Digital Magazine Publishing Handbook

Nicholas, Coburn, Van Doren, MacArthur

DIGITAL MAGAZINE PUBLISHING  Digital Publishing Tips for Creating Digital Magazines in a Tablet Publishing World  

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Mequoda Team

Advisory Board

Don Nicholas CEO & Lead Consultant

Active Interest Media

Ed Coburn Chief Content Officer

American Quarter Horse

Aimee Graeber Chief Technology Officer

American Society of Pension

Laura Pittman Chief Operating Officer

Biblical Archaeology Society

Amanda MacArthur Managing Editor

Capitol Information Group

Mary Van Doren Lead Copywriter

Public Interest

Norann Oleson Analytics Manager

Inc.

Nancy Horan Systems Director

Hoffman Media

Michael Phillips Senior Information Architect

Institute

Lowell Allen Senior Information Architect

Program on Negotiation at

Ann-Marie Trebendis Operations Manager

Prime Publishing

Contributing Editors:

Retirement Capital Strategies

Copyright © 2014 Mequoda Group LLC American Lantern Press Association Professionals & Actuaries Business & Legal Resources Center for Science in the Ebner Publishing International Farm Progress Companies Natural Health Advisory

Kim Mateus Christopher Sturk Jane Zarem Peter A. Schaible Patrick Hughes Michelle L. Rodriguez Jeanne S. Jennings Roxanne O’Connell

Oxford Media Group Harvard Law School Psychotherapy Networker Revolution Golf The Successful Investor The Motley Fool Vida y Salud Media Group

Report Authors: Don Nicholas Ed Coburn Mary Van Doren Amanda MacArthur Terms of Use All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, faxing, emailing, posting online or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the Publisher. All trademarks and brands referred to herein are the property of their respective owners. All references to Mequoda™ and the seven Mequoda Website Publishing Models™ are trademarks of the Mequoda Group, LLC. Legal Notices While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for error, omissions or contrary interpretations of the subject matter contained herein. The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, both referral and state and local, governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any other jurisdiction, is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader. The author and publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional. For More Free White Papers: http://www.MequodaFree.com

Contact Information Mequoda Group, LLC Customer Service (617) 217-2559 225 Franklin Street, 26th Floor Boston, MA 02110

 

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Table of Contents Introduction  ................................................................................................................  4   Digital  Magazines  Will  Dominate  ........................................................................................................................  5   Digital  Magazine  Fundamentals  ...................................................................................  8   The  Perfect  Digital  Magazine  ................................................................................................................................  9   The  History  and  Future  of  Digital  Magazines  .............................................................................................  16   Digital  Magazine  Publishing  Software  ...........................................................................................................  20   Launching  a  Digital  Magazine  ............................................................................................................................  22   Digital  Magazine  Design  .............................................................................................  25   The  Short  +  Sweet  of  Magazine  Apps  .............................................................................................................  26   What  Is  a  Digital  Replica?  ....................................................................................................................................  28   What  Is  a  Replica  Plus?  .........................................................................................................................................  33   What  Is  a  Reflow  Plus?  .........................................................................................................................................  37   What  Do  People  Want  in  a  Free  App?  ............................................................................................................  42   The  Art  of  the  Vertical  Swipe  .............................................................................................................................  49   Digital  Magazine  Best  Practices  in  Design,  Content  and  Functionality  ...........................................  55   Selling  Your  Digital  Magazine  .....................................................................................  64   How  to  Sell  Digital  Magazines  ...........................................................................................................................  65   How  to  Make  Money  With  Free  Digital  Magazines  ..................................................................................  69   Magazine  Pricing  .....................................................................................................................................................  71   Pricing  a  Digital  Magazine:  Universal  Digital  Access  ...............................................................................  75   The  Future  of  Digital  Advertising  ....................................................................................................................  78   Decoy  Pricing  ............................................................................................................................................................  84   Comparing  Remit  Rates  from  App  Stores  ....................................................................................................  89   Digital  Magazine  Auditing  ..........................................................................................  94   Auditing  Your  Digital  Circ  ...................................................................................................................................  95   AAM’s  approach  to  auditing  digital  circulation  .........................................................................................  98   Case  Studies  ..............................................................................................................  99   Digital  Publishing  Turns  Things  Around  at  The  Atlantic  .....................................................................  100   The  Atlantic  Weekly:  An  Experiment  or  a  Brilliant  Strategy?  ...........................................................  104   Why  Millennials  Love  the  Men’s  Health  Digital  Magazine  ..................................................................  109   Black  Belt  Magazine:  9,600  Digital  Subscriptions  in  12  Months  ......................................................  112   TRVL  Magazine  App  Takes  Publishing  Industry  on  an  Adventurous  Ride  ..................................  115   MAD  Magazine  Offers  a  Haywire  Digital  Edition  ....................................................................................  122   Popular  Science  Turns  its  Digital  Edition  Around  ..................................................................................  131         Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Introduction

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Digital Magazines Will Dominate Tablet users will prefer digital to print in the next seven years Did you ever think that consumers would prefer digital magazines over print magazines? We do, and we think it’ll happen within the next seven years. And that judgment isn’t even based on speculation. The 2013 Mequoda Tablet Study1 revealed that in 2013, 55% of Internet users own or have access to a tablet. If growth occurs at the same rapid pace we’ve been witnessing thus far, we predict that market penetration will be at 85% by 2020.

Our study, which surveyed over 1,200 tablet users, showed 26% prefer digital magazines to print magazines. Keep in mind that the iPad (the leading tablet in our study) was released barely three years ago. 0 to 26% in three years? Remarkable!                                                                                                                 1  http://www.mequoda.com/free-­‐reports/mequoda-­‐tablet-­‐study/     Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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At the same rate of growth, we predict that number will rise quickly to 77% by 2020 as digital magazines get better and conform to the user experience that subscribers expect.

We predict that by 2020, 65% of adult US Internet users will prefer digital magazines to print magazines. To get this number, we calculate that the percent of consumers who prefer digital magazine over print magazines is equal to the percent who have access to a tablet (85% by 2020), times the percent who prefer the digital editions (77% by 2020). In 2020, that calculation is 77% x 85% = 65%. And how can we make such a bold statement when people still claim to like the feel of paper? Digital magazines are better in at least seven ways: • Timely – When the issue is released, it can be viewed and downloaded instantly. For news-based magazines especially, this is crucial. It’s even important for those who look forward to reading the latest celebrity gossip as it hits the newsstands. • Portable – When given the choice to bring seven magazines on a 12-hour flight, or an iPad mini, which takes up the least amount of space? Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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• Collectible – Just as tablet users collect apps, they can collect magazines. Magazine apps are increasingly allowing subscribers to clip and save certain articles of the magazine too, which makes it even easier to replace print. And again, apps take up a lot less space than print magazines! • Searchable – Usability of print magazines has never been optimal. Sometimes it’s hard even find the index amongst the pages of ads. Searchable (and tapable) magazines reduce the barrier to engagement. • Shareable – App publishers are getting savvy about allowing subscribers to share content. In a social media driven world, customers want to share everything with everyone, a feature of print that simply doesn’t exist naturally. • Video enhanced – Thirty years ago, science fiction films predicted that we’d be watching video news clips in our print magazines. That was just silly. Digital magazines with video tutorials, interviews, and even video advertisements make much more sense! • Audio enhanced – Along the same lines, subscribers enjoy listening to sound clips, interviews and advertorials, something not even possible in the print medium. Tablets have bridged the gap between magazines and magazine websites. They’ve created a complete hybrid of information. Once tablet users actually see and engage with a digital magazine, they’re more likely to subscribe. The rapid consumer adoption of tablets, and an early preference for digital magazines over print magazines by their users, leads us to conclude that a longrange digital publishing strategy is imperative to the survival and prosperity of every magazine publisher. That strategy should consider format, partners, and a premium subscription website to be used as a home base for all paid magazine subscribers. Mequoda advises and guides its clients on achieving these goals, and you must begin to chart your course, too. While it’s certain that format and platforms will shift, it seems clear that the web will remain a nexus for all consumer activity and the number one application for tablet users.

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Digital Magazine Fundamentals  

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The Perfect Digital Magazine Nine characteristics of a digital magazine that are defined by the user experience, and dictate the future requirements of what will become the template for digital magazine publishing success We have seen the future of magazine publishing, and it’s paperless. It’s not only we publishers who think so. Today, many consumers have begun predicting the demise of print publications. Pay-for-access online content is gaining newfound acceptance, and e-readers and computer tablets are enjoying soaring popularity. Many of the publishers we work with generate more than 10 percent of their new subscription sales from digital channels. So, is it possible? Will all magazines be digital in the not-too-distant future? Whether that “not-too-distant future” is three years, five years or 10 years away, we see the inevitable metamorphosis. The 10 percent of the literate population that consumes the lion’s share of all written information has begun to devour digital content on new, intriguing and attractive platforms that are convenient, portable and — there’s no denying it — fun! Will the digital magazine template required for tablet publishing success redefine the medium we now call magazines? What characterizes a magazine in the future, as many publications transform from print to digital and deliver content on a tablet computer that’s part netbook, part phone, part personal digital assistant, and part mobile Internet device? What is the true essence of a magazine in the digital delivery world of today and beyond? What is a magazine? Our criteria may surprise you. The magazine is a reading experience like no other. What has made the medium so successful over the past 100+ years? What brought it to its initial success? Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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How has the magazine survived as initially radio, and later television challenged the medium for readers’ time and attention? What differentiates a magazine from a book, or a website, or any other collection of written content? I have always loved magazines! But frankly, over the years, I’ve wondered if the magazine, as a medium would survive. And now, with the advent of the digital tablet — the perfect platform for digital magazines — I am no longer worried that the magazine medium will disappear. In fact, I believe it will evolve and thrive. Here’s why. The essential core characteristics of a magazine are those that define the user experience. The attributes that define a magazine are not necessarily better or worse than those that define other media — websites, movies, books, etc. They are simply different in terms of the user experience. The combination of a magazine’s attributes make it desirable and “survivable” for some part of the reading population, for certain topics. The magazine will survive because magazine lovers will continue to demand this magazine user experience, which transcends its physicality. Paper or tablet, the essential attributes of a magazine will not change. Consumers are not going to let publishers change the characteristics of a magazine that have made the medium so successful over the years. That it has traditionally been printed on paper is not an essential characteristic of a magazine. Some publishers will inevitably disagree, but they are mistaking physical appearance for user experience. Here’s what I believe is the core of a magazine. As your publication is transformed from print to tablet, make certain it doesn’t lose even one of these essential attributes, which define the user experience. #1: Magazines are linear. Magazines are designed to be read from front to back. Magazines have covers and a table of contents. Magazines are arranged in a series of articles. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Magazines are not meant to be read in their entirety. For the three decades that I’ve been a publisher, the average time spent with the average issue of a magazine — whether a weekly, monthly or quarterly — is about an hour. Compare that with other media, where the articles constitute hundreds of pages, are arranged with taxonomies and hyperlinks, and are not linear. Hyperlinking is not linear. Any medium that enables or encourages the reader to bounce around among hundreds or thousands of articles is not a linear medium. #2: Magazines are finite. Magazines share this characteristic with books, movies and other media, but not Internet websites. The web is an infinite medium, with no beginning or end. You can never finish it. Humans desire closure, which magazines provide. A reader can say, “I have read the April issue of Vanity Fair. I finished it on Sunday.” And that doesn’t mean the reader has read every word and studied every photo. It means he started at the cover, read the table of contents, read the articles that were of interest (usually a combination of reading and skimming), and eventually put the magazine down and declared, “I’m done with that. And now I’m looking forward to the next issue.” But no one has ever said she has finished the Vanity Fair website. And no one ever will finish it. #3: Magazines are periodic. Weekly, monthly or quarterly, magazines are periodic, based on how often the user wants to consume content, and how often the content is needed and changing. If you’re a knitter, and you need six new knitting projects each year, a knitting magazine that’s delivered six times annually is ideal for you. If you’re a political news junkie and you love to catch up on the politics of the week on rainy Sunday afternoons, then a weekly subscription to The American Spectator or The Nation is your ideal. Traditionally, the economics of printing and the postal system pushed magazine Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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publishers to lower frequency. When publishers complete the switch from print to digital, we’ll pay greater attention to the natural organic frequency of magazines, rather than the economic frequency that has been imposed by postal delivery. Some users will wish there were a new issue of Vanity Fair published every Friday afternoon instead of monthly. Or published with 75 pages every week instead of 300 pages once a month. Such a publishing schedule might capture an hour of the user’s time each week instead of an hour monthly. And if a publication meets the users’ frequency needs, they will be more engaged with both the editorial content and advertisements in the medium, and more inclined to buy more affiliated publications and products. Overall, customer satisfaction and subscriber retention rates will increase. #4: Magazines are cohesive. Part of the appeal of a magazine is that it’s been edited and curated. Its editors have culled out the most interesting and most relevant content for the reader. The content is not an isolated collection of articles or stories. Instead, the editorial content is connected and cohesive. Frequently there’s an introductory letter from the editor that creates context for the content that follows. The whole (the collection of curated articles) is greater than the sum of the parts. The cohesive property of its editorial content is core to great magazine publishing. #5: Magazines are portable. Users can fully experience a magazine on the beach or on the toilet. Tablet computers do not diminish this experience. But laptops, desktops, e-readers and smart phones were not adequate media for the digitization of magazines. Going forward, tablets will do for magazines what ereaders have done for books; they will kick-start a resurgence of reading among literate people who consume elite media. #6: Magazines are textual. Magazines are an elitist medium.

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Most Americans are not regular readers and are appallingly ignorant of anything even remotely resembling enlightened thought. Unfortunately, this condition will not change with new delivery platforms. Television will continue to be the mass medium. Newspapers, magazines and books are all elite media as compared with television because they are textual. Magazines and magazine articles are “text first;” photographs are ancillary. This will not change as magazines are delivered on tablets. Editorial content, the art of storytelling, and the ability to write a paragraph that paints a picture with words and enables the user to close her eyes and visualize what the writer is describing, is not going away. Readers live in the world of ideas. The written word is their raison d’être. Magazines are an elite experience, with the written word what readers enjoy most. But what 70 percent of Americans don’t have is the magazine experience on a regular basis. #7: Magazines are collectible. People like to own magazines. As a child, I lived in a household that collected and displayed every issue of National Geographic and Reader’s Digest magazines. Steve Jobs said that while there’s a small group of consumers that wants to own television shows, most want to rent. But many magazine subscribers collect their back issues. For some specialty magazines such as Sunset and Interweave Knits, as many as 70-80 percent of subscribers keep their back issues for future reference. At a magazine website, users must be able to download an issue of the magazine. If not, it’s not a magazine website. Going forward, magazines will be universal and searchable In the future, magazines will not be limited by platform. Readers (subscribers) will expect to be able to access the content of your magazine on any platform that Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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delivers four-color-saturated, editorial content. Currently, that means desktops, laptops and tablets. Publishers will make their magazines available on the Apple iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Tablet, Kindle Fire and all other lightweight, portable, touchscreen, tabletsized, personal computers, regardless of operating system. Users will expect their subscription content to be available to them everywhere. Publishers will not risk disappointing them by making exclusive platform alliances. Additionally, in the future, a magazine delivered on a digital platform must be searchable. Whether he previously read an article in Sunset and is now actively planning a Hawaii vacation, or previously read an article in Consumer Reports and is now preparing to buy a kitchen appliance, the user wants to be able to revisit and find specific information. Why every publisher will need a subscription website In 2013, every publisher must build a subscription website that is the nexus for all the other platforms. Of course, the subscription website must enable the user to experience their magazine using all these criteria. With a companion website, publishers will disaggregate all the magazine content and create a searchable content database. While the traditional print magazine could only be searchable in a linear review of past issues, a companion magazine website enables the publisher to offer subscribers a searchable HTML database of editorial content. In 1997, we advised Consumer Reports magazine to publish on two platforms and offer two separate subscriptions. One is the print magazine, for a linear, one-hour, once-a-month experience. The other is an online database — call it a reference book or even an encyclopedia, if you like — for researching previously published editorial content in preparation for making a purchase. We would offer the same advice today. And we would recommend the launch of a second website — a truly subscription website — that would enable subscribers the nine magazine user experiences we have described above. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Note the difference between a subscription to the reference book website and a subscription to the magazine content website. The magazine website would enable users to buy and download individual issues or a 12-month subscription. The magazine website would power the digital issues, viewable on the iPad and other tablet platforms, and would have a searchable archive of all the editorial content that appeared in the magazine as a subset of the reference book website. The subscription magazine website and the subscription online reference book are different products with different uses. These differences are detailed in our handbook on subscription website strategy. The Consumer Reports reference website is used exactly like a book. The average subscriber accesses it 2.7 times annually for 5-10 minutes each time. In contrast, the average Consumer Reports magazine subscriber spends 50-60 minutes per month with each new issue. Subscribers access the online reference book for solutions. They read the magazine for mastery. Users can buy either the subscription magazine, or the subscription reference book, or both. What do you think are the essential elements of the perfect magazine template? As we prepare our digital publishing strategy, it’s clear that our digital editions will climb from a single-digit percentage of revenue into double-digit numbers. Understanding the core modality of our digital magazines along with the need to create magazine templates that display text, photos, and video in a format appropriate to the leading caplets is essential to powering that growth rate. As readers become more familiar with digital magazines, their expectations will rise above what can be met with a simple replica digital magazine template. The need to resize our magazine pages for these smaller formats will become required “table stakes” for success.

