news-launching-digital-newsweekly?tid=true

(thx to Richard Lander for the point)

There’s no denying that they can make money if you get the right advertisers but it’s a short term fix and won’t provide long term digital revenue. Recreating offline experience online seems like a painfully unimaginative way of making money. The only person it seems to help is the salesman who doesn’t really understand online.

I think your point on ‘engagement’ is the key to realising how websites can give your content much more value online over digital editions.

It’s also worth adding there is little to no search engine indexation (digital edition companies will argue there is but compared to a well designed website their visibility in search engines is worse than a badly formatted PDF). This significantly reduces their longevity and traffic over time.

Plus you can sell a regularly visited 5 year old web page many times, you can only sell space in a digital edition once.

The internet is a city and you surf from website to website like you would walk from house to house. Digital magazines don’t share this world, they’re a web cul-de-sac.

Magazines are a “lean back” experience, consumed when you have the time to browse the content at your leisure. On-line is very much a “lean forward” experience, most users are searching for the answer to a question and are looking for results as fast as possible.

Page turners offer the worst of both worlds. They are not easily indexed by Google and therefore unlikely to satisfy a researching user and lack the portability and tactile experience that a printed magazine provides.

There are always exceptions to the rules, Monkey magazine is a good example. This works because the content is disposable, the target demographic love the video format and there is a large database of users to send the emails to.

If your content has long term value then much better to publish it in a CMS based website where you can continue to monetise it over a long period of time.

Publishers looking to cut their print and distribution costs by simply creating page turning versions of their magazines misunderstand the way content is consumed on-line.

The big trend here is the abstraction of content from presentation. Print magazines are all about presentation – its one of their key strengths. Online – presentation is a totally different matter, as people consume in many ways through different browsers and forms (RSS, flash mags, HTML websites, mobile apps, widgets etc etc).

So the key hurdle in the minds of traditional publishers is that the tight grip on presentation must be loosened so that readers can consume as they wish. The issue with the classic pdf/page turn models is that it too closely replicates the print version (and therefore, incidently, the cost of creative is just as high as in print – which is tough to carry when delivering and monetising online).

At idiomag, we can offer publishers and brands a platform that enables delivery in multiple formats (currently flash mag, mobile, widget, RSS) with the presentation layer being automatically created, based on the requirements of that medium.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Bold-Transformation-Detroit-Free-Press/story.aspx?guid={0C4C2384-7AD0-4FD9-A5E0-1F0F9E4DEF58}

My business model was going to be paid-for book, freebie promo PDF-to-Flash page flipper, and then a paid for e-book.

When I researched Issuu and Zmags and even CS4’s new page-flipper PDF-to-option, I could see that I could make money with a B2C product using a B2B model.

In short, I sold ads in the book. Some people complained initially but the content won them over.

I’m now a PDF-to-Flash zealot and can see a lot of potential in the delivery method, especially the social media potential.

I also like the stats on Issuu.com. For instance, I can see that nearly 50 percent of the visitors to my book read right through to the end (well, flick, anyway). The book is 50 pages and that kind of low bounce rate really surprised me.

If you’re interested the book is at:
http://issuu.com/carltonreid/docs/bike_to_work_book_50_page_sampler

Click on ‘author’ to see the other 14 versions of this self same book. I personalise covers and ads so advertisers and those with audiences can distribute their own versions of the book.

I’ll remain a sceptic but I can see that things have moved on in the digital edition world & will keep an eye out for the next evolutions.

Again, I think your response to Digital Editions is grounded in what we might call DE 1.0. But we’re now moving into DE 2.0, and as with the web I think thatstep forward will make a significant difference in the user experience.

For one thing, publishers are now designing DE publications from the ground up, rather than simply as replicas of their physical publications. They are sizing the page to better fit a computer screen, using type sizes that can be read with relative ease, and building in links that help the content better come alive.

One example you may not have seen yet is Sporting News in the US, which recently converted from print to digital with a redesign that takes advantage of the technology platform. It’s worth it to download a sample copy from here so you can see what they have done. Not perfect, but certainly a giant step forward and one I’m sure other publishers will be emulating.

http://today.sportingnews.com/sportingnewstoday/20081124/

By the way, you might ask why download a digital copy when you can see the content on the website? As a reader who commutes daily by train and often finds himself on long plane rides, I find that the web is not always available. But I can theoretically carry a hundred digital editions with me on my travels and not worry about an internet connection. Just one more reason why I think the technology has a future.

Bill

Actually though I think this gets to the heart of my problem with digital editions – that there is no usable reader for them.

Digital editions are currently read in a web page and yet are not formated to make it easy to do so. That’s madness. A4 or tabloid pages need to be shrunk to fit a standard computer screen & to read individual articles regularly requires re-sizing, scrolling etc.

This, in my opinion puts a significant barrier in the way of user acceptance.

A controlled circulation magazine is all about introducing buyer to seller. If the buyers aren’t using the product then it doesn’t matter how creative you are being with the seller’s message delivery.

This has certainly become a lively debate! Let me just add a couple of points to the discussion.

1. Technology does not stand still. Not only is the software (eg Texterity and Zinio) improving, but more importantly so is the hardware used by readers. One of the things that I think will drive reader acceptance of Digital Publications is the proliferation of the Kindle and similar devices among both business professionals and the general public. Were you planning to give a Kindle for Xmas? Too late–Amazon is already sold out until after the holidays. And The NY Times is now claiming it has 10,000 subscribers to its Digital Editions via the Kindle. With newspapers and magazines more widely available on such devices, reader acceptance will rise and advertisers will be happier with the results.

2. I never said that I favored Digital Editions over websites. In fact, we are investing heavily in our websites and I think that they have a bright future. But display advertisers, who provide most of the support for our controlled distribution magazines, have shown an inability to transfer their 4-color image-building display ads into a web environment. Banner ads don’t quite do the trick. And interstitials may be intrusive and look good but if there are too many of them web users are likely to get frustrated. Digital Editions represent another channel for those advertisers to use in getting across their brand-building messages.

3. I remember in the old days editors would first create a magazine, and then they would simply copy the same content and art on to their web 1.0 website. There was little advantage in it for the reader. Now, smart editors, do things with their websites that they would have never been able to do in print–they are taking advantage of the technology and creating added value on their sites. I think the same needs to happen with Digital Editions–editors need to take advantage of the rich media capabilities, links, etc. that provide a meaningful difference with print, in ways which will engage readers and boost open rates and readership. That will be good for the publications and good for the advertisers.

Like you, I’d like to hear more from experienced publishers with regard to successes and failures in the Digital Publishing arena.

Cheers,

Bill