A digital all you can eat buffet

My good friends over at PC World magazine have a good piece on a French magazine distributor who has introduced an all-you-can-read subscription offer.

For a monthly fee of around £15 readers can download the latest issues of around 400 French magazines, including top sellers such as Glamour and Playboy. There are also more obscure titles, including magazines for stamp collectors, bonsai growers and clockmakers.

There's no limit on how many different magazines subscribers can download, although they can only download two copies of any given issue.

Its a green play - pushed by the distributor Relay and (among others) the WWF - thats the Worldwide Fund for Nature, not the US wrestling lot.

You can make it up..

Digital magazine publisher Made Up Media has signed its first two contract publishing deals and has announced the first issue of Nutmeg, a monthly digital football magazine for Littlewoods Gaming.
The 32-page title will be sent electronically to Littlewoods’ 40,000 betting customers and will build on the content from Catflap Magazine, which we reviewed last year.

The one-year-old company has also signed a deal with razor manufacturer King of Shaves to produce a digital contract magazine called The Knowledge.

In addition to Catflap, the company also published In Golf We Trust, EatCricket and Scrum of The Earth.

Which is about rugby in case you wondered.

Driving the digital agenda

A good piece by Josh Gordon on Folio about the whole "digital magazines don't work" debate.

He points to the success of The Winding Road, an automotive site that has attracted 180,000 readers who view over 22 pages each.

Digital Drift

At last. Some naysayers...

Digital magazines don't work. That's according to the publishers of a UK surfing magazine, Drift. Ignoring the deliciously ironic title for a minute, let's have a look at the facts - and the product.

Drift is a surfing magazine, based in the South West of England, and despite targetting surfer types - young, internet savvy and above all eco friendly, it isn't cutting the digital mustard.

Ultimately,according to editor Howard Swanwick, is that "I think digital magazines have had their day. As a medium to put features in, they don't work." That evidently is why he's switching to print - more costly, less accurate, less measurable and er, less eco - friendly.

Gosh.

Now I need to flag up immediately that I used to work with Howard in my dark and distant past, but despite that I have no axe to grind. I just think he's got it wrong.

Its about the ads Howard, and you haven't got any, so switching it to print is going to make f*** all difference. Plus, I'm afraid that your site is (1) slow to load (2) confusing in terms of downloading the digital product and most importantly (3) the text on the magazine is in places unreadable.

Back to the drawing board I think...