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The History and Future of Digital Magazines Mainz, Germany, 1439: Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith, invents movable type technology. This launches the information age, and the use of the printing press all over Europe even leads to a name for the new information media, the press. Germany, 1663: The Western world’s first magazine, Edifying Monthly Discussions, is published. The magazine industry is born. It took 224 years for an entrepreneur to harness the printing press for generating what we now know as magazines, and create an entire new industry. London, England, June 20, 1981: The Economist mentions the World Wide Web in an article about CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). United States, Aug. 12, 1981: IBM releases its first personal computer. United States, Oct. 27, 1994: The first commercial magazine website, HotWired, is launched by Wired magazine. The digital magazine publishing industry is born. It took 13 years for the magazine industry to jump on the computer bandwagon. California, United States, April 3, 2010: Apple releases the iPad. United States, May 26, 2010: Wired magazine’s iPad edition goes live and sells 24,000 copies in the first 24 hours. Condé Nast is only slightly behind Wired. The digital magazine publishing industry is born again. It took 53 days for the magazine industry to begin leveraging the iPad. United States, Jan. 17, 2013: Forrester announces that in the three years since the iPad was released, 200 million tablets have been sold worldwide. By contrast, they note, it took the laptop 10 years to sell 27 million units. And today the laptop is being abandoned for tablets. United States, April 9, 2013: The iPad newsstand includes 8,419 magazine apps. Amazon, creator of the Kindle tablet, has 609 magazine apps. It took 3 years for the magazine industry to make digital magazine apps as Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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readily available as any other product on the market today. Anyone who doubts that the iPad is the most important media-related technological innovation in all of human history should re-read those dates. If speed of adoption indicates affection, then consumers and the magazine industry are truly, madly, deeply in love with tablets. And the exciting thing for those of us who live and breathe magazines is that we get to live through this incredible era! The other exciting, but also sobering, thought is that the iPad has clearly become the savior of our industry, once on the verge of extinction. The iPad and its competitor tablets are perfect for lean-back consumption of content, in a way that computers never could be – who wants to sit at a desk to relax with their favorite magazine? – and consumers are increasingly demanding rich digital content that print obviously cannot deliver. Finally, tablets are more portable than laptops, but have a large enough screen to make reading content comfortable. Tablets, led by the iPad, are hotter in the marketplace than anyone ever imagined. Forrester has projected that 112.5 million US adults, or 34.3%, will own a tablet by 2016. In Europe, that number is 105.7 million, or 30.4%. And that’s small potatoes: Forrester also believes that the Asian Pacific region is growing in tablet ownership so fast that it will be the home of 34% of all tablet owners worldwide by 2017. Caution: iPad ownership in Asia, Eastern Europe and South America is currently lagging behind to the extent that magazines trying to reach the digital audience there may have to rely on iPhones for the time being. And reading magazines on iPhones is problematic. At the same time, the Alliance for Audited Media reported in February 2013 that the number of US magazines sold on tablets and other mobile platforms in the second half of 2012, while still small as a percentage of overall magazine sales, more than doubled from the same period in 2011. There are 289 titles with digital editions audited by AAM, which saw 7.9 million sales, up from 3.2 million in the same period a year earlier. Put tights and a cape on the tablet, it’s a superhero!

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Consumers quicker to adapt than digital publishing industry itself

Oddly, many of the publishers we talk to regularly still haven’t recognized the significance of the tablet to their own survival. Today’s tablets are not the boring black-and-white experience of the early Kindle, which was designed for a book reading experience. These tablets deliver a user-friendly, four-color publishing platform. The iPad has taken off well beyond Apple’s expectations, and I suspect Steve Jobs – who initially considered content consumption a minor “hobby” use for the Apple tablet – will go down in history not for the Mac or even the iPhone, but for the iPad, in exactly the same way Johannes Gutenberg did almost 600 years before him. For awhile there, it was touch and go for digital magazine publishing. Some of us feared that the industry would collapse before the right technology came along. But today we’re thrilled that both the reading public and the digital publishing industry have so quickly adopted the tablet as the lifeline it is today. Indeed, the data starting to flow indicates that consumers might even love reading magazines on tablets more than they do in print. As reported in FOLIO:, Time Inc. has been researching its subscribers since it launched its app, and those readers say they return to view the same issue close to five times, and spend about 40 minutes with each tablet edition, comparable to the average for print. Better still, reports Condé Nast, their tablet subscribers (including those who are tablet-plus-print subscribers) are renewing their subscriptions at a higher rate than print-only subscribers – and they’re also paying higher prices for their renewal subscriptions. Certainly, some publishers are farther along than others in riding the tablet train. Generally speaking, FOLIO: notes in Digital Magazines 2013, the larger the company, the faster and farther the tablet adoption has come. The MPA Swipe 2.0 conference (their poorly-named conference on digital magazines) speaker list was filled with Hearst, Condé Nast, and other large-circulation publishers discussing their latest app launches, or even relaunches. But that doesn’t mean smaller niche publishers shouldn’t get in on the action. While Forbes magazine has an absolutely awesome, technology-rich app, let’s not forget the comparatively tiny Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR), whose digital Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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magazine publishing strategy has powered revenues unimagined by the publisher before the advent of the tablet. BAR is the publication of a nonprofit organization, and has roughly 50,000 unique visitors monthly. Its digital edition drove 6.4% of the organization’s revenues in 2012, even though digital wasn’t launched until October of that year, and that rate doubled in the first two months of 2013. Digital magazine publishing and you Obviously, Mequoda urges every publisher to get going with a digital edition, whether you’re BAR or Forbes, or something in between. The monetization of your content will go through the roof for a plethora of reasons. First, as FOLIO: notes, tablet editions open you up to younger and more affluent readers. Usually you can get one or the other in your audience, but not both: This is the best of both worlds. In addition, with the cost of printing and mailing print issues eliminated, your content can be “delivered” and read all over the world. Then there’s advertising. You probably already know that advertisers are fleeing print for digital in droves, but did you know that you can charge more for those digital ads? Rich content enhanced with extra photos, slideshows, videos and audio content such as that seen in Forbes and The New Yorker is worth more to readers, keeps them engaged longer, and of course, builds a bigger audience base. Not only that, but many platforms allow for interactive buying from within an ad. At Wired, 2012 saw digital ad revenues hit 50% of its total, and The Atlantic hit 59%. Some observers are cautious, but with the rapid and enthusiastic adoption of mobile magazine reading by consumers, we’re optimistic here at Mequoda. There are dozens of companies out there looking for your business in translating your print product to a mobile edition. BAR, our modest-sized client, partnered with BlueToad, and Forbes went with MAZ for its fancier version. Of course, if you can do it in-house, the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is the industry standard, although arguably not the best tool. We’re big fans and partners of Mag+ which offers comparable functionality to Adobe DPS at a price that’s much more comfortable for most small and mid-size publishers. (See the next section for more on digital magazine publishing software.) So don’t wait. If you haven’t jumped into the pool yet, take the leap!

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Digital Magazine Publishing Software Publishers have been trying digital magazine publishing software during the last few years in hopes of creating the best digital products for their audiences. And like everything else in digital magazine land, digital magazine software has evolved at light speed since we made our initial recommendations. Here’s our latest look at the magazine software landscape. Major digital magazine publishing software options Adobe Digital Publishing Suite: The Adobe Publishing Suite is one digital magazine publishing software option that offers a complete digital publishing solution. It allows users to publish for print, the web, and tablets seamlessly. Whether selling digital products or using digital products to develop larger audiences, Adobe has created an option that brings content layout, graphics, illustrations, and distribution to digital publishers. However, getting into DPS Enterprise requires an upfront cost of more than $50,000, and Adobe also charges $.35 per download. This makes DPS best suited for large, multi-title publishers – 10 publications or more. Some of our earliest clients to jump into the digital space, such as Interweave, were such multi-title operations. But because Mequoda tends to champion the little guy – that is, small, independent niche publishers – we’ve identified another provider as the best choice for them. But because Mequoda tends to champion the little guy – that is, small, independent niche publishers – we’ve identified another provider as the best choice for them – Mag+. Mag+: A spin-out company derived from Bonnier Corp.’s very early Popular Science app, Mag+ is our new go-to provider. Full disclosure: We’ve signed a partnership agreement with them and direct our niche clients with one to three titles their way. We find that Mag+’s feature set and functionality are similar to Adobe, and also support our best practices such as content reflow, including HTML links and other Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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interactive features. But Mag+ is simply more affordable for small publishers, both the base price and the entitlement price for downloading issues to clients’ subscribers. You’ll pay just $599 per month to publish to all devices, and about $.04 per download, depending on the size of the issue. And unlike Adobe, Mag+ allows publishers – including our clients who use Haven Gate, our comprehensive premium subscription management program – to host their digital magazines themselves. So you don’t even have to pay that entitlement cost. This also allows you to eliminate the newsstand middleman and keep the cut you’d normally owe them for each issue sold. Another benefit: You also control your own subscription offers, including copy, price and incentive testing, not to mention offer tracking and data harvesting. Another benefit of Mag+, in our experience, is that the culture there is more compatible with ours as champions of the independent publisher. Their executive team is open and very willing to answer questions and work with small publishers. At Adobe, not surprisingly, you’ll find a closed culture where you’re routed to resellers who often know less than you do about digital magazine publishing, and little if any support comes from Adobe itself. Frankly, we expect that Mag+ will eventually pass Adobe and take over the #1 slot, because there are simply more independent small titles than there are companies like Hearst, Meredith and Time Inc. GTxcel: Texterity has merged with Godengo – and created a mystifying new brand name – to both provide websites for magazines and create digital editions and mobile magazine apps. Their multi-channel approach is available to audiences in digital, on the web, and through mobile, providing readers and advertisers a modern experience. BlueToad: Similar to GTxcel’s offerings, BlueToad provides digital magazine publishing software for digital editions and mobile apps. BlueToad takes PDFs and turns them into viewable formats online. We have some clients who jumped into digital publishing before Mag+ arrived and found BlueToad fit their needs satisfactorily. As the magazine and newsletter industries continue down the path of digital evolution, new product solutions will reach the market.

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Launching a Digital Magazine Some industry insiders are still skeptical about the power of digital magazines. And they’re still ignoring them. At Mequoda, we urge our clients to begin the process of launching a digital publication yesterday, because, as you know if you follow our posts on Mequoda Daily, we firmly believe the future of our industry lies in mobile publishing. I know some publishers feel paralyzed by the idea of a new process. After all, this isn’t like launching a direct mail campaign, or selling advertising, or redesigning your magazine, or any of the things publishers have done for decades. But it’s not as complicated as it seems. Because we’re always here to help, here are the five steps you must take to launch your first digital magazine, whether you’re starting with a legacy product or you have a brand new digital only publication in mind. If you read through this list, you’ll know exactly what to expect launching your digital publication. This is exactly what we do with our clients, and it’s true whether you’re starting with a legacy product or you have a brand new digitalonly publication in mind. In fact, about a third of our clients don’t have a legacy publication at all and exist only online. That means that while they don’t have print material to draw on, they do have their portal, blog or video content they can use to create a digital-only magazine. So fear not. Let us walk you through the process and hopefully propel you into action. Launching digital magazines: Step 1 The very first thing a budding digital publisher must do is decide on the format of the magazine. Will the magazine be a simple replica, or offer enhanced features (replica-plus)? If you follow Mequoda best practices, you’ll choose to reflow your print content for maximum readability. That means redesigning each page in a vertical format, so long articles flow into bottomless pages and the reader swipes vertically to read the full articles. You’ll also include as many live hyperlinks as possible for additional resources – both the links included in your print product and new ones that you’ve added just for the digital product. Consumers tell us they love having extra information and content that they can’t get in the print product. If you just upload PDFs of your print pages, you’re not taking advantage of the technology. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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As we’ve noted already, Mequoda has a partnership agreement with Mag+, a company we’ve chosen because of its wide range of options for publishers and its accessibility and affordability to smaller operations like those of our clients. We urge you to check them out, along with other options such as Adobe, GTxcel and BlueToad. Launching digital magazines: Step 2 Adding interactive elements to your digital magazine is essential. And the thing consumers love most about tablets is video. This may sound daunting, but don’t assume this is out of your reach. Existing DVD or downloadable video content can be repurposed. You can start producing video content of your own, or at least dip your toes in the water by reaching out to bloggers and others in your niche who might have videos they’d be willing to share with you. One of our clients began just that way, and soon found that demand outpaced the supply of existing video content. That gave them the motivation and confidence in the market to start creating their own videos. In addition to video, you could at least deliver photo galleries of images that didn’t make it into the print product, or behind-the-scenes shots or similar material. Finally, you should be prepared to have at least one bonus article, with interactive elements, in every digital issue to enhance value. Launching digital magazines: Step 3 Two words: Subscription website. If you don’t have one, create one. Mequoda clients use our comprehensive premium subscription management program called Haven Gate to launch a premium subscription website as part of their product lineup. There are a number of advantages to having a subscription website related to your print and digital magazines. First, it helps you develop a relationship with your readers and keeps them engaged with your brand. And since you have other products to promote (you do, don’t you?), it gives you the perfect platform to do just that. Having a subscription website associated with your print or digital products also allows you to sell subscriptions and back issues yourself, instead of relying on Apple and other newsstands – which in turn means you get to keep the cut you’d have to give those third parties. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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You also control your subscription offers, including copy, price and incentive testing, not to mention offer tracking and data harvesting. Above all, having that premium subscription website means you can bundle your products – website, digital and print – in a way that drives an increase of 30-40% in per-customer revenue. What’s more, because the average customer stays with you for about three years, you’ll be getting $90 from that customer instead of $60 over that lifetime. Launching digital magazines: Step 4 Choose your pricing strategy. Take this example from the Biblical Archaelogy Society (BAS) to heart: Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) digital at $19.95 BAS digital library on the premium subscription website at $29.95 BAR digital + BAS library at $34.95 More than half of BAS’ sales are for the highest priced product – $15 more than the lowest priced product. • The second highest sale price point is the middle price. Few consumers bother with the cheapest product! • • • •

Launching digital magazines: Step 5 Determine your marketing strategy. This means establishing a schedule to integrate digital magazine promotions into daily, weekend and spotlight emails that you send out to email subscribers from your portal. (You do have a portal, don’t you? Right there associated with that premium subscription website you should also have, right?) You should plan to promote your digital product once every six weeks or so. We have plenty of advice for using email to market your products, in case you’re unsure. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Mequoda has already worked out the process, so you don’t have to stress over it. Whatever choices you make, at least now you know the outline of the process.

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Digital Magazine Design  

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The Short + Sweet of Magazine Apps Six best practices in digital magazine publishing, plus five definitions from the new digital age Now it’s time to take a look around and quantify some best practices that we’ve noted in researching apps and digital magazines. First, some definitions. Terminology is changing daily, as it always does with new technology and new products, but for now we should at least attempt to clarify a few things. Some of these definitions come from outside Mequoda, but others are our own preferred definitions that serve to clarify some of the confusion in the industry right now. Digital magazine The Alliance for Audited Media (formerly ABC) defines a digital edition as distribution of a magazine’s content via electronic means. The digital edition must maintain the same identity of the host publication by maintaining the same brand characteristics. Mequoda agrees with this definition. Replica At Mequoda, we consider a replica edition to be one that’s fairly simple, with print content digitized on pages exactly as the print edition does it. The user swipes right to left in order to read left to right, and the pages are exactly as they appear in the print version, only downsized to fit on a tablet screen. Replica-plus This is the most advanced version of a digital magazine currently available. Now the publisher is adding the interactive bells and whistles to a nicely reflowed magazine. This gives you everything that readers are looking for in digital magazines. In practice we have never found an example of a simple reflow edition. Apparently, if publishers are going to invest in a reflow edition, they’re also enhancing it with additional features. Reflow A Mequoda Best Practice, reflowing your magazine so that the pages and type aren’t downsized and unreadable makes your magazine much more reader-friendly. In this version, the page is redesigned to fit the screen without shrinking the type. Additionally, it can be designed so that the page fits horizontally, but not vertically. The user swipes up to scroll through what is essentially one very long page. Reflow-plus Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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This is the most advanced version of a digital magazine currently available. Now the publisher is adding the interactive bells and whistles to a nicely reflowed magazine. This gives you everything that readers are looking for in digital magazines. Magazine app For the publishing industry, Mequoda considers a magazine app – or just “app” – to be the program that allows users to access their digital editions on a mobile device. Readers download the app from a digital newsstand, and most apps are currently nothing more than a sales outlet for subscriptions and single copies. More creative apps, such as those of New York and Forbes, offer free content of some kind that’s updated every day, in order to keep readers coming back for more. Others at least include a free issue or free sample content, in addition to selling subscriptions. Gadget app At Mequoda we use this term to distinguish certain kinds of apps from the ones that most publishers are familiar with – the app that sells the magazine – and to avoid confusion. A gadget app doesn’t sell the magazine, but it provides some other function that’s related to the magazine’s content. For instance, Farm Progress has an app called “Growing Degree Days” for use on smartphones, which “measures the maturity of your crop by viewing current and past growing degree days data for your farm’s location.” Another example would be Martha Stewart’s “Martha’s Everyday Food: Fresh & Easy Recipes.” Unfortunately, gadget apps often seem to have serious usability problems that annoy users, and few publishers are actually making any money with them yet, and most of those that do are doing so through sponsorships. That’s why we’re careful to distinguish between magazine apps – good! – and gadget apps – generally not so great yet. Tablet When writers refer to tablets, they’re often talking about mobile computers such as iPads and all competitors such as the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook, products from Microsoft and Blackberry, and the Google Nexus. Others only consider tablets to be the iPad and similar larger devices that have multiple functions, while the smaller Kindle and Nook devices are referred to as e-readers, being largely limited to reading functions.

