Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Google Launches Magazine Search
Google officially announced their "initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles". You can read it directly from the google blog.Generally, I'm in favor of anything that exposes great magazine content to a wider audience. The "scan everything" model works well for magazines with a large historical archive, especially for researchers. This is a service to magazines in general, and allows people to see magazines that are both in and out-of-print.
The quality of the pages is obviously limited by the scanning approach, and zooming in is a bit blurry. But, as a free offering this is still very useful.
Is this directly competitive with efforts such as Coverleaf (www.coverleaf.com) which makes digital magazines available on a direct to consumer basis?
Much of the value-added of Texterity is the "business model" that supports publisher's circulation and revenue generating interests. The Google Magazine initiative provides a link back to their website, but not much more. With respect to the "quality" of the digital edition, digital edition providers can do many more things than Google. For example, more advanced "mark up" such as linking URLs and pages, rich media embedding, gatefolds, blow-in cards, audited delivery, and many other services that integrate the digital edition into the publisher's site.
Google is technically and financially capable of doing a lot, however, I believe that publishers will be interested in protecting their brand and leveraging their content beyond that of "sampling" via Google.
Labels: Google
Monday, December 8, 2008
Five Tips to Cope -- or Even Thrive -- Through Downturn
Ad Age knows something about troubled times: The magazine was founded less than 90 days after the crash of '29 and has reported on every downturn since the Great Depression. They have dug deep into their archives to analyze the issue of innovation during three of the worst times: the Depression and recessions of the early '70s and early '80s. The result of that research is "Downtime Opportunity," a comprehensive Texterity digital edition "white paper" available at adage.com/whitepaper.Bottom line: A great example of "just in time" publishing leveraging the brand and knowledge of a leading publisher and the quick turnaround and features of Texterity digital editions.
Labels: Tips
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Premier Guitar : a showcase website and digital edition integration
Premier Guitar, which bills itself as the "relentless pursuit of tone", has a great website and integration with the digital edition.Peter Sprague (CEO) and his team have worked with the Texterity team to use digital editions to truly leverage the www.premierguitar.com) website and brand.
Some of the cool things they've done include:
- Providing multiple offers to sign up for the digital edition throughout the site, encouraging visitors to self-identify and starting the relationship in a personal way
- Cross-linking the HTML readable version of articles with the digital magazine view, allowing easy viewing in both delivery methods
- Customizing their digital edition interface, including "Gear Search" to help readers find advertisers and products easily, and an introductory page next to the cover to highlight key articles
Check it out and I think you'll agree - nice job!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Dan Woods Driving Digital
Dan Woods, who is Associate Publisher for O'Reilly Media's Maker Media Division, just appeared in an online interview on the Magazine Publishers of America site (see www.magazine.org/digital/digidriver-dan-woods.aspx).Dan talks about how Make and Craft magazines were among the first available on the iPhone editions via Texterity. Dan also pointed out that his readers love it when they find it that way. Dan adds, "We like trying different things. About 80 percent of our total circulation signups come through all the online marketing that we do."
Dan and the O'Reilly team have always been at the forefront on using new technologies, and we're thrilled to have them as a publishing partner.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Incisive Media - Capitalizing on Digital Edition Technology
Bill Pollack from Incisive Media just posted a nice entry about the use of digital editions in an issue of The American Lawyer. The digital edition features a video ad with a highlight of the TAL Awards dinner, and it’s embedded over the spread ad on pages 36-37. The pages with the video can be viewed directly with this link http://www.americanlawyer-digital.com/americanlawyer/sample/?folio=36.Bill points out that "digital publishing does provide advertisers with some major advantages over print. Thanks to web links, embedded audio and video, and other opportunities for inclusion of rich media, a digital ad can do a lot more than a print ad. It can more easily be used to generate leads, provide specific product information, or link over to the advertiser's website. And so the accountability and statistics available in connection with a digital ad are quite a bit greater than with a typical print advertisement."
I could not have said it any better!
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