Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Global Golf Masters Memories
We're enjoying the viral momentum around our Global Golf Post promotion. Global Golf Post is a weekly, all-digital publication, and last week they published a bonus Masters Preview Issue. This issue, designed like a scrap book, features tournament highlights and player memories. It's got some of the nicest art direction I've seen in a while, with great videos of the players you grew up watching. Working with WebSolvers, we’ve created a highly interactive component that allows golf enthusiasts to post their own Masters Memories, with a chance to win a sleeve of Nike golf balls. Nike Golf is sponsoring this Preview Issue, and prizes will be awarded to the 10 Best Tweets.
Readers can sign up for their free digital subscription to Global Golf Post at http://www.globalgolfpost.com/ where they can also click to social links and the TweetBoard to see what others are saying.
Readers can sign up for their free digital subscription to Global Golf Post at http://www.globalgolfpost.com/ where they can also click to social links and the TweetBoard to see what others are saying.
Labels: golf, masters tournament
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Two Part Post - iPhone Apps and Show Updates
Texterity's Mobile Apps - Want an App With That?
We are so proud of our mobile app platform. Our goal was to create a compelling reading experience; to translate the delight of getting a print magazine in your mailbox to a mobile delivery. A magazine is more than just the paper, editorial and images. It's a community and a way readers identify themselves. Reading a magazine is both personal and public, and inviting it onto your phone via a download through the app store is a similar embrace of the magazine as an extension of self. I love to wax philosophical, and we thought about all this as we planned and designed this app.
It's got:
* Beautiful replicas which download quickly and you can swipe right through
* Reflowed articles with images included
* Reader comments on articles - keeping them coming back to see the comment threads
* "Between the issues" feeds - whatever is relevant to the readers
* Advertising and sponsorship opportunities
* Magazine branded app chiclet and logo - can be sold or downloaded as a free app
There was a great team behind it, lead by Adrienne Azaria, VP of Development. Adrienne worked days and nights, burning the midnight oil alongside Bryan Dunn, Engineering Manager, Petra McLure, Texterity's brilliant software architect, and Rachel Summers, who made all the workflow and process engineering to produce these this at massive scale.
Now it's released and made available in the Apple App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/premierguitar/id357976896?mt=8 or search on Premier Guitar in the App Store.
Check it out, download, and let us know what you think. We can build one for you, too!
Show Time!
It's high season for publishing industry shows, and Texterity's sales team has fanned out across the world to be at them. I was at the UK Publishing Expo last week, and though I was full of good intentions to blog from the show, it turned out that the traffic to the booth was so steady and so engaged that I had no time to type anything here at all. There was an explosion of interest in our mobile apps, and everyone I talked to opened with some variant of "so you can help us get our magazine into the app store?" I spoke on a panel with three other digital and mobile edition providers, each with a different approach to mobile, and it was a good opportunity for the audience to learn about what mobile can mean for publishers. It was a pleasure to meet and listen to my fellow presenters.
Just this month, we've got the NAPCO Publishing Business Expo coming up this Monday through Wednesday in New York, a Custom Content show in Nashville, CASE Editors forum - a college publishing show in Cambridge, MA, close to our own stomping ground, and prepping for more in April.
I'm signing off now so I can write my slides for next Monday's panel! Hope to see you at the Publishing Business Expo.
Texterity's Mobile Apps - Want an App With That?
We are so proud of our mobile app platform. Our goal was to create a compelling reading experience; to translate the delight of getting a print magazine in your mailbox to a mobile delivery. A magazine is more than just the paper, editorial and images. It's a community and a way readers identify themselves. Reading a magazine is both personal and public, and inviting it onto your phone via a download through the app store is a similar embrace of the magazine as an extension of self. I love to wax philosophical, and we thought about all this as we planned and designed this app.
It's got:
* Beautiful replicas which download quickly and you can swipe right through
* Reflowed articles with images included
* Reader comments on articles - keeping them coming back to see the comment threads
* "Between the issues" feeds - whatever is relevant to the readers
* Advertising and sponsorship opportunities
* Magazine branded app chiclet and logo - can be sold or downloaded as a free app
There was a great team behind it, lead by Adrienne Azaria, VP of Development. Adrienne worked days and nights, burning the midnight oil alongside Bryan Dunn, Engineering Manager, Petra McLure, Texterity's brilliant software architect, and Rachel Summers, who made all the workflow and process engineering to produce these this at massive scale.