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What Is a Digital Replica? Publications like New York, Forbes and The Atlantic have become leaders in what we consider the second phase of mobile publishing development – the technology is dependable, early jumpers are releasing their all-new versions upgraded from their 2010 efforts, and standards for what consumers are willing to pay for are establishing themselves. But there are hundreds of smaller publishers out there bravely forging ahead without the expensive bells and whistles of the big boys. These companies are only on their first app iteration, not their second or third, and have substantially fewer resources to throw at a digital magazine. These are the publishers for whom the digital replica was made. No one says you have to start out like New York, with a spectacularly innovative digital magazine platform. Nope, you can ease into the mobile publishing age with a simple digital replica magazine, and still satisfy your readers, your advertisers and your bottom line. A replica edition is fairly simple, with print content digitized on pages exactly as the print edition does it. Usually this means simply uploading PDFs of your pages into software of some kind, or having someone else do it for you. The layout, advertising and content are exactly the same as the print version, no more or less, and each page, accessed by swiping horizontally, is identical to the print original. (Note: If you currently create your magazine pages as PNGs, please resist the temptation to upload those. The iPad’s technology makes those pages look fuzzy and pixelated. That’s definitely a no-no.) Producing a digital replica is a fairly simple process now, with dozens of providers offering software and even hosting, marketing and analytics services. And if you’re concerned that you’ll look like a publishing dinosaur by putting out a simple replica, fear not. At least not yet. These days, many perfectly respectable publishers are opting for the replica because of the lower price points for design (none) and production. Among the simple replica brethren are the brand-new Atlantic Weekly, Black Belt and other magazines from Active Interest Media, Fine Gardening and other Taunton Press publications, Sound + Vision and other Bonnier magazines; even a Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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brand-new digital-only science magazine called Brain Dump. You’re certainly in good company if you choose to go replica only. Digital replica: The cons Obviously the biggest downside to creating a digital replica of your magazine is that it’s an entirely new expense, requiring more manpower and technology that you never needed before Steve Jobs and his iPad came along. We’ll get into the actual costs later. In addition, many publishers find that their sales staffers have trouble selling advertising now that it’s so much more complicated in the digital world. The metrics are complex and not standardized, and explaining the benefits to a new advertiser may take more knowledge than your print ad salespeople have. From the consumer point of view, one of the biggest complaints we hear about replicas is that the page, being simply minimized to fit into a tablet screen, delivers type that’s too small for many people to read. Enlarging the view then expands the page beyond the confines of the tablet screen, so the reader has to move the page around with a finger to read all of it. Another problem that no one seems to be measuring is that a replica edition, if done sloppily, can generate animosity and drive consumers away from your brand – even long-time readers. In the iPad newsstand, I see dozens of complaints about the technology of every app I’ve ever reviewed here, and many I haven’t – and I mean 1-star ratings out of 5. An example from TIME magazine, which should have the money to do these things right: (1 star) No longer interested I have not been able to download the last three issues, even thought they appear on the library shelf, and I have downloaded the upgrade. This is a waste of time, and I am going to write my subscription off. I guess that subscriber won’t be renewing any time soon.

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Digital replica: The pros So why should you trust your brand to a digital replica? Most importantly, because consumers now expect and even demand a mobile version of your magazine. The longer publishers wait to jump on the bandwagon, the more they risk losing their audience to rivals who already have a mobile version. On top of that, consumers are starting to actually prefer digital magazines to print, partly because of the convenience and, especially in the case of millennials, partly because of the green factor: A full 37% of respondents in a 2011 MPA survey said that digital media’s lighter environmental impact was one of the reasons they buy digital media. And while I mentioned above our consumer research showing that the small type of a replica can be a pain for readers, there is an alternative to the basic replica that we call the “vertical swipe reflow,” which allows a larger font size as each article is then reflowed into a long single page that’s accessed by swiping vertically. We’ll get into this option more deeply in another chapter. It’s something most publishers could choose at a minimal expense – at Mequoda, for instance, we charge $35 per page to redesign a magazine to reflow – to overcome the replica “con” of small type. Besides, consumers are increasingly willing to spend serious cash on mobile media, unlike expectations of website content back in the early Internet days when everyone demanded that all content be free. PriceWaterhouseCoopers has even predicted that consumer spending on digital magazines will top $80.2B by 2016. You certainly want to be getting in on that action, even with a plain replica! By the way, tablet magazine readers are also younger and more affluent, according to numerous studies – a two-fer that’s rare for any commodity – making them a tempting audience for both publishers and advertisers. That’s one reason why you may also be able to charge higher prices for advertising. Another reason is that readers have been shown to be more engaged with, and spend more time on, digital content than on print. Although as I’ve noted, advertising rates appear to be lagging behind, others report higher prices being charged successfully. Furthermore, by going electronic and taking delivery costs out of the equation, you can afford to expand your reach globally for the first time. And as some publishers have proven, adding a digital magazine to your product line might allow you to Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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actually raise subscription rates without substantial pushback from your readers. Finally, data is starting to trickle in showing that digital subscribers, including those who get the digital edition as part of their print subscription, renew at higher rates and at higher price points. That’s not too bad, either. So … is it worth your time and expense to publish a replica? While you’re weighing the above pros and cons, you’ll also need to consider cost. The best thing about the replica is that uploading PDFs is pretty much all there is to it: No need to redesign around fancy options like interactive ads, videos, or interactive content. If you want to move beyond the simple replica, most providers will happily do so for you, but let’s consider the basics of producing a plain replica. When it comes to providers in this space, Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite is the granddaddy of them all. However, getting into DPS Enterprise requires an upfront cost of more than $50,000, and Adobe also charges $.35 per download. This makes DPS best suited for large, multi-title publishers. Number 2 in the field is Mag+, which Mequoda generally recommends for its clients. For Mag+, you’re going to pay $599 per month to publish to all devices, and about $.04 per download. (And unlike Adobe, Mag+ allows publishers to host their digital magazines themselves, eliminating the download cost.) This package is much friendlier to smaller publishers. There are so many other factors and options that I’ll be revisiting this issue in an entire blog post later, but for now I’ll just mention that you can also get software only and do all the rest yourself, or even use free, open-source software such as Treesaver. How much should you charge? Pricing for digital magazines is as chaotic right now as your average Macy’s sale. No two pricing policies are alike! However, we’ve determined that the average single-copy price is $4.97, while the average 1-year subscription rate is $19.97. Some folks bundle their digital subscriptions with print for an extra $5-$10. Others maintain completely separate subscription options. If you’re feeling bold you can add bundle your digital subscription with your print subscription, and take that opportunity to raise your print price. Of course, the real question in pricing is how you’re going to break even and make Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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money after investing in your digital edition. And as I said, the cost of going digital is complex enough to merit its own spreadsheet. But here’s the bottom line based on Mequoda’s research so far: To launch a simple replica, you can expect to pay about $7200 per year for Mag+, plus another $2000-$3000 in labor. If you have a $30 subscription, with the average 70% remit, you’ll need to sell 500 subscriptions to break even. And even the smallest of publishers we’ve heard from are selling 10,000 or more in their first year. If that’s not enough to get you on the digital bandwagon, we don’t know what is. There are dozens of replica editions already out there, and there are enough advantages to mobile publishing that Mequoda believes no one should hesitate.

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What is a Replica Plus? When we first saw the Forbes app, we were wowed. Ah, how quickly things change in mobile publishing. In that brief time, we’ve discovered newer, better apps that give us second thoughts about Forbes. I think we’ll start adding a disclaimer to our case studies along the lines of “This is awesome … today. Tomorrow, who knows?” The digital replica is the most basic version of a digital magazine you can create. Upload a PDF of your publication to the Internet and voila! You’re a mobile publisher. A digital replica is, as we explained before, a version in which print content appears on the tablet screen exactly as it appears on a print page. The layout, advertising and content are exactly the same as the print version, no more or less, and the pages are accessed by swiping horizontally. Forbes delivers what we call a replica-plus. And normally you’d think that doing as Forbes has done in adding bells and whistles to a plain old replica, such as video, audio, HTML links and other technology-rich features, would be an improvement to the simple replica. We’re not so sure that it’s a good enough upgrade, and here’s why. The problem with adding bells and whistles to a simple replica to create a replicaplus lies in one of the disadvantages of the replica mentioned in that previous chapter. But first, let’s look at the pros and cons of the replica plus. Replica-plus digital magazine: Pros The advantages of the replica-plus are similar to the replica, in that consumers increasingly expect digital versions of their favorite magazines, either because of convenience or because of the “green” factor. What’s more, consumers are also becoming more willing than ever to pay for digital content. And the replica-plus model creates an even more audience-engaging environment for advertisers than even the simple replica, with all those interactive features. Finally, renewal rates are gradually showing themselves to be higher for mobile editions.

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Replica-plus digital magazine: Cons You probably remember from a few pages ago that the major drawback to the replica is the small type necessary to shrink a print page down to tablet size. You can pinch out to enlarge the type, but then the page no longer fits in a tablet screen. This is more than just an inconvenience; it’s a major source of complaint for many consumers we’ve talked to. And it makes your mobile magazine basically inaccessible to anyone over the age of 40. So here’s why we believe the replica-plus is not enough of an improvement over a basic replica: It doesn’t solve the type size problem. It just increases the user’s frustration by creating more things he can’t see. And when you’re in enlarged mode with part of each page missing, you’re that much more likely to overlook the links and tappable buttons that lead to the videos, audio and other fancy features anyway. In short, the replica-plus is akin to adding fancy whipped cream, chocolate syrup and cherries to a bowl of dirt. It costs more to create, yet does very little to make the dirt more appealing. Solution to the digital magazine replica dilemma Instead of dressing up a plain replica with whipped cream, Mequoda advocates for something we call a reflow version. The reflow allows the type to resize and reflow around ads and images in order to fit on a tablet screen while still being readable. Nothing shrinks. Your readers over are happy. Best of all, the reflow isn’t as costly or time-consuming as you might think. As we noted already, Mequoda redesigns digital magazines for clients for $35 per page. A visual difference So let’s take another look at Forbes, which admittedly has some truly awesome bells and whistles. I’m looking at a page on which a full-page opinion piece is squeezed onto a tablet screen. Even in real life it’s hard to read, especially the eye exam at the bottom in all caps, listing the contributors to the piece.

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Now check out a page from the nicely reflowed Bon Appétit. Does the original page fit into the tablet screen? Nope. It fits horizontally, so there’s no need to push the content around with a finger to find the beginning and end of sentences. But vertically, the content runs off bottom of the tablet screen, and, as the arrows at the bottom indicate, you scroll down to read the entire piece. And, blessedly, even a 50-something can read the type.

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If you want to improve your basic digital replica, we do not advise going with the next step that so many publishers seem to believe is logical, the replica plus. Instead, invest your money in a reflow. Your lovely, user-friendly mobile magazine is going to increase revenues, after all, and it won’t be long before you can afford to add the bells and whistles you long for.

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What Is a Reflow Plus? So now we’ve covered the simple replica and the replica plus. The other two digital options are the reflow plus and the digital-only magazine, which has no legacy print publication to compare it to or to hold back its designers. You might wonder how I skipped from replica plus to reflow plus, without considering the reflow by itself. That’s because we haven’t found anyone doing just a reflowed version of their magazine. Everyone who’s invested the time and money into reflowing their publication seems to have also added the bells and whistles that make their magazines “pluses.” What’s a reflow? A reflowed magazine has been designed so that the text and images are enlarged but still fit onto a mobile device screen horizontally, instead of forcing a magazine page-full of content onto the smaller screen by shrinking everything, as the replica does. Content that doesn’t fit on one page is simply flowed onto the next. This means the reflowed version is vastly superior to a simple replica where a magazine page-full of content is shrunk down enough to fit as one page on a mobile device screen, especially to folks whose eyes aren’t quite what they used to be. And there are two ways to reflow your content: Keep it flowing horizontally, so that the reader simply reads your entire magazine horizontally from newly-flowed page to newly-flowed page as she would a print magazine. Then there’s the vertical reflow, also known as vertical swipe. In this version, the content in each article, if it doesn’t fit on one page, flows downward, and is accessed by swiping up. Consumer Reports’ navigation section gives us the big picture:

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The reader swipes horizontally to navigate from article to article, and vertically to read articles longer than one tablet-sized page. Note that when you reach the bottom of a vertically-swiped page, you don’t have to scroll back to the top to swipe horizontally to the next article. That can be done from anywhere within the long vertical page. Magic!

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Reflow-plus: Pros As I’ve been saying all along, having a digital version of your magazine is a basic advantage, given the light-speed adoption of mobile devices by the reading public. And the reflow-plus is superior to both a simple replica and to the replica-plus. The most obvious benefit is, of course, readability. Increasing access to your content is always a good idea. And we’re definitely not fans of the replica-plus, a simple PDF with added bells and whistles. Why spend your money on extras when readers have to squint to see them? Compare a page from Forbes, left, which is a replica, to a reflowed page from The Economist, right, for readability:

In addition, a reflow is also an excellent use of the technology that digital natives seem to want in digital products. Users accustomed to digital media become impatient with low-tech PDF replicas. Finally, the “plus” part of Mequoda’s name for this version tells you that the magazine uses technology to enhance the reading experience with video, additional popup content, audio and more. That means more engaged readers, happier advertisers and a more profitable magazine. Reflow-plus: Cons Yes, a reflow-plus costs more than a simple replica. I can’t share provider prices with you because they’re usually negotiated with a sales rep, but Mequoda partner Mag+ says that on average it take about 10 minutes per page to reflow the content Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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– five minutes for a short piece such as a letter from the editor, and a few hours for an eight-page feature. And Mag+ tells me that many of their customers who start out with the simple replica move to custom design, including reflow, after only a few issues. The only other disadvantage we can come up with for the reflow is potential confusion for readers of vertical reflow magazines – but that’s easily remedied by explaining how it works in your user’s guide (which of course you have, because it’s a Mequoda Best Practice) and by including visual cues or icons, such as arrows, in vertical articles to tell readers how to find the rest of the content. Best examples of reflow-plus An example we often cite of reflow is The Economist, which offers horizontal reflow. It tells readers where they are in each article with small dots at the bottom of each page.

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Vertical reflow is illustrated by Bon Appetit, which uses nice big arrows to help the inexperienced reader find the rest of the reflowed articles. You can reflow sections of your content within a reflowed page, too. This interesting twist is employed Scientific American, for one. The reflow-plus is one of our preferred design styles. We certainly believe that it’s worth the extra cost if you can swing it, and certainly a better way to spend your money than tacking fancy features onto a simple replica.

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What Do People Want in a Free App? As the first wave of digital magazine apps has passed, we’ve discovered one thing: People hate apps with nothing in them. And yet, the vast majority of digital magazine apps available today are nothing more than a retail outlet for single copies and subscriptions! They are labeled as free, but have nothing to offer unless a purchase is made within the app. This practice is the reason why so many magazine apps have low ratings, as can be witnessed by reading the reviews. While we often talk about prices and opining on the dire need to raise them, at the same time, magazine readers are like many other digital consumers in expecting something free on their tablets. And disappointing them right out of the gate when they first download your app is not exactly a marketing Best Practice. In case you hadn’t noticed, your competition and peers are starting to solve this problem. So it behooves publishers to rethink their app strategy pronto, if not sooner! But fear not, we have some solutions to the app customer service nightmare, courtesy of some very savvy publishers.

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What kind of apps do people want, #1: The magalog

Condé Nast, as we’ve mentioned before, is on the leading edge in digital magazine publishing. So it’s no surprise that they’ve developed an app for SELF (Motto: Tap into your best self!) that combines free content – enhanced with videos and extra “tappable” content, with sell copy urging you to subscribe now. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s a lot like the magalog of old – a carefully crafted blend of free content and marketing messages. SELF does it with a back issue from 2011. On a page titled Let’s Get Physical, featuring two exercises that are illustrated with video, SELF proclaims, “Buy it now! Get the new issue of SELF and let us be your personal trainer!” There are variations of this message on every page, from beauty to fashion to healthy eating. One quibble: You can’t get to the “Subscribe” page by tapping on these messages. You have to know enough about apps to tap on the Home icon. At least one of them includes instructions: “Go to the home screen of this app to buy the newest issue! You’ll find tons of easy ways to eat better today.” All in all, a clever approach that combines the best of free content with marketing. Watching someone actually do an exercise is roughly 2,376 times more useful than looking at a static image.

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What kind of apps do people want, #2: The free issue

Interestingly, the publisher who perfected the magalog in the olden days, Consumer Reports, doesn’t do an app magalog. Instead, it delivers free issues. This is the most common style of content-rich app, and you can choose to offer either a free back issue, or a special issue you’ve put together for this purpose. Consumer Reports does the latter, although I suspect it’s actually an existing back issue. Why do I only “suspect?” Because there isn’t a single date in this free issue, not even in the car reviews. The reader has no idea which model year is being Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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reviewed, and that goes for the tablet reviews, the washer and dryer reviews, and everything else in the free issue. As marketers, we love it. You get the full flavor of Consumer Reports’ rich content, yet nothing is really being given away – who would choose a car based on data that could be years old, and then decide they already got what they wanted and exit the app without subscribing? What’s more, at the end of every article is a full-page ad featuring an image of an iPad with a cover related to the content of that article – the Best Tablets, Cameras, TV, Phones, E-readers and More issue after the tablet review, the annual auto issue after the car review, and so on. The text is the same on every ad: Enjoying your free preview issue? Subscribe today and save up to 59% off the single-issue price.

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What kind of apps do people want, #3: Updated free content

Instead of just offering a free issue, you can really step up your game like New York magazine. This is the most entertaining, awesome digital magazine app out there. New York has broken new ground. With this free app, you get daily content including news, features and columns. Pages and pages of free, new content. You could easily spend an hour or more reading it.

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Then, when you’re done, and you’re well and thoroughly dazzled, you simply tap on the magazine link at the bottom left, and you get the table of contents and the opportunity to buy. If you’re already a subscriber, you still enjoy the free content, and when you’re ready to read your issue, it’s only a seamless swipe away. Finally, for the pièce de résistance, there’s a link on the “Latest News” page – the home page for the free content – to the website. New York’s free news content and paid magazine content are both easily accessible at all times with their unique “window shade” feature – just “pull” the “handle” with a finger. And then there’s the thumbnail menu of the magazine’s pages at the bottom when you’re in that part of the app. There are just so many ways to love this app, we can’t list them all. Everything New York magazine does is readily available, free or for a price, seamlessly connected, and easy to navigate. Clearly you need a fairly large staff of journalists to make this kind of daily content happen for free, but the app, launched in early 2013 to mark the magazine’s 45th anniversary, is a home run.

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The Art of the Vertical Swipe Isn’t it fascinating to consider how the old journalism phrase “above the fold” has evolved? Once it literally meant “above the fold” of a traditional broadsheet newspaper. Editors, writers and designers battled over what, and who, would win a coveted spot above that fold, where the most reader eyeballs would land. Now, even as those broadsheets themselves are in decline, heading for dinosaur status, the phrase still lives – in tablet publishing. Of course tablets have no fold. But they do have a single screen, and for magazines employing the Mequoda Best Practice of vertical reflow, “above the fold” – that is, the first screen – has become once again a layout consideration. Vertical reflow, also known as vertical swipe, to describe how the user accesses the content, means a layout where instead of squeezing a magazine page into the smaller tablet screen, the content is resized and reflowed on a bottomless tablet page. Users swipe up to bring up this long page as they read. The reader can swipe horizontally at any point on this page to go to the next article. Mequoda prefers this layout because it’s reader-friendly; even young folks can have trouble reading content that’s squeezed down from magazine size to tablet size if you don’t reflow your content. And the growing popularity of this layout has led to new design considerations – what should you put on that first screen, above the “fold?” Designing above the fold for the iPad What with 62% of the market owning a full-sized iPad, I’m focusing only on designing for that specific device. When you employ vertical reflow, you don’t have to worry about responsive design, because the content’s already laid out to be easily viewed on that iPad screen. And just as in the newspaper days when editors chose content to go above the fold that would keep their readers engaged and coming back every day, iPad content designers have to consider how to do the same. You don’t want your subscribers or single-issue buyers yawning and scrolling straight through your magazine. Those readers won’t be renewing, or buying a subscription, if they’re not captured by your content in the first few seconds on each page. And it’s certainly a waste of Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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resources if you’re spending time and money to reflow your content without taking reader engagement into consideration. So how to get readers’ attention and keep it? At the moment, there are several different design options popping up out there. 1. Use a big, provocative headline This is fairly common. For example, New York magazine, one of our tablet favorites, does this for every feature it publishes. This is gratifying yet challenging for writers, and reminiscent of the days of 19th-century journalism where big fat headlines were the only tools newspapers had to get readers’ attention. In fact, the headline for one article in a recent issue was created in a font that could have been ripped directly from one of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, circa 1899.

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2. Feature a compelling image. Again, fairly common. The right image can really have an impact on a reader casually scrolling through a digital magazine. In practice, an image completely alone looks like an ad, so all of the designs with prominent images I found have at least a small headline included to indicate that it’s editorial content. Wired does this for most of its features. (In an interesting enhancement, Popular Science lets you double-tap the screen to make the headline and any text disappear, and enjoy the lead image all by itself.)

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3. Start with an engaging video. Though video is something that consumers expect in their tablet magazines, this is harder to find in practice. Popular Science, ever the leader, delivers. An article on a vertical veggie farm opens with a woman talking about her work and video of the farm’s produce flowing in behind her.

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4. Combine a compelling image with moveable text. This is a technological offering that our partner, Mag+, is excited about. “Layering” allows the designer to feature a stationary image and have the corresponding text be scrollable. Mental Floss does this particularly well. In fact, it even offers a compelling image above the fold, which, as the text scrolls into view, fades gradually until the screen shows all text. I don’t know how much this contributes to reader engagement in the traditional sense, but it certainly makes you want to find out what other technological bells and whistles Mental Floss will come up with!

5. Do nothing special, but at least make sure there’s a great image above the fold. This is how most regular departments are handled by the reflowed magazines I surveyed. The design is really just a resized version of the print magazine page. And we can’t expect blockbuster, knock-your-socks off design for every single lead page – it’s just not a practical use of resources. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Of course designers being designers, we may soon see other “above the fold” offerings that we haven’t seen yet or even thought of. That’s the beautiful thing about tablet magazine publishing!

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Digital Magazine Best Practices in Design, Content and Functionality

Given that we’ve already revised our thinking since I started regularly reviewing digital magazines less than a year ago, I concede that anything we name as a Best Practice in digital magazines is purely temporary. But I’m going to bravely list our current Best Practices for the mobile magazine that I know you’re all going to publish, if you’re haven’t already. Tomorrow someone might invent something new that blows away a previous Best Practice, so this is obviously an evolving list. And now, without further ado, here’s the official list: Mequoda’s Current Digital Magazine Publishing Best Practices DESIGN Digital magazines should… 1. Feature readable design. Whether you reflow the content to fit the screen or use responsive design to reflow content for different devices on the fly, you must make the pages easy to read. Consumers don’t buy tablets and smartphones so they can take eye exams, no matter how young they are. We offer up two options: Design your magazine with vertical reflow, like that used in New York or Consumer Reports magazines. The text is larger and fits more comfortably on a Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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tablet screen, and flows off the screen in a long vertical page that’s accessed by swiping. This is also called vertical swipe. The reader swipes horizontally to get to the first page of every article, then vertically to read each article. Consumer Reports’ navigation tool shows exactly how this works.

Use responsive design like The Economist, so that text and images automatically reconfigure themselves to fit the device they’re being viewed on.

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2. Be easy to navigate. We learned from our Mequoda Tablet Users Study Video that users are a bit frustrated at having to learn something new with every magazine they read. And a full 89% of respondents in a November 2011 MPA study agreed that “it would be great if all magazine apps had the same functions and navigational features.” Since there are no standards as yet for digital magazine design, it’s helpful to your readers to include a user guide just inside the “cover” that explains how to navigate your publication. Many publishers use line drawings of fingers scrolling and pages turning. The Economist has a much fancier version featuring photos.

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You should also insert tappable links from the teasers on your cover directly to the article; include a “scrubber bar” that’s essentially a scrolling bar of thumbnails for every page to enable browsing; and use icons to show readers what to do, such as arrows pointing down if you have a vertical article that needs to be swiped. 3. Accommodate either portrait or landscape viewing – not both.

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We think that making your digital magazine viewable in both modes is a waste of resources better spent elsewhere, so unless you have very deep pockets, choose one and focus those resources on making it look awesome. And in case you’re wondering, based on user preference, we recommend portrait mode, unless you have a compelling reason to use landscape. CONTENT Digital magazines should … 1. Use the available technology to enhance the reading experience. Yes, digital magazine readers notice that you’re wasting the technology if your digital publication is a simple replica of your print edition. They want interactivity: videos, audio, photo galleries, links to outside sources and extra content that’s not available in print. In addition to adding reader satisfaction, interactivity increases reader engagement, and that’s a good thing for your advertisers and therefore your advertising revenues. A good example of this comes in a recent Men’s Health article on a hot new movie star, where the reader can tap an image and get career advice from an expert, based on an observation the actor makes in the article about advancing his own career. 2. Include updated daily content. You don’t want your reader thinking about your brand once a month. You want them to yearn for you every day, so that their loyalty keeps growing and your relationship thrives. New York magazine keeps ‘em coming back for more with a plethora of daily news, features and analysis. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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And if you don’t have a huge news staff like New York, you should be publishing daily tips, or the day’s blog posts that you feature on your website. 3. Include free content. It’s practically unanimous among users: A free magazine app that’s nothing more than a sales outlet for the magazine is useless. Although tablet users have learned that content doesn’t have to be free and are willing to spend well to get it, they also have dozens of non-magazine apps on their devices that offer something for free. Solution? Give them a free issue or a sample issue to entice them to buy. SELF, for instance, offers what is essentially a good old-fashioned magalog, with sell copy mixed in with the sample content. FUNCTIONALITY Digital magazines should … 1. Be free of functional problems. That means the app opens immediately, doesn’t crash, and doesn’t hang up when loading a magazine. Is this a no-brainer? Of course. But read the reviews on pretty much any magazine app in the Apple store, and you’ll be amazed at how badly publishers are doing in the tech department. And the very scientific McPheters & Co. backs this up with research from its iMonitor product, which tracks U.S. and international mobile publications on more than 100 discrete variables. Its research even breaks down the type of malfunction that readers experience: Authentication of print subscribers is the most frequent, at 22% of all malfunctions tracked. Display issues come in second at 10%. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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What to do? Mag+ and Woodwing executives told McPheters that the responsibility for malfunctions can reside with the publisher, the development platform, or even the device. Authentication problems can also fall on the fulfillment house or even on the publisher’s subscription server. But you know who your reader is going to blame? The publisher. No matter what the issue is, the experts say it’s your job to test, test and re-test your app before it’s published. Nothing will kill you faster than disgruntled consumers. 2. Offer interactive advertising The possibilities for this are endless, which is a good thing because consumers say they want to be able, among other things, to make a purchase directly from ads. (Fifty-nine percent in the MPA study mentioned above.) In fact, they just plain old want to play with the ads. According to a recent survey by Starch Digital, a full 50% of respondents who saw interactive ads listed in the survey actually responded by interacting with them. Car advertising currently seems to be taking best advantage of interactive features for now – no doubt because selling a big, expensive product that has a ton of information attached to it has never Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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been easy in a simple print ad. 3. Have stationary images next to scrollable text. Revolutionary: An image stays put while the reader scrolls through text. This is all very nice for content producers, but it’s even more exciting for ad salespeople. Imagine telling your advertisers that their ad will be visible the entire time a reader is engaging with an article! There’s no such thing as a turned page if you’re willing to pay for this kind of design capability. 4. Offer in-app purchase of special issues Most publishers develop special issues throughout the year, using either existing content or, if they have a large editorial staff, fresh material. Surprisingly, many of these publishers sell these issues in a web store, or at Amazon … but not in their own magazine app. Why leave money on the table? Consumers might not wander into your store when they’re visiting your website, but if they’re in your app, scrolling through available issues, they can’t help but notice those special issues. For inspiration, check out the apps of such varied publications as Maxim, Bloomberg Markets and MAD Magazine. 5. Offer the reader a function for saving articles. Consumers are accustomed to being able to pin and like Internet content they love, so in addition to the usual social media sharing options, give them an enhanced experience with your magazine by Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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including a “save” function of some kind. Forbes has a fun tool that saves a “clipped” article, and The Atlantic includes a folder where users can stash free content they want to revisit later. 6. Be easy to find. As publishers in the digital age, we’re all aware of the importance of SEO on the Internet. But what about the newsstand where your magazine is sold? When it comes to the biggest one where all magazines should be available, Mag+ points out that it’s just as important to position your magazine in the Apple store as it is to drive traffic to your website. For example, I searched the term “healthy cooking” in the Apple newsstand. The #1 result is a cookbook from Time Inc. called Cooking Light Recipes. It isn’t until result #12, well off the first screen, that a magazine actually called Healthy Cooking turns up. Someone has failed to select the right keywords. Mag+ has some excellent tips for choosing the keywords to make your app stand out in a typical user search, and also for choosing the right category for your magazine – especially as Apple will only allow you to change your category when you submit an app update. Doing the best you can Obviously not every publisher can afford to do everything on this list with digital magazines. But it will certainly pay off to do as much as you can, and to plan ahead for adding new features as your profits roll in.

 

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Selling Your Digital Magazine  

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How to Sell Digital Magazines Don’t rely on the “Field of Dreams” Marketing Method Not so long ago, the idea of a digital magazine that you could read on a portable computer was almost too futuristic to imagine. Yet now that Steve Jobs has us all thinking outside the box – or at least outside the desktop computer – we have even newer challenges. Namely: How to sell these newfangled digital magazines now that we’ve got ‘em. We know all our readers have, or are planning, digital magazine products (right? right?), so it’s time to consider some innovative or even updated traditional marketing techniques. Because contrary to conventional Hollywood wisdom, simply building an app doesn’t mean that subscribers will come to it.

The renewal trigger Nina LaFrance, SVP for Consumer Marketing and Business Development at Forbes Media, outlined a creative strategy at the Independent Magazine Media Conference. When dead-tree Forbes subscribers have 13 issues or less remaining on their subscription, they get a renewal offer that includes an upgrade to include the digital subscription, normally $29.99 when purchased separately, for just $9.99 more. Subscribers paying more than base rate actually get a complimentary digital subscription. Of course, among those who are offered the paid upgrade, Forbes isn’t immune from consumers’ lingering perception that digital products, having no print or delivery costs, should be free. “We do get complaints ” from some subscribers, LaFrance says, “but we think it’s a valuable product, and we worked really hard to put it together” – and if you read this blog regularly, you know we basically agree about the value of the product – so Forbes is standing its ground. Tracking iPad-generated users If you’re making even the smallest effort at online audience development, you’re Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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getting a sizable number of unique visitors to your website. Identify those visitors who arrive on an iPad and deliver a floater with a digital subscription offer they can’t refuse. Partner options You probably already know you should be on the Apple and Amazon newsstands (more on that later!). Other options you may also have already considered include Zinio, Google and Barnes & Noble. But there are a couple of newcomers to the newsstand arena that are worth considering. Zinio, best known as a traditional newsstand, has just launched a Netflix-style program called Z-Pass, in which the consumer pays $5 per month for any three magazines. Consumers can swap titles up to three times per month, and buy additional titles starting at $1.50 per month. Another entry in this Netflix model is Next Issue Media (NIM), a joint venture of Condé Nast, Hearst, Time Inc., Meredith and News Corp. With NIM, readers pay $9.99 per month or $14.99 per month, depending on the number of magazines they want to access. Both of these options are too new to judge, and early reviews focus solely on the reader experience, not the publisher’s. But we wanted to mention them so publishers can do their due diligence. Enhanced partner options For those of you who aren’t already on a partner newsstand site, keep this in mind for the future. When you apply to a partner, such as Apple, they’ll want to see a comprehensive marketing plan that outlines all of your other efforts to support your new digital magazine. Newsstands naturally like the idea that you’re going to drive traffic to their site, so be prepared to wow them! If the newsstand thinks you’ve got something special, you could end up as, say, an Apple App of the Week, or an Amazon Featured Magazine. LaFrance notes that Forbes’ App of the Week appearance generated huge interest, and others have reported similar results. Even better, you can actually ask to be featured. A source in the industry tells me that while none of these newsstand platforms will say so out loud, they’re all willing to listen to a request from you. So don’t be shy. You’ve worked hard to Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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develop your awesome app, and you deserve some recognition! Note: Even if you’re already on the newsstands, they all have theme spotlights for apps already in their catalog, so you could wind up in, say, Amazon’s “Best Summer Ever” promotion. Again: Don’t wait to be noticed. Ask! Keep the cut Having said the above about partners, here’s a fun secret to consider. You can sell your digital subscriptions on your own website, taking the money and data directly, and then send the buyer to Apple to download the app – without paying Apple a dime, or giving away the buyer data that should be yours. Apple allows this, as long as your website isn’t solely a retail site, because its real business isn’t selling magazine subscriptions – it’s selling iPads.

Leverage your back issues There’s gold in them thar archives! Christian Dorbandt, VP for Consumer Marketing at Scientific American, reports that anthologies of articles by past contributors such as Albert Einstein and other Nobel Laureates are powerful premiums. And the Biblical Archaeology Society is making plenty of hay by combining a digital subscription with access to their archives, with the result that more than half of their sales are for the priciest subscription, the digital edition plus archive access. Lesson: Get your back issues digitized and use them as an incentive to buy a digital subscription!

Low-tech paper Forbes’ LaFrance says they tried a direct mail campaign to print subscribers to promote their new app. “We probably won’t do that again, “ she adds wryly. A full-fledged direct mail campaign is expensive, so the ROI may be a bomb if your subscriber base is older and/or of the opinion that digital magazines should be free add-ons to their print subscriptions. But other publishers, such as Scientific American, are finding some success by including promotional inserts in paper bills and renewal notices that they have to mail anyway. Either way, it’s something to consider.

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Sample issue As we’ve mentioned before, some publishers give away sample issues in their app to entice customers to buy something. Self offers an actual archive issue; Consumer Reports offers what looks like an old issue, but could be an issue compiled specifically for the purpose. A recent case study noted that for Popular Science, when they tested a specifically-designed sample issue against a free trial, the sample issue, showing off the best of the digital edition, easily bested the free trial offer. (Don’t hesitate to run your own similar test, though. Free trials are classic marketing techniques for a reason!)  

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How to Make Money With Free Digital Magazines The magazine industry feels it’s on the edge of a renaissance. Digital magazines are the hot topic of industry events, digital magazine software platforms abound, and massive retail partners including Apple, Amazon, and Zinio are seducing magazine publishers with their siren songs. “I simply don’t understand the opportunity,” one veteran magazine publisher told me at a recent industry conference. “My magazines are sponsor-driven. My issue archive includes hundreds of back issues. I have all these vendors and partners offering to digitize my back issue archive and make it available online. But I don’t have a clue how I make any money if I do it. Near as I can figure, my digital magazine archive is worthless.” Now, I do understand my colleague’s dilemma. Historically, she has sold advertising pages into an issue, published that issue, and sent invoices to her sponsors. The issue is now dead to her. Because her magazine has always been free to readers, she sees no market for back issue sales through retail partners that would generate meaningful revenues. I do hesitate to prescribe free business advice to someone I have just met. In my experience, free consulting advice is often the same bad fit as a free pair of shoes. With that caveat, I’ll share with you now the list of revenue-generating ideas I shared with my colleague after knowing her for less than five minutes: Four ways to monetize a free digital magazine archive Brand building: Magazine issues are simply more impressive than HTML content. Because readers associate magazines with high quality, curated content, they will think better of your brand if they understand that the content on your website originated in a magazine format. The cost of putting a few years worth of back issues on your website is minimal, and the boost it will give your brand is more than enough reason to digitize at least a part of your back issue archive. Traffic generation: Virtually all of the leading digital magazine software platforms generate pages with unique URLs that can be indexed by the search engines. With your digital magazine archives online and findable, your editors can create blog posts that reference and link to back issue content in a valuable way. More findable content almost always equals more website traffic. And even though you may not be making extra money on back issue page views, most Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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digital magazine archive generated arrivals will also produce cross readership of your current HTML content. Lead generation: Even if you choose to make your back issue archives completely free, creating digital magazines can provide a reason for new users to visit your website and register for your e-mail newsletters and free downloads. A visit to a digital magazine back issue is also a great opportunity to let users subscribe to notifications about future releases of new digital magazine editions. Retail visibility: While it might not be worth creating digital magazines for the sole purpose of distributing them freely through Apple, Amazon, and Zinio, once you have created them it probably makes sense to add retail distribution of current and back issues to your audience development mix. You may choose to make your digital magazines available for free on these platforms, or to charge a nominal amount. Either way, you open up a new way for new customers to discover your brand.