Now it's released and made available in the Apple App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/premierguitar/id357976896?mt=8 or search on Premier Guitar in the App Store.
Check it out, download, and let us know what you think. We can build one for you, too!
Show Time!
It's high season for publishing industry shows, and Texterity's sales team has fanned out across the world to be at them. I was at the UK Publishing Expo last week, and though I was full of good intentions to blog from the show, it turned out that the traffic to the booth was so steady and so engaged that I had no time to type anything here at all. There was an explosion of interest in our mobile apps, and everyone I talked to opened with some variant of "so you can help us get our magazine into the app store?" I spoke on a panel with three other digital and mobile edition providers, each with a different approach to mobile, and it was a good opportunity for the audience to learn about what mobile can mean for publishers. It was a pleasure to meet and listen to my fellow presenters.
Just this month, we've got the NAPCO Publishing Business Expo coming up this Monday through Wednesday in New York, a Custom Content show in Nashville, CASE Editors forum - a college publishing show in Cambridge, MA, close to our own stomping ground, and prepping for more in April.
I'm signing off now so I can write my slides for next Monday's panel! Hope to see you at the Publishing Business Expo.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Monetizing B to B Content
I'm back from the fabulous Niche Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, which took place on Feb. 1-2. Carl Landau knows how to bring great ideas to his audience of small and growing publishers, and throw a great party at the same time. It was fun, and shout-outs to all those with whom I got to meet and drink margaritas.
Back here in the cold northeast, we are hard at work on many fronts. Digital publishing and device revolution aside, I wanted to talk about what seems to be a growing trend we've been hearing about from B to B publishers. I just saw a great article about it in Media Business that brought it back to me. Check out the article: Can Paid Content Really Generate Revenue?
The article covers a number of ways B to B is monetizing content. I've recently heard from one of Texterity's customers that they would like to sell digital subscriptions and back issues of some of their B to B magazines in the tech space, and I have also seen other B to B publishers exploring subscription sales where they were previously in advertising-sponsored businesses only. ALM's Distressed Assets Investor is a new title for them, and their model is to sell subscriptions to real estate professionals. They have seen some real growth and interest since launching the title late in 2009. Alexa Faulkner of ALM is exploring many ways to get large organizations to sign up their members, and find content that is timely and high value - Distressed Assets Investor
We've also seen a resurgence of whitepaper activity, particularly whitepapers for sale to end users. Here's an example of the campaign Ad Age is running.
This is the seventh in a series of whitepapers, started in June of 2009. They have been very happy with the results, according to John Lamarca, Circulation Director of Crain's Ad Age, and they've found it to be a successful new revenue stream.
Digital editions have been a key part of these types of campaigns, and we've found that publishers have used digital editions as a way to test the waters. Does anyone reading this have any programs you've tried lately that have worked well in a similar vein?
Back here in the cold northeast, we are hard at work on many fronts. Digital publishing and device revolution aside, I wanted to talk about what seems to be a growing trend we've been hearing about from B to B publishers. I just saw a great article about it in Media Business that brought it back to me. Check out the article: Can Paid Content Really Generate Revenue?
The article covers a number of ways B to B is monetizing content. I've recently heard from one of Texterity's customers that they would like to sell digital subscriptions and back issues of some of their B to B magazines in the tech space, and I have also seen other B to B publishers exploring subscription sales where they were previously in advertising-sponsored businesses only. ALM's Distressed Assets Investor is a new title for them, and their model is to sell subscriptions to real estate professionals. They have seen some real growth and interest since launching the title late in 2009. Alexa Faulkner of ALM is exploring many ways to get large organizations to sign up their members, and find content that is timely and high value - Distressed Assets Investor
We've also seen a resurgence of whitepaper activity, particularly whitepapers for sale to end users. Here's an example of the campaign Ad Age is running.
This is the seventh in a series of whitepapers, started in June of 2009. They have been very happy with the results, according to John Lamarca, Circulation Director of Crain's Ad Age, and they've found it to be a successful new revenue stream.
Digital editions have been a key part of these types of campaigns, and we've found that publishers have used digital editions as a way to test the waters. Does anyone reading this have any programs you've tried lately that have worked well in a similar vein?