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Magazine Pricing We’re not the first, and we won’t be the last, to comment on magazine pricing strategies in the online age. It’s a topic of burning importance to publishers, after all, now that the new digital versions of their products are in growing demand by a tablet-addicted public, and advertising revenues are falling. Interestingly, an article in PCWorld published just weeks before the iPad’s debut in 2010 speculated that publishers would continue their traditional pricing models of $10 to $20 per year … and “I hope that’s the model iPad magazines go with,” added the writer. Of course you would. You’ve been getting thick, glossy, contentrich magazines for pennies since the beginning of time. Why would you want to pay more? One of our biggest pet peeves is the decades-long policy that magazine publishers pursued – mostly to ensure that they had as many readers as they had promised to their advertisers – of pricing their publications dirt cheap. $9.99 was indeed a common price for 12 full issues of a consumer magazine. As we often note, that policy trained generations of consumers to believe that magazines are cheap, throwaway products. Mind you, this seems to have been restricted to the U.S. When we taught our Digital Publishing Course in London to global publishers recently, the eyebrows in the room rose collectively to the ceiling when Don mentioned the prices of some well-known American magazines. They were astonished that any industry would shoot itself in the foot in that way. Don’s angst over this issue made him practically float out of his chair with happiness at the recent MPA Swipe 2.0 conference when Hearst Executive Vice President John Loughlin declared war on cheap magazine pricing now that digital versions are so popular. What does Loughlin think is a fair price? “19.99 is the start of fair value,” he said, adding that nearly 900,000 Hearst subscribers have already agreed with him. Loughlin isn’t shy about his position: He also sounded this theme when talking to the Wall Street Journal in January. “I hope that this is the demise of $6 and $7 and $8 and $9 print subscriptions,” he said at the time.

Digital magazine publishing as camouflage As the WSJ noted, Hearst is joined in this campaign by publishers such as Bonnier, owner of Popular Science and Field & Stream, and by Condé Nast, publisher of Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Vogue and The New Yorker. In fact, The New Yorker has not only raised its prices, it did so in a somewhat surreptitious way by simply attaching a $20 higher price to the magazine, print or digital, when it launched its digital edition in 2011. Nowhere did The New Yorker actually announce a price increase, thus completely camouflaging that extra $20 behind the dazzling debut of its app. The Economist has also joined in this sleight-of-hand. While we love the universal pricing that the venerable publication adopted from the beginning for its digital and print editions – one price for digital, print and archive access – they’ve recently not only abandoned universal pricing, they took the opportunity that move provided to bump the price from $129 to $160 for the bundle, while leaving the $129 price in place for digital-only or print-only. What makes digital magazine publishing worth more? This year would appear to be all about higher digital prices being accepted by the consumer, and at the same time driving higher print prices. But are digital magazines really worth more than the old print magazines? At Mequoda, we really do believe that higher prices for digital subscriptions are about more than just correcting decades of underpricing. Digital magazines, as Hearst’s Loughlin points out, offer extra value, including instant delivery, enhanced and extra content, and interactivity, not to mention being easily archivable and searchable without taking up space. And for younger consumers, it also appears to be important that digital magazines are green. Then there’s the data starting to trickle in showing that tablet owners hit two of marketing’s most desirable demographics: They’re young, and they’re affluent. It’s not often you can get both of those demographics in one product. This two-fer means that the target audience for digital subscriptions is more willing to spend money because they have more to spend – and on top of that, they haven’t been trained to think that print magazines are birdcage liners. How often do you get a win-win situation like that? And oh by the way … Condé Nast’s tablet subscribers are renewing their subscriptions at a higher rate than print-only subscribers – and they’re also paying higher prices for their renewal subscriptions. By my count, we’re now up to a win-win-win. So we have a massive advantage for digital magazine publishing in terms of price. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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But that doesn’t mean everyone is on the bandwagon with Hearst and Condé Nast. Time Inc., for instance, told the Wall Street Journal that because they never discounted their subscriptions in the first place, they’re not raising prices now. Walking the walk Fair enough. We’ve seen from Time Inc. that they understand online publishing pretty well. Among the country’s top magazines in circulation, TIME and People are two of the only three publications (the third being National Geographic) to boast an OMI above 1 – that is, they have far more unique visitors to their free website than they have paid circulation. The OMI is one of Mequoda’s key metrics for measuring the success of an online publication, specifically, its audience development strategy. If your OMI (Online Media Index) is higher than 1, it means that you have more website visitors than magazine subscribers. That’s a good thing, because if you can’t generate at least an equal amount of free traffic to your website as you have paid subscribers, you’re doing something wrong. Just for fun, we decided to see how these “top” publishers are pricing their subscriptions, as an exercise in digital publishing savvy. I also checked out a list of Don’s “Nimble Niche Leaders” who all have solid OMI numbers. Here’s what I found: Magazine pricing policies are as varied as snowflakes. Even within one publishing company, there’s no standard.

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Print prices: • All the Nimble Niche publications but one, with OMIs over 1, are charging at least $15. National Geographic is the low at $15, and most are at $19.97$29.99. • The Nimble Niche exception is Eating Well, which charges only $9.99 for print ($5 on Amazon!). • Hearst may talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. They still give away print, under $8 for their two represented magazines. They also defy the other pattern: Magazines on our list found on Amazon are all less there than on their websites, except for Woman’s Day. • Meredith is the biggest sinner. $5 on Amazon, or $15 at the website, for Better Homes & Gardens – and even less for other publications? Boggles the mind. Digital prices: • Prices are impossible to characterize. But note the jaw-dropping $4.99 charged by Autoweek! • Some publishers with outstanding OMIs haven’t gotten around to bundling (and thus have no opportunity for disguised price increases … yet). • Some folks have apps, others have digital editions available only from the website … and Videomaker says it’s available in iTunes, not in the Apple Newsstand … but we couldn’t find it there. Pricing is sure to continue as a mystery for many publishers in this completely new era. At Mequoda, we’re still voting for strategies of universal pricing for all editions and raising prices in print. And as these things evolve, we’ll follow developments and come up with some best practices.

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Pricing a Digital Magazine: Universal Digital Access

One of the most critical decisions you have to make when launching a digital magazine is pricing. The simplest subscription website pricing strategy is Universal Access, and here’s why you should consider adopting this model. No subscriber left behind If I had to handicap the various formats on which we are currently publishing magazines and magazine content, the World Wide Web looks to be the best contender for long-term stability and success. The iPad and iPhone would be numbers two and three in my digital magazine winners circle. I’m also pretty sure print is not an edition The Economist or any other magazine will be serving up in 20 years (with the possible exception of hardbound collector’s editions). Thus, it’s important for publishers to build direct relationships that are simple and straightforward with their customers on every conceivable platform that may come and go over the next couple of decades. Universal Digital Access, as a policy, creates an environment where subscribers can safely sample different platforms without fear of being left behind. From the publishers point of view, a subscriber is a horrible thing to waste, and anyone who Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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subscribes to our content on any platform, in any edition, should be given the big bear hug of love that includes premium access to our subscription website. Note: If you don’t have a premium subscription website, build one, now. Permission to communicate When a customer buys a print edition, an iPad edition, an iPhone edition, a Kindle edition, a Nook edition, a Zinio edition, or any other non-website edition, the publisher should make it priority one to get that customer registered for unrestricted website access. There’s an old direct marketing adage that marketers should never ask for information they don’t need, and get the information they need by giving the customer what they want. A robust next-generation subscription website with HTML archives, issue archives, audio content, video content, and an engaged and interactive user community provide the digital or print customer with plenty of reasons to claim their right to unrestricted website access. The claim, of course, grants the publisher permission to communicate via the website, e-mail newsletters, and perhaps Twitter and Facebook. Permission to communicate is the lifeblood of a multi platform niche media publisher. Building customer relationships While we’re incredibly excited about the rapid adoption of tablet computers and digital magazines, we still believe the World Wide Web is the nexus for niche media customer relationships. A well-designed niche media website will include a next-generation magazine subscription website, plus an open portal for building and maintaining affinity relationships, and an online store for marketing books, videos, software, and the myriad of special interest merchandise that a niche media publisher can recommend to its constituents. Keep more money The Economist can promote to subscribers to buy their subscription on their website, which allows them to keep subscriber information and all of the revenue from the sale. Buying directly on the website gives users credentials that activates on iPad or Android with no additional money being spent as well.

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The short and the long of it While charging customers separately for the same content or similar content on multiple platforms in multiple editions may provide the opportunity for some short-term profit taking, it is not in the customers’ or publishers’ long-term best interests. It looks as if many publishers may take a decade or more to discover their long-term best interest.  

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The Future of Digital Advertising The only subject in the industry media invoking more hand-wringing than the future of digital publishing is the future of digital advertising. But if you look really, really hard, you can find the occasional glimmer of hope. For example, a recent article from eMarketer proclaims, “Significantly more unique brands in the US are placing ads across digital formats.” Adds eMarketer, “Now as readers take up digital magazine editions, publishers are getting advertisers to follow them online. The Publishers Information Bureau (PIB), along with Kantar Media, looked at 58 magazine titles in the US and found that between Q1 2012 and Q1 2013 … the number of ad units available on just the iPad increased nearly 24% … Factoring in iPhones, other tablets and PCs, digital is clearly providing a significant number of new magazine ad opportunities.” Good news at last! And just in time, too: The one thing everyone agrees on is that print advertising revenues are falling faster than Superman confronted by kryptonite. And it makes sense that digital media would have appeal to advertisers. After all, interactive media keeps readers engaged more deeply and longer in the pages of the publication, and offers the possibility of an instant, interactive connection between the reader and the advertisers. In addition, advertisers can specifically target their audience, include videos and other digital experiences, expand their reach globally, and track impressions and clicks, all features that aren’t available in print advertising. So, what’s the bad news? If you research the subject in any depth, you’ll find a lot of people bemoaning the fact that digital advertising isn’t taking up the slack left by print ads as fast as some hoped: “Trading print dollars for digital dimes,” as the saying goes. In fact, a newer version even refers to “trading digital dimes for mobile pennies.” Mary Meeker, partner at venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and celebrity analyst to the publishing industry, calculates that the effective cost per thousand impressions on the desktop web is about $3.50 – but only $.75 on mobile devices. (Newspapers have it even worse: According to Poynter, newspapers get only $1 in Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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new digital ad revenue for every $25 in print ad revenue lost. Ouch.) There’s a plethora of reasons for this disparity: • With smaller screens, users don’t spend as much time consuming content on their tablets and phones as they do on desktops and laptops. • Advertisers don’t know how to use new technologies properly and are trying clumsily to transfer what they know about print to digital. (More on that later.) • Mobile ads are complicated and hard to sell. • Mobile ads metrics are hard to measure and are different depending on the platform and device. But study after study proves that consumers really are reading content on mobile devices, and spending quality time there, too. And as for the other objections, there is plenty that publishers can and should do to forge a profitable path through the digital maze. 1. MPA digital advertising metrics initiative MPA is dedicated to bringing order to the chaos that is measurability. Ethan Grey, the organization’s SVP of Digital Strategy and Initiatives, noted at the recent MPA-IMAG annual conference that depending on what platform a digital edition is built, data sets from the same ad can vary widely, though both are equally accurate. “Digital editions are like having every international plug in front of you—they’re all different,” Grey said. “Every electrical outlet works exactly as designed, and all deliver power, but they’re incompatible.” In other words, “The exact same ad will deliver completely different data sets. They’re not apples to apples.” What to do about it? At the conference, Grey announced MPA’s plan: Along with providers such as Zinio, Google, Adobe, CDS Global, Nook, Palm Coast Data and Time Customer Service Inc., MPA will develop new software that automatically tracks five metrics that the organization first developed last year, so the playing field is leveled, everyone is crunching apples only, and magazine publishers can finally command print advertising dollars or better for the new and improved content environment they deliver in their digital editions.

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(Mind you, Grey says some MPA member publishers report that they are indeed selling digital advertising at higher rates than print. There are even publishers who report that “straight from print” ads are performing as well on tablets as they do in print, contrary to the widespread notion I mentioned above that using print ads in digital media is part of the problem.) In October, MPA will publish the data from some 20 publishers who first volunteered last year to report on these metrics. The data will also be verified by the Media Research Council, giving it credibility in the same way that print data earns it from auditing agencies such as AAM. As of now, Adobe DPS v. 28 has already built in monitoring of these metrics, and the MPA is open to working with other partners as well. Metrics will be delivered through Adobe Site Catalyst version 14+ or Google Analytics, though the MPA welcomes additional partners. If you can report on these universal metrics to your advertisers, you have a much more appealing product to sell, and you can set ad rates accordingly. MPA is actively recruiting additional magazine publishers to be part of the program, and hopes to increase its numbers as the pilot program proceeds. MPA’s metrics are: • Total Consumer Paid Digital Issues: An unauthenticated/bundled issue, which has been paid for by an end user. Sponsored, corporate or “free” editions will not be counted. • Total Number of Digital Edition Readers Per Issue: The total number of “unique” readers who have opened a “full edition” on a device for the first time. • Total Number of Sessions Per Issue: The total number of aggregate sessions for all versions of the specified digital edition across all digital newsstands. • Average Amount of Time Spent Per Reader Per Issue: The aggregate total time spent across all measured digital issues divided by the total number of “unique readers.” • Average Number of Sessions per Reader Per Issue: An audience/engagement metric, derived from the aggregate total number of sessions across all measured digital issues divided by the total number of “unique readers.” 2. AAM’s Consolidated Media Report and Rapid Report tool

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Additionally, the Alliance for Audited Media (formerly ABC) is making its own strides in delivering usable metrics to ad buyers. It recently announced its new Consolidated Media Report, which, it says, “is the one place where content providers can combine all brand platforms. And it’s one place where buyers can go to get a credible picture of those brands.” And earlier this year, AAM responded to media buyers’ need for timely data by requiring that American magazines with circulation of 250,000 or more report perissue data via AAM’s Rapid Report online tool. Beginning with July 2013 issues, approximately 240 magazines will provide issue-by-issue data covering print and digital subscriptions and newsstand unit figures. Until now, participation in the reporting tool had been optional. It will remain an option for publications with circulation under 250,000. Again, the more publishers work toward establishing their credibility, the more ads they can sell and the more they can charge for them. 3. Responsive advertising Selling both online ads and now mobile ads can be a challenge if you’re not the possessor of a large sales staff. But a new trend in “responsive” advertising allows you to sell one ad that can be used on both your website and on various mobile devices. Twitter, for example, reports that in doing this, it sometimes generates more revenue from mobile device ads than from desktop ones. In the same article, Digiday.com also reports that Say Media is applying the same, cross-device approach to display advertising. The company has rolled out “adaptive” display ads, which use responsive-design technology to adapt their shape and content to the size of the screen. “This is about preparing for a world in which more than 50 percent of traffic is coming from non-desktop devices,” said Say CEO Matt Sanchez. Instead of having separate conversations about desktop and mobile ads, Say’s salespeople can focus on selling its advertisers simple, cross-platform programs. For those who are interested in pursuing responsive advertising, companies such as Google, ResponsiveAds and Undertone have launched products that enable advertisers to place responsive ads across a range of different publisher sites.

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4. Native advertising Another way to overcome some of digital advertising’s challenges is to take full advantage of the technology that digital media offers. It’s still pricey and complicated, but the payoff is equally high. That’s why “native” advertising is so hot right now: It delivers soft-sell advertising that’s integrated into the content experience, such as aligned sponsored video ads within your content, or endorsements of your content by a related advertiser. Emarketer offers an excellent overview of the concept here. Common examples of native ads include Facebook Sponsored Stories, Twitter Promoted Tweets, branded videos and other ads that appear in the content streams of media sites such as Forbes.com and BuzzFeed. Native advertising is, in short, similar to the “advertorials” of old. Needless to say, some content producers worry about blurring the lines between editorial and advertising, but the web is full of good examples of native advertising, and it’s worth considering when you want to wow your advertisers with what your digital magazine can deliver to them. 5. Work with your advertisers Above all, notes MPA’s Grey, publishers need to be more proactive in developing advertising opportunities. “We’ve seen a huge push to have publishers and advertisers working together, rather than ads just showing up,” he says. That includes doing your due diligence with the above ideas, getting your metrics in order, and then presenting it all to potential advertisers as one persuasive package. Grey also encourages publishers to identify exactly what’s working for them, take the time to thoroughly understand why it works, and replicate it. You should also be constantly on the lookout for the amazing ads that pop up in digital magazines similar to your own and studying them in depth. The advertising I’m seeing as I review digital magazines regularly is incredible, and often tempts even an old marketing hand like me. 6. Take heart! It’s too easy to look at all the numbers, trends and forecasts and be discouraged. As Grey notes, understanding and monetizing mobile publishing “is the hardest thing I’ll ever do.” After all, nothing is static in digital magazines. Grey points out that a new Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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development blasts into view every day; partners are numerous and diverse: expectations from users change constantly; and “digital” data from the Internet, social media, and a huge variety of digital magazines is often lumped together despite being vastly different, leading to numbers that the pundits can spin several different ways. Most importantly, we hope publishers will take advantage of the excitement that mobile publishing creates, rather than growing discouraged from the confusion. A marketing executive I once knew had previously worked at Wal-Mart – a success story if ever there was one – where, she told me, the word “problem” was never to be spoken. Instead, marketing executives were ordered only to speak of these things by using another, completely different word: Opportunity.

 

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Decoy Pricing How would you like to increase your subscription revenues by almost 60%? It can be done, and it’s not magic. All you need are a paid subscription website, a couple of other great products to sell and one secret: Decoy pricing. More and more publishers are discovering this secret. And it’s not a new concept. You might know of it as the “contrast effect.” A simple description of it from Ask.com: Contrast effect is the change in perception when different stimuli are put side to side to interact with one another. For example, a weight is perceived as lighter than normal when compared with a heavier weight. But what does that have to do with pricing? I’m glad you asked. The Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) has discovered how the contrast effect drives buyers to choose their most expensive product. Here’s how BAS prices three different products, the digital version of their legacy magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review; an online archive of BAR and other discontinued magazines the society no longer publishes; and a bundled offer for both: • Digital magazine: $19.95 • Digital archive: $29.95 • Both products bundled: $34.95 Now, $34.95 contrasted with $19.95 seems pricey, doesn’t it? But if you’re like most buyers, you’ll also spot the $29.95 price compared to the $34.95 price – and now $34.95 doesn’t seem so high. Hey, it’s just $5 more … and you can get what’s behind Door #1 and Door #2 for that extra $5! Might as well go for it! How many people go for it? According to BAS Web Editor Noah Wiener, for orders that come via the website where these offers are made, roughly 55% are for the highest-priced bundled offer. About 25% opt for the next highest price, the library only. The lowest price, for the digital magazine alone, trails at just under 20%. Are you starting to feel the love for the contrast effect?

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The bottom line on decoy pricing Let’s look at some actual decoy pricing math. The key, as you may have noticed, is first, having a subscription website where you can make these offers together, and second, in the careful pricing of your most valuable product.

Most publishers assume that they should price their most valuable product accordingly: • Magazine: $20 • Subscription website: $30 • Combo of both: $45 Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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After all, $45 is still less than the combined price for both products purchased separately. Consumers will respond to that, right? Not according to our research, they won’t. We find that 70% of buyers will pick the cheapest offer, while 10% will opt for the second-highest priced product, and only 20% will pick that $45 price – it looks like a lot of money compared to the price just below it. People just don’t want to make that $15 leap from $30 to $45. Now, let’s adjust that highest price to take advantage of the contrast effect: • Magazine: $20 • Subscription website: $30 • Combo of both: $35 Our research says the numbers of buyers shift dramatically: Now, 70% will pick the highest price! The middle price still attracts only 10% of orders, and the lowest price is the choice for 20% of buyers. And not only that: You’re also going to get more orders to boot– an additional bonus. That makes for a dramatic increase in revenue. As you can see, making this nonintuitive pricing decision drives more customers to buy, and a much higher percentage of them to buy the most expensive product. Bottom line: The combo package generates $14,950 more for this generic publisher. That’s almost 60% more in revenue, all without changing anything other than your prices. For an extreme version of this strategy, see Bloomberg BusinessWeek who leaves no room for deliberation. The whole shebang for only $5 more, and a $5 gift card to seal the deal.

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Real-world case studies of decoy pricing Here’s another example of decoy pricing from The Economist, which, after practically inventing the universal access price, has now been exploiting this little secret for some time. 1. Website only: $99 2. Print magazine: $127 3. Digital magazine: $127 The website-only offer is not a public offer, but becomes available when someone has exhausted their 6 free views on blog content normally behind the paywall. The user receives this offer through a pop-up for a “starter” subscription that gives them access to premium blog posts. These are fairly standard prices for a weighty product like The Economist. But there’s more. You can also choose to get both versions of the magazine for far less than double the individual price, which would be $254. 4. Print + digital magazines: $160 Again, the strategy of bundling two products for much less than their actual combined prices isn’t particularly unusual. The highest-priced product, however, is where The Economist is trying to score big: 5. Print magazine, digital magazine + website, audio and special reports: $300 Compared to $127 for one or the other magazine edition, $160 seems like a better buy. We’d bet The Economist sells a lot of bundle #4. And getting all three products is a lot of money, but an easier decision to make – the buyer doesn’t have to actually choose between them. So the $300 price point probably gets its fair share of bites, too, although we would suggest that testing a lower price, like $199, might prove more profitable.

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The Economist has been employing the contrast effect for some time. Before it launched its digital edition in 2011, it offered these subscription options: • Website: $59 • Print magazine: $125 • Website + print magazine: $125 Dan Ariely, a Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics, took note. He posited in a blog post that this was about not just contrast, but context. A potential subscriber might not know whether the website was worth $59, but it was pretty easy to see that the $125 offer for both website and a print magazine that also cost $125 was a bargain. In other words, it was a no-brainer in that context. (Note: as with everything, we favor testing whenever possible. That said, The Economist may have left money on the table with the pricing above and a combined price of $135 or even $130 may have done better.) Ariely took this notion a step further. He began surveying students about which option they preferred. Eighty-four percent opted for the combination offer, and to no one’s surprise, no one wanted to pay $125 just for the print magazine. The website-only choice got 16% of students to bite. But when he dropped the unpopular $125 offer for the magazine alone, the combination subscription became the least popular option instead of the most popular, with only 32% of respondents choosing it. The website option then became most popular, with 68% of respondents making that choice. Ariely’s experiment confirms the contrast effect theory in pricing: An obviously inferior offer affected the decision-making process and made the combination offer seem more appealing than it did without its ugly stepsister in the mix. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Influencing potential buyers’ decision-making is one benefit of decoy pricing. Another is that you can disguise price increases by making them still seem reasonable in contrast to your pricier combination offers. And since many publishers are still stuck with those legacy rock-bottom, rate-base-driven prices of $8 or $10, this is excellent news. Take another look at the model above. You know your customers would rebel if you raised your legacy $8 or $10 price to $20. But remember how the $35 bundle in our model appealed to buyers? Seventy percent of them chose that offer. At the same time, 20% went for the magazine-only price, because it was still the cheapest option of the three, even if it is a whopping $20. Decoy pricing also means you’re deflecting attention away from those price increases. As we noted in an April 2013 post, The New Yorker launched its tablet edition in 2011, setting the price for either digital or print at $59.99. Without any announcement of a price increase, The New Yorker had just raised its former print price by $20. It also offered print and digital editions together for $69.99 – just $10 more than the price for either edition alone. We don’t have The New Yorker’s specific sales results, either, but we do know that a steady decline in circulation halted at that time, despite the $20 price increase for its print edition. The $69.99 price successfully deflected its customers’ attention from the price increase for print. Whether you’re a Duke economics professor or a niche publisher, decoy pricing is a secret that’s readily understood. It’s all about human psychology. And people with products to sell should be ready, willing and able to entice other people to spend the most money on those products as possible.

Comparing Remit Rates from App Stores Just a few short years ago, magazine publishers were thrilled down to their toes to keep 18-40% of sales from news agencies. When Don ran an online newsstand, 18% was the average new remit order for the 1,400 titles there. And some publishers earned absolutely nothing from sales from the agencies they dealt with. In 2013, the same publishers complain bitterly about earning … 70% of sales from Apple. Some people just don’t know when they’ve got it good. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Three reasons why the Apple newsstand is the best offer you’ll probably ever get: • It’s incredibly generous. Compared to the bad old days, as I said, giving Apple 30% of each sale is highway robbery. And you’re the robber. • You’ve just been granted access to more than 1 billion tablets sold worldwide by the end of 2012. Thank you, Steve. (BONUS: On the iPad, your magazine rides on the coattails of one of the most beloved brands in history.) • Unlike, say, manufacturing, where a product’s maker is lucky to get a few warranty cards that help it establish a relationship with buyers, Apple delivers plenty of data to publishers for long-term marketing purposes. (And what manufacturer on the planet gets to keep 70% of sales by a retailer?) When was the last time a brand-new marketing channel opened up that can generate up to 20-30% of a publisher’s revenues in just the first 24 months of its existence, as tablet publishing has? Answer: Never. Add to that the timeliness of the iPad’s arrival – when magazine publishers were practically jumping out of windows after looking at their revenue forecasts – and Mequoda firmly believes that Apple has just saved the world as we know it. Bottom line: Take advantage of Apple’s generosity. And quit complaining.

What’s the good word? Of course you’ve noticed that we keep tossing around “30%” and “70%.” As experienced magazine industry experts and publishers, the team at Mequoda knows the difference, and wants to more clearly define what we’re talking about here. A lot of folks in the industry consider Apple to be taking a 30% commission, and that number is the focus of their ire. Yet, as I’ve noted, Apple is actually sending publishers 70% of every sale. No publisher pays any newsstand a 30% commission. So we prefer to call it a 70% remit rate – to describe the action that occurs when Apple sends your cut to you. Part of Apple’s PR problem is that they’ve allowed the conversation to circle Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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around to the “30% commission” phrase – possibly because it’s similar to the way Apple worked with the music industry long before digital magazines were invented. In any case, Mequoda is sticking to remit because it’s accurate. Maybe Apple will get with the program one of these days, too, and stand up for itself. In the meantime, we also know that there are more newsstand options out there than just Apple, so let’s put it all into perspective. What you can expect from digital newsstands As most of you know, the four players are Apple and iPads, Amazon and its Kindle devices, Barnes & Noble with its Nook, Google, and Zinio. Two of these newsstands will negotiate their remit rates. For these, I’m reporting on the best remit rates we’ve seen around the industry.

Apple • • • •

Remit rate: 70% Negotiable: No Device: iPad Number of titles: 8,477

Notes: Apple allows publishers to sell subscriptions on their websites, even if Apple is also selling those subscriptions, and takes no cut – as long as the website contains content, and isn’t a rival commercial website. Barnes & Noble: • Remit rate: 50% Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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• Negotiable: No • Device: Nook • Number of titles: 1,019 Notes: B&N justifies its relatively low remit rate by the fact that it does all conversions to its platform. Amazon • • • •

Remit rate: 65% Negotiable: Yes Device: Kindle Number of titles: 808

Google • • • •

Remit rate: 60% Negotiable: Yes Device: Android smartphones & tablets, Google TV Number of titles: “Hundreds”

Notes: No one but Google knows how many titles Google Play offers. A search doesn’t reveal the number of results, and their sales copy only calls it “hundreds.” One review comparing Google with Amazon listed numbers for all kinds of apps … except Google magazine titles. Zinio • • • •

Remit rate: 85% Negotiable: Yes Device: All major ones Number of titles: 5,500

Notes: Zinio, the oldest digital newsstand operation, handles all conversions to digital format for publishers. It also has the most complicated arrangements, and will even handle fulfillment for publishers who want to sell their digital magazines off their own website. It has the best remit rate, but we can’t call it the best newsstand because its popularity and sales volume are so low compared to Apple. Zinio has also recently launched its Netflix-style program, Z-Pass, which costs $5 per month for three magazines, which the user can swap out as desired. It hasn’t Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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been around long enough to have generated any meaningful data for interested publishers, but we’re hoping for good news. All of these newsstands have apps that allow readers to access the magazines on devices other than the newsstand’s own device, and of course Zinio, not being a device-centered agency, offers magazines in all formats, too. And as you can see, the remit rates for all of them are still light years head of the old print remit rates. This is possible because Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are more interested in selling iPads, Kindles and Nooks. It’s in their interest to entice publishers to their newsstand. Bottom line? With these generous offers, and knowing that magazine readers are increasingly interested in digital editions, a publisher has no excuse for not being available digitally.

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Digital Magazine Auditing

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Auditing Your Digital Circ Circulation reporting and auditing has been a meticulous science for more than a century. Then digital magazine publishing came along to shake it up for the first time in decades. Some publishers, such as giant Condé Nast, comply with a complex set of rules to report their digital circulation to the Alliance for Audited Media. Others large companies, such as Forbes, don’t report it. Some publishers publish their data in their media kits. Most publishers don’t share it anywhere. In the first half of 2013, AAM reported that 3.3% of all (reported) circulation is digital, with a total of 10.2 million subscribers to digital editions. But what percentage is not reported? From what we’ve witnessed, a significant amount. What should publishers and industry observers think of this kind of chaos? Publishers who aren’t reporting their data to an auditing bureau should start, for one thing. According to a recent AAM survey, 67% of publishers say that advertiser demand for independent, third-party verification of mobile metrics is increasing. Add that to the opinion from magazine advocacy group MPA: “The advantage of auditing is that a trusted, third-party source is validating data that shows that consumers enjoy magazine media brands on other platforms in addition to print.” Publishers who aren’t reporting their mobile data are selling themselves short, according to the MPA. Says Cristina Dinozo, VP-Communications Platforms and Editor of the MPA Daily News Roundup, “Magazine media are not getting credit for all the ways that consumers seek out and interact with our brands, be it digital editions, native apps, social media, video and other platforms. Reporting digital circulation is a step in that direction.” In other words, if you’re selling advertising, you’re going to have to start reporting your digital circulation sooner or later, and as long as you don’t, you’re probably leaving revenue on the table. Is there a downside to publishing your data? Well, yes. All the confusion means that your performance could be misunderstood by the advertisers you want to reach. Says Dinoza, “Due to non-standardization of newsstands, terms and metrics, as Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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well as the way that issues are counted (such as replica and non-replica issues), magazine media may not be getting full credit for all the circulation reported when they publicize it.” For example, it was just reported that Game Informer accounts for one-third of all digital magazine circulation. Would that number still be true if 100% of all digital circulation was reported? “If anything, the industry is underreporting its reach. This can be a disadvantage, at the present time, which is why the work the MPA is doing with DESI (Digital Editions Standards Initiative) is so crucial—getting all publications on the same digital page, metrically speaking.” As we noted in an earlier chapter, getting everyone on the same page means greater credibility for publishers, and more trust from advertisers – both of which are necessary if publishers are going to start commanding the same kind of ad rates that they were once accustomed to in print. At the same time, AAM is pushing its own reporting tool to publishers with its own set of data points. According to the AAM survey, 17% of AAM’s members are already using its relatively new Consolidated Media Report (CMR). Another 18 percent plan to publish a CMR in the next 12 months and 64 percent said these types of reports are becoming increasingly important. The CMR is AAM’s customizable report that allows publishers to show advertisers their entire media footprint by reporting audited information on various distribution platforms, including print, websites, social media, apps and more. AAM also has a more basic interactive audit report that details only digital data. Of course, in order to report your data, you need to possess the data. One of the biggest headaches for publishers is the fact that the newsstands are reluctant to share sales data with anyone, including publishers. Said one respondent to AAM’s survey: “The publishing industry needs to work more closely with the platform providers (Apple, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc.) to get better reporting. We currently can’t tell exactly how many digital copies of a particular issue are being accessed by subscribers. We have to make assumptions with the available data to guess at the right number.” And what data you do get, you have to manipulate manually to get it into a meaningful format because the data from each newsstand isn’t standardized. This, of course, is a colossal pain. There is a tool available that helps with this task, Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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called eEditions from CDS-Global, which provides consolidated metrics on sales of magazines in the tablet market. Unfortunately, we don’t have any first-hand reports of it at this time.  

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AAM’s approach to auditing digital circulation AAM (formerly ABC) is, of course, the go-to auditing bureau for magazines and newspapers. It addresses the digital data issue with a set of rules about what is counted as digital circulation. In general, a digital paid circulation unit for reporting to AAM reports, which is intended to be included in total circulation, includes only those issues which … • Were sold to the consumers who gained access in a “pull” delivery method or successfully received the download in a “push” delivery method • Are not also being counted as a print unit when part of a bundled offer • Are not back issue • Cost the consumer at least $.01 (except for verified circulation) • Include the same advertisers (not the advertising content itself) as an existing print edition • Include at the minimum the same editorial content as the print edition Different rules apply such as those for analyzed nonpaid bulk publications. Nonreplicas, which in AAM definition are those with different advertising and editorial content from the print version, may be reported, but are not included in total circulation and in AAM’s rate base comparison data. So far, AAM and MPA are taking digital circulation seriously. Everyone else … not so much.