Labels: ALM, Crain, Monetizing B to B Content, Texterity
Monday, February 1, 2010
Parenting and Digital Publishing
Wendy Zingher, VP Sales & Marketing
This has been a busy week for me, and I’ve decided it’s time I buckled down and started the Texterity blog I’ve been meaning to for months now. As an introductory post, I’ll take the liberty of being a bit personal. It’s been a busy and revelatory week for all of us in digital publishing. Texterity was hot on eReaders back in the early 2000’s and when they failed to appear, digital publishing on laptops and desktops was and remains good business, for us and for our publishers. So, as the first real eReader to matter to our magazine market was unveiled this week, it was a week full of thinking, planning, and excitement. I must confess, though, after the excitement of the Apple announcement, I was completely drained. My husband was out of town all week, so I was holding down the home fort. I got home that evening, made dinner, took care of my littlest one and put him to bed, and then took out my laptop for routine catchup. An hour or so passed.
And that’s when I was faced with bad parenting example #27. (You can buy me a drink if you want to hear about any of the other 26 examples). My two teenagers trooped in and said, “Mom, you really should have watched the State of the Union. It was really good.” That’s when I a) thought ‘what kind of civic involvement am I promoting by missing the State of the Union?‘ and b) sort of pondered that there’s something akin to parenting in what we do here in our business.
We’ve been raising this child called a “digital edition.” It’s been a great kid, but it’s growing up, and you can’t ignore that. Suddenly, there is a confluence of interest in truly transforming the content and the magazine experience. I could liken it to that period where a child enters adolescence, and suddenly worlds of possibilities appear, and with them, many pitfalls. It might have some really awkward moments! But here we are, at the threshold of adolescence, and it’s important to try new things, learn by doing, and build this new world together. I’m in a company that provides platforms and services for publishers at large scale, and those platforms need to work. Publishers also need to find value in reaching their audience in new ways, and when I mean value, I mean something that, either directly or indirectly, helps keep the lights on.
We’ll be guiding this child of ours to adolescence on the iPhone, the iPad, and a host of other mobile devices. We’ll be sticking with our “family values” of creating this experience for readers which respects the publisher’s connection with their audience, and doesn’t try to create an intermediary brand. There’s lots of passion and drive on our internal team, and we’ll be doing some wicked cool stuff. There’s lots of support from our publishing community. From a solid foundation, we’ll build something that will stand on it’s own. For me, that’s what I most fervently hope for as a parent as well. It’s looking like we’ll be having a lot of fun doing it!
This has been a busy week for me, and I’ve decided it’s time I buckled down and started the Texterity blog I’ve been meaning to for months now. As an introductory post, I’ll take the liberty of being a bit personal. It’s been a busy and revelatory week for all of us in digital publishing. Texterity was hot on eReaders back in the early 2000’s and when they failed to appear, digital publishing on laptops and desktops was and remains good business, for us and for our publishers. So, as the first real eReader to matter to our magazine market was unveiled this week, it was a week full of thinking, planning, and excitement. I must confess, though, after the excitement of the Apple announcement, I was completely drained. My husband was out of town all week, so I was holding down the home fort. I got home that evening, made dinner, took care of my littlest one and put him to bed, and then took out my laptop for routine catchup. An hour or so passed.
And that’s when I was faced with bad parenting example #27. (You can buy me a drink if you want to hear about any of the other 26 examples). My two teenagers trooped in and said, “Mom, you really should have watched the State of the Union. It was really good.” That’s when I a) thought ‘what kind of civic involvement am I promoting by missing the State of the Union?‘ and b) sort of pondered that there’s something akin to parenting in what we do here in our business.
We’ve been raising this child called a “digital edition.” It’s been a great kid, but it’s growing up, and you can’t ignore that. Suddenly, there is a confluence of interest in truly transforming the content and the magazine experience. I could liken it to that period where a child enters adolescence, and suddenly worlds of possibilities appear, and with them, many pitfalls. It might have some really awkward moments! But here we are, at the threshold of adolescence, and it’s important to try new things, learn by doing, and build this new world together. I’m in a company that provides platforms and services for publishers at large scale, and those platforms need to work. Publishers also need to find value in reaching their audience in new ways, and when I mean value, I mean something that, either directly or indirectly, helps keep the lights on.