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Case Studies

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Digital Publishing Turns Things Around at The Atlantic

On a day when journalists were rising to the occasion as they are rarely asked to – as the city of Boston hunkered down in lockdown and a manhunt was under way – we were proud to be associated with the magazine industry. Some of the oldest, most venerable and presumably staid publications were doing something their founders certainly could never have imagined, as they reported on the news in real time, on a medium that’s broadcast instantly into homes and tiny handheld communication devices all over the world. The Atlantic, a 156-year-old publication, was born from the minds of Boston’s intellectual elite – hardly a publication you’d expect to be leading the way in any creation of the 21st century. And sure enough, The Atlantic spent the early years of website and digital publishing floundering. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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When it made a profit in 2010, it was the first time in decades. But this very failure is what has driven the company to be one of the industry’s digital leaders, according to owner David Bradley in a 2010 interview. Bleeding red ink meant that there was nothing to lose. So The Atlantic didn’t just jump into the digital age. It dove headfirst without a safety net. Throwing caution to the wind Sure enough, by going “digital first,” The Atlantic has turned itself around. It is now one of the rare magazines with a positive Online Media Index (OMI), and in fact has improved that number since 2011. Its current number, because it has far more website unique visitors than paid circulation, is 3.48. That number is up from 3.23 in 2011. And at the recent MPA Swipe 2.0 digital media conference, president M. Scott Havens shared that their audience has increased by 330% from 2009 to 2013, and its financials have improved by 76%. Havens noted that the keys to the turnaround are the magazine’s world-class editorial talent, staying true to the brand’s culture and DNA, and a forwardthinking digital strategy. So what, exactly, is The Atlantic’s digital strategy? We started out with the iPhone app, which was just launched in February. And we forged bravely ahead despite almost universally ugly reviews. “Buggy” and “prone to crashing” were the kinder descriptions. Almost every reviewer complained because the app wasn’t available to them in the Apple Newsstand, but had to be bought from iTunes. We had just downloaded the app from the newsstand, so apparently The Atlantic remedied that situation fairly recently. And we didn’t experience any of the bugs that earlier reviewers had noted. Instead, we dug into its live coverage of the Boston manhunt, all available free from its AtlanticWired brand, which was deep and varied. Having already spent the morning perusing the coverage from dozens of other media outlets, we could Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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make a fairly informed judgment – and we were impressed. We did notice that there was not a single link to related content, nor any enhancements such as those delivered by Forbes. What you get in the iPhone app is exactly what the print reader gets, except for swiping. It was simple to navigate the free content, and easy to read. This is not an accident, of course. In a recent Mashable article, Kimberly Lau, VP and General Manager of The Atlantic Digital, said the company wanted to ensure that the experience was different from the existing iPad app and better suited to the smaller screen. The iPhone version therefore features pages created in HTML rather than PDFs, so that users can adjust the font size on their phones. We did, and it was a piece of cake to do so. Other thoughtful touches include the ability to retract menu bars to fit more text on the screen, and an innovative “folder” feature that lets the reader save free articles in one place. And here’s where we started to wonder a bit about The Atlantic’s digital strategy: One of the best things about the iPhone app, the folder, is mysteriously missing when reading premium magazine content via the iPhone app, and is missing altogether from the older iPad app. It’s on the Internet. It must be free. Off we went to the iPad, where we bought and enjoyed the April issue – even if we couldn’t save our favorite articles. Finally, we sat down at the desk to check out the website. Imagine our surprise when we realized that the magazine, a premium product, is available entirely free there! iPad and iPhone subscribers pay for the convenience of digital portability, but nothing else. Mind you, the subscription price would hardly break the bank. In December 2012, the singlecopy price was raised from $4.99 to $6.99. And a one-year digital subscription of 10 issues costs $21.99 when you buy it through the app. If you buy at the website, you’re offered print for $24.50, with the digital editions included for that price. We’re not quite clear why some publishers, including mighty Time, offer different prices for different outlets. And we’re not huge fans of a $21.99 price point – even less enamored of it when Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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the price of the magazine on desktop or laptop is $0.00. The Atlantic’s early foray into digital publishing seems to have reaped them substantial advertising revenues – Mashable reported that digital ad revenues topped print in October 2011, up 86% year-over-year – which may explain this bargain-basement decision, but the price would also seem to be a remnant of the suicidal, rock-bottom pricing within the entire industry during the print era. As we recently wrote, some publishers are starting to raise their prices to reasonable levels. The New Yorker made the leap from $19.99 in 1998 to $39.99 during the ‘00s, and again to $59.99 or $69.99, depending on the package, when it launched its digital edition in 2011. But The Atlantic is aware. Havens recently admitted to Forbes, “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot a little by having the paid app in the iTunes store while offering ourselves for free in Safari.” So 2013 was the year when The Atlantic, which has been giving away its content online since 2005, at least explores a paywall, Havens notes. Please do! Between the industry’s brain-dead print pricing, and the early training of Internet users in the ‘00s that all online content should be free, subscription revenues will continue to falter unless everybody gets on board the New Yorker’s train. And, The Atlantic’s success notwithstanding, who knows when digital advertising revenues for the rest of the industry will recover to pre-Internet levels? One other caveat from The Atlantic’s digital edition: There’s no attempt to drive traffic from their free content to the magazine. In fact, when we decided to subscribe, we looked in vain for a link to a “subscribe” page. Later, when we were experimenting and clicked on the “issues” link to buy another single copy, we found a “Subscribe” banner at the top left of that page. Nothing but luck and persistent poking around got us there. Ah, but as we all know by now, digital publishing is all about experimentation and evolution, and it’s almost refreshing to have something new to learn when we get up in the morning.

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The Atlantic Weekly: An Experiment or a Brilliant Strategy?

What do you when your website already publishes every word that appears in your premium print and digital publications for free? Um, well, uh … if you’re The Atlantic, you take the same content and put it another paid publication. The reason? Apparently, just because. And that’s OK because there is an absolute need for publishers with the pockets to do it to make these daring experiments here in the early days of mobile publishing. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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When The Atlantic launched its new weekly digital-only publication, The Atlantic Weekly, Senior Editor Geoff Gagnon told Folio, “We’ve already got a really good paid product that people can see for free, it’s called The Atlantic magazine.” “We’ve done so well and the reception has been so good on our magazine app, we thought it was a no-brainer to continue to engage these readers on more apps.” We praised The Atlantic’s digital publication earlier, with a few caveats, one of them being the presence of all premium content on the website – and not even hard to find, as you’ll see at other subscription websites, who assume the reader will be willing to pay simply for the convenience of curation. In their announcement of the new app they wrote: We are asking readers to pay for this magazine. The reason is that we are putting work into it–by editors, designers, and developers–and at least for now we’re not including any advertising. This is, for us, another experiment in putting to use any new means available to create and support the journalism of ideas that distinguishes The Atlantic. The Atlantic folks say they’re considering a paywall for the future. Having boosted its declining circulation from 439,318 in 2008 to 488,332 by December 2012, Atlantic Consumer Media president Justin Smith told Mashable that while tablets and e-readers are cannibalizing print newsstand sales, both magazine circulation and print ad revenues are up, “largely due to the brand impact that our digital strategy has had,” he says. “The dramatic growth in digital audience has in turn driven demand for the magazine, because so many more millions are now aware of it.” We believe this is an excellent experiment in expanding the brand’s digital presence, especially considering the importance that The Atlantic has placed on digital media – diving headfirst into digital in order to rescue a brand that had been failing steadily for years. The Atlantic boldly announced in 2011 that it would henceforth be not a company that happened to publish a digital edition, but a digital company that happened to publish a print magazine. The publisher called this strategy “digital first.” So now that the dust has settled from the ballyhooed launch of The Atlantic Weekly, let’s take a look at the details, and without the necessarily optimistic commentary from the publisher that accompanied all the articles around the Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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industry on the day of launch. Same or different?

Both The Atlantic digital and The Atlantic Weekly are simple reflow editions, with no bells or whistles. Both allow you to swipe horizontally to navigate between articles, and scroll vertically to read each article. Of more substance in the similarities is that The Atlantic Weekly’s content includes six articles taken from TheAtlantic.com (which, as I said, includes the magazine’s premium content), TheAtlanticWire.com (the brand’s daily content) and TheAtlanticCities.com, which covers urban issues. The Atlantic tells us that The Atlantic Weekly articles are selected by editors for their content, not by page views, and in fact they usually won’t be the most popular articles, on the theory that those articles have already been seen by most readers. Rather, says the publisher, “No one who doesn’t work for The Atlantic can keep up with it all (many of us can’t, either), and we suspect that even our most constant readers miss some of our best pieces. We’re aiming to provide readers with a selection of stories and ideas on screens scrubbed of all distractions.” The only enhancement over the website and monthly publications is the inclusion of an archive article in the weekly product. We’re big fans of monetizing your archive content, but we’re not sure this will cut it. Hopefully The Atlantic Weekly will prove us wrong, but we’re wondering if $19.99 per year is a fair price to pay for 48 archive articles. Heck, over at the Biblical Archaeology Society, you can get 6,600 articles from 35 years of Biblical Archaeology Review plus articles from two magazines they no longer even publish – 20 years’ worth of Bible Review and eight years of Archaeology Odyssey – for $5. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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What’s not in The Atlantic Weekly

Aside from the inclusion of that single archive article, The Atlantic Weekly has much in common with The Atlantic digital edition – unfortunately, much of what’s in common are things that are lacking. Neither has a link to the website, and neither allows you to save premium articles in handy folders, our favorite feature of TheAtlanticWire, the daily free content you get with The Atlantic digital edition. For that matter, subscribers to The Atlantic Weekly don’t get TheAtlanticWire. Here at Mequoda, we love apps that include fresh daily content, because it’s a great way keep your subscribers engaged in your content, remembering how much they love you, and, if you sell advertising, laying eyeballs on your ads. The Atlantic Weekly says its goal is to be a “lean-back” medium, so perhaps they figure daily news content doesn’t fit. But TheAtlanticWire is one of our favorite features of The Atlantic – solely because of the high quality of the journalism, a rare find in today’s daily news media – and we miss it in the weekly publication. The Atlantic Weekly, unlike The Atlantic, is sold by itself at $19.99 for a year, $2.99 per month as a monthly sub, or $1.99 as a single issue. There are no bundled offers with the parent publication, either print or digital. In fact, it’s mentioned nowhere on TheAtlantic.com, and isn’t (yet?) available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Zinio. Presumably there will be more outlets carrying The Atlantic Weekly soon, unless the publisher is hedging its bets and waiting to gauge consumer response.

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The long and short of it

We’re always thrilled to see publishers taking risks and thinking outside the box, and we can hope for success in the case of The Atlantic Weekly. Certainly they have plenty of great marketing minds on board who must have given this new product much thought and have insights into consumer behavior. And even if the magazine fails – and, as Mashable noted in its article about the new kid on the block, the weekly space has gotten more competitive lately with New York, Esquire, Time and Huffington Post all offering such products – experiments are good in these early days of mobile publishing. The more experiments, the better, bring ‘em on!

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Why Millennials Love the Men’s Health Digital Magazine

With a digital circulation of 109,935 reported to the Association of Audited Media as of June 2013 – 4.1% of its total circulation of 1.9 million, and a 4.4% increase since December 2012– Men’s Health is a leader in the digital space. It was one of the earliest magazines to go digital, and its experience shows. This is one hot digital magazine. Digital magazine publishing for digital natives Men’s Health has a fairly young demographic, meaning their primary audience is what we call digital natives – people who’ve never known a media world without computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets. The Rodale publication appears to be meeting that challenge well. There are hundreds of reviews of the digital version, almost all of them from loyal Men’s Health readers, judging by their comments, and almost all of them glowing. Trust me, this is not the norm. Every week we see scathing commentary from regular magazine readers of various apps from around the magazine industry. Digital magazine publishing isn’t as easy as it looks. It’s easy to see why readers love digital Men’s Health. Excellent use of the technology shows up the minute you download the app. While there’s no free content in the app – which is a shame – you do get an awesome video preview of the newest issue featuring the magazine’s editors extolling the highlights of the issue.

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Interestingly, Men’s Health also employs a digital layout we’re only just beginning to see in the industry. Instead of horizontal, right-to-left swiping throughout, Men’s Health uses vertical reflow, in which the articles are rescaled to fit comfortably in the one long screen-width page, instead of shrunken to fit the same text on a tablet screen as on a print page To read the rest of each individual article, you swipe up, and the article itself is laid out vertically. In addition to the behind-the-scenes photo gallery from the main feature mentioned above, the digital version also offers other fun things. The Christopher Pine feature, for example, is supposed to be telling readers how they can achieve their career goals in the same way as the actor. When Pine explains how he over came certain challenges, on the same page you’ll find a small image in the corner that you tap, and you’re rewarded with related advice from a career expert.

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Price, promotion and partners: More than healthy When it comes to other crucial components of this product, the magazine is in pretty good shape. Men’s Health is thankfully not giving away its content, at $34.77 for print and $23.99 for the digital edition. Of course, at Mequoda we believe the digital product should be priced the same or higher compared to the print product if you’re putting in the extra cost and effort to produce fun stuff like videos and other extra content, but this is a debate within the industry that’s probably years from being settled. And Rodale’s promotion of the digital product is fairly fit, showing up in the digital newsstand, social media, email, the app itself, and the Men’s Health website … although we had to Google “Men’s Health digital” to find the page. You won’t find any digital subscription promos at the Men’s Health website any other way that we can determine, and we hate to see this product being left only to those readers eager enough to read it digitally that they’re Googling for it. Another fitness faux pas: The print subscription includes the digital version, but you wouldn’t know it. The print subscription offer page makes no mention of even the existence of a digital product, and we only figured out that it’s included with print by reading about it on an FAQ page … which we only found via that Google search. Still, Rodale’s very healthy digital product is being seen these days in all the right places, including the Apple newsstand (including an iPhone-specific app that’s included with the iPad version), Zinio, Google Play, Windows and Amazon. The Kindle version is a simple replica at this stage, though, so we look forward to seeing it gain the fun bells and whistles that the iPad version boasts. If you’re not in the digital space already, you should be making your move soon. We recommend that you buy an issue of Men’s Health on your iPad pronto – strictly for research purposes, of course! – and find out how you should be doing your own publication’s digital edition.

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Black Belt Magazine: 9,600 Digital Subscriptions in 12 Months Debate rages in magazine land about the future of the industry, and especially the role that digital magazine publishing will play in that future. But at least at Active Interest Media, there’s little doubt about what’s keeping Black Belt magazine in fighting trim, and there’s plenty of earned optimism about the digital future. Black Belt sold 9,600 digital subscriptions since debuting its app in April 2012. That volume puts it in the top third of AIM’s 42 magazine products, all of which have digital editions. “We’re excited about the consistent growth month over month,” says Andrew Clurman, AIM President & COO. Black Belt’s digital circulation accounts for about 5% of its total – and the largest total at AIM is about 10%, Clurman says – which makes it a leader in digital publishing, where the average is 1.7%. Clurman isn’t among those discounting digital circulation, either. “I think it will be significant” in the industry, he says, noting that the market is still establishing itself, with consumer awareness of digital content and device ownership still growing strong. He’s also optimistic about advertising in these fancy new digital magazines. While some publishers fret that the industry is trading print advertising dollars for digital dimes, Clurman firmly believes that the interactive reading experience, instant connection between advertising and users, and longer reader engagement will all turn into strong CPM rates for digital publishers in the long run. Black Belt offers a real kick for readers Black Belt, a Mequoda client, is helping define digital magazine Best Practices. We’ve seen interesting innovations such as its advertiser index, a feature we haven’t seen anywhere else (yet). Clurman says all of AIM’s digital editions offer the index, and adds that advertisers expect it. The Black Belt digital edition is accessed via a Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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standard app that offers no free content, just the opportunity to buy issues or subscriptions. Mequoda still believes in delivering some kind of free content in your apps, because readers expect it, but in the meantime, Black Belt readers who do buy in are getting a rewarding experience. The magazine offers what we’ll call a replica-sorta-plus: There are certainly bells and whistles, but no videos, which the magazine excels at on its YouTube channel and website. Raymond Horwitz, Director of Digital Media, notes that Black Belt, which produces all the digital editions in-house, doesn’t have the manpower at present to offer anything fancier. However, he adds, the magazine might at some point include links back to the website’s archive of editorial and video content. In the meantime, it’s still more than just a simple replica. One our my favorite features is the seamless link back to the website that’s available on every page. When the user arrives at any page, the words “BLACKBELTMAG.COM” that appear in the bottom margin of article pages are briefly highlighted, drawing attention to themselves.

Tap that text, and you’re delivered a half-screen view of the website – at the bottom when using your tablet vertically, at the right when using it horizontally. You can make that view take over your entire screen, make it go away, or keep it where it is and read the article by scrolling while simultaneously viewing any website page you also want to check out. Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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The title of every article will also highlight itself, and tapping it delivers a halfscreen of text only, with the option to enlarge the text – always appreciated by us (ahem) more mature readers. Pricing, promotion and future plans For all of this fun and informative content, readers are paying $24.99 for digital only. The print edition is $24 per year, and there’s no option for a bundle at the moment. We’re happy to see that Black Belt isn’t giving away its content for $8 or $9, like many other magazines. The digital subscription is sold via the Apple and Amazon newsstands, Barnes & Noble, Google Play and Zinio, all of which are promoted on a single page at the website. Horowitz also notes that plans are in the works for an online store that will sell Black Belt digital content directly, including back issues. Black Belt is also vigorously marketing its digital subscriptions, most successfully via popups or floaters that appear when a new user arrives at the website on a mobile device, Clurman reports. There are also ads in the print magazine, email blasts and banners on the website. Perhaps the bottom line for Black Belt digital is the role it’s playing in Black Belt circulation and revenues. Clurman says that both numbers for all of AIM’s publications have been flat over the past three years, as they have for most publishers, even after digital editions were launched. But what helps him sleep at night is that without the digital edition, those numbers would have dropped. And with his optimism about digital going forward, Clurman is anticipating rising numbers as the demand for mobile magazines increases, and as publishers like AIM discover new, high-quality digital content products to sell.

 

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TRVL Magazine App Takes Publishing Industry on an Adventurous Ride

It’s not often that someone defies conventional wisdom so profoundly and still makes a success of it. But that’s what TRVL magazine has achieved. TRVL is the first magazine published only in a mobile version, having been founded in 2010 by Dutch partners Jochem Wijnands and Michel Elings (who supposedly compared their love of travel at a party and launched TRVL the next day). In fact, it’s not only mobile-only, it’s iPad-only. And it’s not because they’re just getting started or short of funds: It’s because they planned it that way all along. It’s acclaimed in publishing for its uniqueness, ingenuity, content and quality (3,200+ reviews in the iTunes store and a 4.8 star rating – #1 in iTunes overall). The photographs are gorgeous, the writing fair, the app outstanding.

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The only thing it doesn’t seem to have is a big fat revenue stream. The role of TRVL, it would seem, is as an outlet for a couple of very talented guys – a photographer and a software designer – to create something awesome, and as a showcase for their talents. Wijnands is one of the magazine’s most prolific contributors, and a software product was recently released that has been created by Elings – more on that below. The publishing company created by these gentlemen, Prss (apparently The Netherlands suffers from a serious vowel shortage), has an advertising manager, and they solicit advertisers in their terms of service, but there is no advertising in recent issues. Elings tells me they have sold advertising in the past to major players such as British Airways and Canon, and will do so again in the near future. And subscriptions, at $.99 per month, are optional. Prss does keep overhead low by relying largely on freelancers for its content, instead of a large editorial staff. However TRVL is making its money, it’s still a fun publication to talk about, so let’s take a look at the awesome magazine that is TRVL – a publication that could only exist here in the post-iPad world.

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Award-winning app In December 2011, TRVL was voted Best Digital Travel Magazine in the Digital Magazine Awards in London, and Best Magazine App in the 2011 BestEverApps Awards held in California in January 2012. In April 2013, TRVL announced that it had achieved 1 million app installs. That’s a pretty big audience. Of course, because it’s free and doesn’t seem to have any advertising, it’s not obliged to report its circulation to anyone, so all data comes only from Prss. Still, that’s a lot of downloads, especially considering that the TRVL magazine app disdains all other platforms but iOS. Why is that, you ask? According to its founders quoted recently in Apple Insider, they prefer to be superb on one platform, rather than simply existing across all of them. In fact, while they originally launched using a WoodWings plugin that exported Adobe InDesign files to an iPad reader, they felt constrained even by that – so they promptly developed their own software program. Amusingly – because they’re quoted in Apple Insider – they call it “the software Apple forgot to make.” And after you get a look at the app that Prss has wrought, you’ll be thrilled to know that the company is has released that software as a free Web-based tool, named after the publishing company. Elings says that the Prss tool makes many features of mobile publishing more accessible to publishers, such as reducing the time to design for both horizontal and vertical layout from three days to just one hour. With its beta version in circulation, Elings says, “Now we will scale as fast as possible. In the meantime we want to learn as much as possible about how publishers use the tool,” he notes. In short, this is one of the rare times we can rave about an app, and suggest that any publisher will be able to replicate it, not just the major players. The only cost for using the Prss tool is a fee of 5 euros per download from the Apple newsstand. Meanwhile, since TRVL is clearly marching to its own drummer, the publishers have also “unbundled” their content, to the extent that they now have published 132 magazines, each one dedicated to one single global locale. In practice, these are actually individual issues, but it certainly sounds more impressive to call them “magazines.” Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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One new “magazine” is published each week, focusing on Rome to Sydney to Burundi, from Galapagos to Poland, Languedoc and Yunnan, Andalusia to Lebanon to San Francisco … and 122 more. There’s only one “issue” of each “magazine.”

When you download the free app, you get to the “store” for all these free magazines. There are so many of them, it’s dizzying to scroll through. Shake your iPad to reshuffle the store, or click on the “World” button to bring up a world map with pins in each location they cover. Click on the pin to access that location’s magazine. Sweet! All magazines live in the cloud, but it’s quick and painless to download any issue for offline viewing. And TRVL’s content is not about which hotels to stay at or which restaurants to choose, but rather about the location’s charm, culture and people, so each “magazine” is fairly timeless. That’s the beauty of the digital newsstand: If your content is evergreen, you can sell, or at least give away, endless back issues.

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It’s about the art Everything about TRVL is artsy, from its name to the layout of the magazines. Each issue flows horizontally in one long, long … very long page. At any given moment, you can see bits of the previous or next page lurking at the edge of your screen. TRVL thus refuses to be constrained by the traditional concept of a magazine page.

This is not just using the new digital technology to push the envelope; it’s exploding the envelope in a way that no digital edition of an existing print publication has managed to do yet. For that matter, other digital-only magazines are still designing as if they were simply a replica version of a print publication! It’s hard to break out of the print mindset, but if anyone can get the industry to embrace this kind of change, it will be TRVL. And, as Eling’s promise about the Prss tool indicates, you can indeed enjoy TRVL in either portrait or landscape mode. On pages with both text and photo, the text reflows around the photo if necessary. At the same time, captions never clutter up the layout: If you want to see them, swipe photos upwards to bring up the caption along with details such as the name of the photographer, type of camera used, settings, film and more.

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You can even tap a World button while viewing a photo, and up pops a map showing exactly where the photo was taken. Again, we’re awed by the way TRVL has used iPad technology to invent something completely new that could never have happened in print. Elings biggest goal, he says, is ”to make print feel stupid.”

Other bells and whistles include the occasional link in the text that leads to a related third-party news article or Wiki article. The usual social media sharing features are included, and there are embedded videos throughout the magazine. One feature we found quite unique is the instant ability to report mistakes back to the publisher. At the end of every issue is a small screen, which, when tapped, Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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brings up an email window with the ready-made subject line “Correction.” It sure beats getting out pen and paper to write to the editor! If you have access to an iPad, we can’t urge you strongly enough to check out TRVL as a peek into what’s possible in digital magazine technology.

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MAD Magazine Offers a Haywire Digital Edition The last time I read MAD magazine was as a young teenager. The thing I loved the most, besides Spy vs Spy, were the tiny cartoons that showed up randomly throughout the magazine. I literally loved the randomness and the need to search each page from top to bottom, like an I Spy book, then turning the magazine whichever way was necessary and holding it up to my face to make it readable. MAD still has the tiny cartoons. But now all you have to do is tap the little red circle with the plus sign inside it to get a good look. I think the world is a better place knowing that sophisticated, interactive digital technology can be used to enhance the MAD magazine reading experience. According to the descriptions for each issue in the store, MAD launched its first digital issue (“non-interactive issue”) on April 1, 2012 (get it?), with simple replica editions. And based on the dates of publications, thereafter the company uploaded its back issues as fast as it could, whenever it could. Interactive editions appeared in March 2012, an issue that’s now excerpted as a free preview in the store. Of course, discovering the information above took me a good 20 minutes, because the now-enormous store inventory starts with issue #114 (1967), rolls back through time to issue #1 (1952), and then scatters issues in no apparent order. I just kept scrolling until I found the highest number, #522, nestled among special issues and #s 109-111. Talk about random. Good thing there’s a search function. But don’t try to search by month of issue. You have to type in “Mad Magazine #129” to find what you want. Could it be possible that the publisher does this on purpose … in typical MAD style?

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It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world: Prices and circulation When it launched in 1952, America was tired of the unending Korean Conflict and of a homogeneous, conservative society that worked tirelessly to hide its troubles behind a mask of perfection. It was perfect timing for a comic book that took nothing seriously, laughed at all, and blasted that mask into smithereens. If you know nothing about MAD, think of it as the Saturday Night Live of its era. According to print subscription records compiled by accounting professor and MAD enthusiast Mike Slaubaugh (MAD sells no advertising and does not report circulation to AAM), those early days were good ones: 1962 circulation – when the publisher first started recording it – including subscriptions and sold single copies, was 1.2 million. MAD hit its historic high point in 1974 at 2.1 million. But by then, society had learned to mock itself, Watergate had destroyed that complacent 1950s trust in government, and the need for a comic/magazine to spoof society was disappearing. As the New York Times noted in a 2009 article, “Mad once defined American satire; now it heckles from the margins as all of culture competes for trickster status. What is left to overturn?” Circulation dropped precipitously from that heady 2.1 million until it hit 205,441 in 2002. A brief, unexplained uptick took place between 2003 and 2005, and there was another blip in 2007, but the all-time low came in 2008 at 150,829. MAD struggled back to 188,825 in 2010, dropping to 153,228 in 2011. Then came digital in early 2012: Circulation rebounded to 165,338 for that year, the biggest single-year increase since the decline began in 1975. But, these numbers reflect print data only; I haven’t been able to find any digital circulation data.

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As a bi-monthly (after being a monthly for decades, and a brief period in the late ‘00s as a quarterly), MAD prices an annual digital subscription for those six issues at $9.99 (well, it does say “MAD magazine – CHEAP!” in the Apple newsstand search results). As is common in digital pricing these days, MAD also sells a one-issue subscription that charges the buyer’s credit card for every new issue, in this case, $1.99, slightly higher than the $1.67 per issue that the annual subscription works out to. A single issue, without a subscription, costs $4.99. A print subscription is $19.99, and there is no combo offer.

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Measuring MAD by Mequoda Best Practices

Sixty-one years after its birth, MAD is still the rebel in the room, spoofing everything from Obama’s NSA to Kim Kardashian’s delivery room experience. And it doesn’t always take Best Practices seriously, either. It delivers on some, but not on others. Sometimes it delivers, but only randomly, and in this case, random is not a good thing. But without further ado, here’s how MAD stacks up to Mequoda’s current Best Practices: Design 1. Magazine features readable design, either vertical reflow or responsive. YES MAD utilizes vertical reflow. 2. Magazine is easy to navigate (user’s guide, scrubber bar and instructional Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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icons). YES with caveat MAD offers no user’s guide, but on every screenshot that includes a one-page article, there’s a red bar at the bottom instructing the reader to “Tap once here for navigation (a scrubber bar) or swipe here to turn page.” For some reason, conventional swiping elsewhere on the page is used only on long pieces with vertical reflow. I kept forgetting about the red bar and trying to swipe as I would in any other magazine, somewhere near the middle of the right side of the screen. MAD does offer helpful icons to remind you how to access those vertical reflows: But instead of arrows pointing down, as in most other magazines, these arrows point up … to tell you how to swipe, not where the rest of the content is.

And without a user’s guide, I discovered several awesome high-tech features only by accident. 3. Magazine uses either portrait or landscape mode, preferably portrait. NO Both formats are used. However, when the reader sees a full spread that doesn’t fit into the screen in portrait mode, and naturally turns the device to landscape mode, the spread shrinks to fit into the screen vertically … but not horizontally. Therefore your choice is either to view half of the spread at one time in portrait, or to see most of it in landscape – but squint to read the type, and swipe horizontally to see the last few centimeters of content.

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This strikes me as the worst of both worlds.

Content 1. Magazine uses available technology to enhance the reader experience. YES with caveat Every cover of the new interactive versions features a video. For the most recent issue, the Black Spy and White Spy, from the ongoing Spy vs. Spy series, enter the screen from opposite sides, as a sinister-looking President Obama, resplendent in a trench coat, fedora, and evil grin, rises up behind them to put a hand on each one’s shoulder, laughing maniacally. In case you couldn’t guess, this is an illustration for a satirical piece on Obama and the NSA. Also, the reader can tap on any title in the table of contents to go directly to the article. Many of the high-end digital publications I’ve read lately can do everything including wash the dishes for you, but they don’t feature a tapable TOC. Another high-tech touch: In some of the cartoon stories, the user can tap on a speech bubble and see it magnify for easier reading. But … only in some pieces, and only on some pages of that piece. More randomness.

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And as I mentioned, MAD has always featured teeny little cartoons sprinkled randomly throughout the magazine, and has taken advantage of the technology to allow the reader to magnify them. But once again – only some of them. The rest are just as tiny as they always were. But hey, at least the reader can view them in both portrait and landscape mode! And there’s one thing that truly takes paper and makes it digital. An absolutely classic MAD feature is the Fold-In. In print, this involves literally folding a page together in the middle to change one image and related text to something different. Digital MAD allows you to swipe one side of the page into the center, creating the same effect as you’d get with real paper. Only easier: No need to worry about getting your fold in exactly the right place and completely straight! (Yes, I speak from experience.) 2. Magazine includes updated daily content. NO 3. Magazine app includes free content. YES There’s a free preview that’s an excerpt of the first interactive issue that I Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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mentioned above, plus 10 pages from the book Totally MAD: 60 Years of Humor, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity. Functionality 1. Magazine app is free from glitches, crashes or other technical problems. NO At least one reviewer and I experienced the “white screen of annoyance,” in which it takes several moments for the pages to load. Pinch-and-zoom was troublesome, too. In its brief history, digital MAD has been updated three times this year and three times last year. It may take awhile for them to get the bugs out, including the erratic pinch and zoom function, and applying the features throughout the content instead of just here and there. 2. Magazine with advertising includes interactive advertising. NO MAD has no advertising but its own spoofs (ad for a new “Fox ADHD” cartoon show: “From the mind of a five-year-old …”), and ads for their own products. I’d love to see what they could do with interactive features in the spoof ads … and why on Earth there’s no way to buy a subscription, special issue or book from their product ads – even if it’s just a link to the store — is beyond me. Oh, wait. You can’t buy the books in the store, either. And the ads don’t tell you where to buy them. Amazon, I guess. Paging the marketing department … 3. Magazine features images that remain stationary when text is scrolled. NO 4. Magazine offers in-app purchases of books and/or special reports. YES But see above. Only a few special issues are available as yet. Books, prints and Tshirts are advertised heavily, but are not available in the app. 5. Magazine has a tool for saving content. NO Not even the usual social media icons … 6. Magazine is easy to find in the Apple newsstand. YES Searching for “comedy” gets you nowhere, but for “satire,” MAD is the fifth result.

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The creativity and wit that go into MAD’s content aren’t quite being served as they deserve by this digital edition. Clearly the publisher, E. C. Publications, is making an effort to revive a struggling brand, but we hope they’ll keep updating to get it right. The creative use of technology, in particular, is commendable, but it’s frustrating for readers to use it in one article and not have it available in the next. Then again, without a user’s guide, they may not even know about these features.

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Popular Science Turns its Digital Edition Around Popular Science, founded in 1872 and now owned by mega-publisher Bonnier Corp., is the fifth-oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. But as old as it is, its focus on cutting-edge technology has served it well, allowing it to stride into the digital age with authority. Of course, like most magazines, PopSci suffered from the usual decline in overall circulation in the past few years. After hitting a low in the first half of June 2011, and with its digital app fully up and running, circulation recovered in 2012, only to decline again from 1,350,685 this time last year to 1,309,176 as of June 30, 2013 – still lower than circulation as of June 30, 2010.

Early versions of its app were, predictably, buggy – and PopSci raised consumer ire by selling single issues only at $4.99 a pop, while a print subscription was still $12. But things have improved; though digital circulation has declined slightly from a year ago, as of June 30 it has recovered from a low six months earlier. A look at the state of the PopSci digital edition Subscription offers are a mixed bag. A print subscription is still (sigh) a measly $12. On the iPad, a combo subscription costs $19.99, a digital-subscription only is $14.99, and if you’re already a print Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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subscriber, you can add the digital edition for $5. This iPad combo offer on the website has the added advantage of harvesting PopSci customer emails, credit cards and other marketing data that Apple doesn’t share, notes Subscription Site Insider. Unfortunately, the offer hasn’t been particularly popular, which Subscription Site Insider speculates is because “it’s not prominently featured on the site.” I would concur: If you subscribe to the print edition on the site, there’s no mention whatsoever of digital editions. As for other newsstands, Amazon and Google offer no combos, just the digitalonly price. Zinio sells all versions, again without a combo offer. And Barnes & Noble only sells single issues, now priced to sell at $1.99. The low subscription prices are dismaying in an age when other publishers are finding consumer now willing to pay more for their digital magazines, and some have even managed to occasionally raise their print prices, too. Our bet is that the early barrage of complaints from consumers in 2010 about what is now an average single-issue digital price is what drove this bargain-basement decision. With the quality problems worked out, we would encourage PopSci to test raising this price. PopSci digital is a Mag+ off-the-shelf (OTS) product, which offers a limited number of choices in design, as opposed to its Software Developer Kit, which offers unlimited design choices. As we’ll show you in a moment, though, the OTS version is perfectly capable of meeting Mequoda’s Best Practices. As for the website, unlike other large publishers, PopSci doesn’t offer all of its magazine content for free there. Instead, two-month-old magazine content is available to non-subscribers in its own category, readily accessible from a tab in the navigation bar.  

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Measuring PopSci by Mequoda Best Practices

Design 1. Magazine features readable design, either vertical reflow or responsive. YES PopSci uses vertical reflow. According to Subscription Site Insider, another nice feature is that PopSci offers two different iPad versions, one for high retina display, and one for non-retina display, so that no user has to suffer the blurred images and type that high-retina display can cause when viewed on a low-retina device. 2. Magazine is easy to navigate (instruction page, scrubber bar and instructional icons) YES PopSci features all three. 3. Magazine uses either portrait or landscape mode, preferably portrait. NO Digital  Magazine  Publishing   MequodaFree.com    

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Mequoda believes that spending money on both modes is a waste of resources, and PopSci does have both, including layouts that must be viewed in landscape mode. Perhaps, Bonnier has resources it can afford to waste. Content 1. Magazine uses available technology to enhance the reader experience. YES with caveat Among the smart uses of digital technology utilized by PopSci are a dropdown table of contents that’s accessible from every page in the magazine, and videos to illustrate how things such as robots work in motion, instead of still photos. Caution: PopSci is also using technology in ways that are probably annoying to more readers than just me. One is the use of videos to bring the cover alive, which, while entertaining the first time, is aggravating in the extreme when you’re forced to watch them every time you “open” your issue. Another is the use of video advertising … on the cover. Again, this video can’t be stopped, and it leaps into action every time the reader accesses the magazine. However, while a reader might find it annoying, PopSci tells us that the editorial department has no issues with it, and this cutting-edge advertising is providing a solid revenue stream.

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2. Magazine includes updated daily content. NO A rare misstep for PopSci. Mequoda believes that updated daily content, such as that used in New York magazine, keeps readers more engaged and loyal with your brand than simply accessing content once a month. PopSci actually delivers daily content in a different app, rather than in the magazine app. 3. Magazine app includes free content. YES As we’ve noted in the past, readers often complain when a “free” app turns out to be nothing more than a sales outlet for the magazine. PopSci includes at least one piece of free content: a compilation of some of the best features of the past few months. Functionality 1. Magazine app is free from glitches, crashes or other technical problems. YES The current version, 4.2.1 dated in July (“What’s New: News and Alerts button no longer crashes the app!”), is too new to have many reviews, but the ones that are there are positive. I didn’t experience any problems. 2. Magazine includes interactive advertising. YES And plenty of it. Tap anywhere in a Bose headphones ad and you get an order form complete with price, which is notably absent in the ad itself. There have also been 3-D rotational ads and lots of video, as Bonnier leads the way in interactive advertising.

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3. Magazine features images that remain stationary when text is scrolled. YES PopSci doesn’t utilize this function with advertising, and we hope to see publishers doing so soon, but the function is used cleverly in editorial content. Not only does text scroll, but new sidebars appear next to the stationary image. 4. Magazine offers in-app purchases of books and/or special reports. YES 5. Magazine has a tool for saving content NO 6. Magazine is easy to find in the Apple newsstand. NO As we’ve noted, it’s just as important to set up your digital magazine for optimized search in the newsstands as it is online. We searched the three separate phrases in PopSci’s website page description, New Technology, Science News, the Future Now, and had no luck whatsoever. And, to our surprise, it’s listed under the newsstand’s Entertainment category, instead of Science! That said, from what we’ve been reading lately, there’s adequate room for suspicion that the Apple newsstand is a quagmire and not necessarily set up at this point to allow proper optimization. Still, that’s even more reason for publishers to do whatever they can and not be sloppy about it. All told, Popular Science appears to be doing many things right, and now that earlier problems with their digital magazine seem to be fixed, we can hope that their circulation continues to rise.

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