We’ll be guiding this child of ours to adolescence on the iPhone, the iPad, and a host of other mobile devices. We’ll be sticking with our “family values” of creating this experience for readers which respects the publisher’s connection with their audience, and doesn’t try to create an intermediary brand. There’s lots of passion and drive on our internal team, and we’ll be doing some wicked cool stuff. There’s lots of support from our publishing community. From a solid foundation, we’ll build something that will stand on it’s own. For me, that’s what I most fervently hope for as a parent as well. It’s looking like we’ll be having a lot of fun doing it!
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Coverleaf 2.0 is LIVE!
If you haven't been to Coverleaf today, it's your lucky day. We just released an updated version of the site. The layout is much improved based on feedback from all our users. Be sure to browse around and look in your My Stuff area - it's all there, but easier to navigate. Enjoy!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Etienne Says: Time to go Digital
We just saw the following letter to the editor in Entrepreneur Magazine.
Turns out, Etienne is an active user of coverleaf and an avid reader of many magazines. Thanks for the heads up, and you can be sure we'll talk with Entrepreneur!
Turns out, Etienne is an active user of coverleaf and an avid reader of many magazines. Thanks for the heads up, and you can be sure we'll talk with Entrepreneur!
Labels: Coverleaf Letters
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Magazines Can Succeed on the iPhone
The recent Forbes.com article Magazines Struggle on the iPhone misses the point by focusing on iPhone developers who don't really understand magazines.The article is from the iPhone developer point of view, stating "...publishers also expressed interest in iPhone apps but wanted to pay the firm through revenue-share deals, meaning it would have to shoulder more of its development costs upfront." Translation: publishers don't feel like paying $50K for an iPhone app with an iffy upside.
It's still early days. The iPhone user wants a great reading experience: an application that blends branded content plus 'real time' information and a way to engage with other readers and the publication.
The challenge is that many iPhone developers don't yet understand the unique value of a magazine (i.e., the high quality layout and branded feel), and at the same time the magazine needs to significantly add value to what exists on the print page.
Texterity, working with our publishers, is developing a true next generation mobile application that leverages the branded content and the capabilities of the devices. This includes iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre, and what we expect to come soon -- a "super smartphone" device with a larger display.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Texterity User Interface - Coverleaf Reader Tutorial
View our full tutorial video on the lastest Texterity digital edition reading interface -- the Coverleaf Reader. This 10-minute video covers all the features and benefits, including:
- The Technology Behind Texterity's Coverleaf Reader
- Increasing your Bottom Line
- Enhancing the Viewer’s Experience
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Asset International ai5000 goes "Designed for Digital"
A great example of a "Designed for Digital" publication which is "screen ready" is the new launch from Asset International, ai5000. Min online ("ai5000 Aims for the Super Money") noted the recent launch, stating "In tough economic times publishers can go one of two ways... Either re-target your content towards budget-conscious readers with belt-tightening tips, or look for the places where the big money still resides."
Revenue Generation is provided by sponsorships from Northern Trust, State Street, Bridgewater Associates, and PanAgora Asset Management. Using Texterity's platform, the digital edition can be viewed directly from the web via it's "branded" URL (www.ai5000.com), through google and bing web searches, twitter, and social networks. Asset International plans to re-market its larger suite of institutional research, webinars, conferences and sponsored round tables to high-end customers.
To view the inaugural issue, go to www.ai5000.com.
Revenue Generation is provided by sponsorships from Northern Trust, State Street, Bridgewater Associates, and PanAgora Asset Management. Using Texterity's platform, the digital edition can be viewed directly from the web via it's "branded" URL (www.ai5000.com), through google and bing web searches, twitter, and social networks. Asset International plans to re-market its larger suite of institutional research, webinars, conferences and sponsored round tables to high-end customers.To view the inaugural issue, go to www.ai5000.com.
Labels: Designed for Digital, Revenue
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Link to a page in a Texterity online magazine
One of our friendly readers (Torley) has posted a nice short video explaining how to share a page of a Texterity digital edition with others.
Link to a Page in a Texterity Online Magazine
Torley, thanks for sharing. Good news! In our new release of the Texterity reader interface, the "share" function is much easier to find and use. And, the URL line always has the page number included!
Link to a Page in a Texterity Online Magazine
Torley, thanks for sharing. Good news! In our new release of the Texterity reader interface, the "share" function is much easier to find and use. And, the URL line always has the page number included!
Labels: Texterity
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